Dr. Leepika Parulekar

(MBBS, MD (General Medicine))

Today I will be talking about how to prevent cardiovascular disease. My area of interest is in preventive cardiology, and let me share a few thoughts about this as a doctor, as your doctor in the next few minutes.

How to prevent cardiovascular diseases? We will start with what are your risk factors? If you are above the age of 40, if you are male or female, it depends on all these factors too, smoking cigarettes, having blood pressure diabetes. If someone in your family means father, mother, brother, sister anyone has a heart problem or has diabetes then the risk of you developing blood pressure and after that heart problem development chance or risk becomes very high for this.

If you want to go to the doctor, then you should go for prevention. So that these problems don't occur with you, and to reduce the risk should go early to the doctor.

Traditional risk factors which cause cardiovascular or cardiac disease are if male then if you have blood pressure you smoke a cigarette or in ladies, if you take tobacco, which is equivalent to cigarette smoking, if your cholesterol is high, if you have diabetes, and if your cholesterol which is good cholesterol is less. Then it increases the risk of causing cardiac diseases.

For this, what can we do? you should definitely go to the doctor, if you have these risk factors so for this we can use three things which we call A, B, and C. Which is ABC of prevention of cardiovascular disease.

This means with ABC, the cardiac problem you have we, can reduce the risk. One is that if the doctor has given you a prescription for aspirin you can take that which is A, or if you have blood pressure which is B you can try to keep it at a low level this can be done with the help of a doctor, or with Doctor's advice, and C is cholesterol, which we need to maintain at a lower level in this there is one E too which means there is D and E. D is diet and E is exercise so ABCD and E.

These five things you need to keep in mind blood pressure needs to be kept. It checks if you have diabetes, or you are overweight, or you have all these problems then the blood pressure should be low means 140 systolic blood pressure that is 140 millimeter's of mercury top one and the lower side of pressure should be kept lower than 90. So the risk may reduce.

Intake of salt quantity of salt-packed things which contain hidden salts or soda bicarbonate which is more in biscuits and packed items and bakery products intake of all these products should be minimal or not taken at all.

Apart from this, you should eat fruits, vegetables, and sufficient exercise should be done. If your cholesterol is high you should consult the doctor so that your total cholesterol, which means your LDL total cholesterol along with it LDL cholesterol which is bad cholesterol should be kept low HDL cholesterol which in lay language or common words is called good cholesterol should be kept at higher levels. this can be achieved by doctor's advice through exercise or tablets or medicine can be kept high.

If you do cigarette smoking or intake tobacco then reduce it and completely stop it otherwise, the risk becomes very high heart risk or attack risk or stroke risk increases.

Diet and weight these two things in D and E comes diet and exercise with diet your potassium level, which means the vegetables, fruits, and natural products the amount should be more, and fiber it contains fiber too, and that's why. When you intake it, your weight will reduce, and your cholesterol will also be in control. So, the food that we make at home, which is less salt and less oily is better. If you eat non-veg food then reduce the intake of meat. No need to stop it but the fat which is there in the meat, red meat should be kept less or should be stopped then it is much better. White meat like fish, chicken breast without skin chicken can be eaten, egg whites can be eaten which will not cause more harm, which is good for the body so this diet and weight should be controlled according to your body age.

When it comes to weight, the overall weight is one thing, and the size of the waist is also one thing. the size of the waist is less than it is better because if the size of the waist is more than the risk of heart disease increases, so you need to take care of this.

If you are diabetic then sugar control is very important. If your sugar 100, while fasting should be below 120, and the sugar after eating food should be kept close to 180 and not above 200. This you need to manage one more test that your doctor may advise doing is glycosylated hemoglobin hb1ac through this your average sugar the sugar of three months we can keep it low means between 5.5 to 6.5, which means your sugar control is very good. If it is above this, then sugar control is not right. sometimes the doctor may advise you hb1ac, if you are diabetic then may advise you to test this, so from this it becomes easier to check if the control of diabetes is good or no.

If diabetes is not in control then from this we come to know that the poison is spreading in the blood because if sugar is not in control then plain sugar is circulated in the blood and because of this every organ, may it be brain or may it be muscle or kidney or heart or liver all organs are affected. You will feel very tired if sugar is not in control, the frequency of peeing the amount of time you go to the toilet to pee can be more the frequency will increase and you will not get enough energy because there is no energy in the body, the sugar which is converted into energy that sugar is unable to digest because insulin is not given nor tablet is being taken that's why it is harmful.

Now we come to the diagnosis to exercise. Exercise is very essential when you want to prevent diabetes and heart problems. Through exercise, if the patient exercises regularly then you need to do walking and strength training which means the muscle activities also need to be trained because as we get old the size of the muscle and the strength of the muscle becomes less, so climbing staircase doing squats or lifting lightweights is also important to reduce weight but when you start any exercise program then take advice from your doctor, if you are diabetic, you have blood pressure or any heart issue, so always few tests need to be done because from that, we come to know that whenever we do exercise, the heart or blood pressure should not have any injury when these tests come negative or positive, the Doctor may give advice or advice for exercise or can give clearance, it is important because sometimes due to too much exercise the heart rate can go high, and sometimes if there is a problem in it or there is a block then can cause trouble. so these few tests or doctors advise, if your risk is high we call it, risk stratification through this you can regularly meet your doctor, take advice, and your risk of heart issue can be reduced. This means your quality of life will be very good, and your disease will become less, and the complications of it will reduce, and the risk the death risk or bad quality of life risk will become less. So my advice is to please meet your doctor on a regular basis. So that you live healthy and you are healthy.