by Rebekah Cartwright
The heart. We sing love songs about it. We write about how it feels. We use its likeness as a symbol of love to decorate everything from valentines, to nurseries, to wedding cakes.
While it holds a special place in popular culture, ways to ensure that its beat goes on are often ignored.
“One of the biggest misconceptions people have about heart health is that if you aren’t experiencing symptoms, then it means there is nothing wrong. Many times people can be entirely asymptomatic and have a heart condition that needs to be treated,” says Dr. Amit Mittal, a local cardiologist with Advanced Cardiology of Carroll County.
According to Dr. Mittal, when it comes to cardiovascular diseases, early detection and timing are everything. When caught early, the means of intervention to correct heart problems are easier and a lot safer.
That’s something that Michael Bailey, a local biomedical technician and resident of Westminster, can attest to, whole heartedly.
What started with a normal check up ended up being a life-saving discovery. In the span of less than 10 days, Bailey went from a checkup with his regular family physician to having a five-way bypass. With no history of heart problems, the last thing he expected was to find himself having heart surgery earlier this year.
He had been experiencing a few minor symptoms, like shortness of breath and breaking out into a sweat when walking, but didn’t think anything could be seriously wrong.
On August 20, he described his symptoms to his primary physician, who then ordered an EKG to test his heart function. That is when he discovered that there were serious, life-threatening issues with his heart. He was referred to Dr. Mittal, and before he knew it, Michael Bailey was undergoing five-way bypass surgery to correct his poor heart function.
“They saved my life. I was a massive heart attack waiting to happen,” Bailey explained.
“Don’t smoke. Eat healthy, and if you feel anything out of the ordinary, don’t put it off,” he recommends from his personal experience.
“We are just so grateful for my husband’s doctors and want to thank them in any way that we can for what they did,” said his wife, Patty Bailey.
According to the American Heart Association, every 40 seconds, an American dies of heart related diseases. That’s 2,150 people per day, which is more than the number of lives that all forms of cancer claim.
But yet, heart problems tend to go unnoticed or completely ignored, and most of the time, people don’t even realize that they have them until it is too late to even try to fix them.
That’s because people tend to put their heart health on the backburner, assuming that they don’t need to take any special measures to take care of their hearts, according to Dr. Brian Barr, a cardiologist affiliated with Carroll Hospital Center.
“People have a problem with underestimating the importance of exercise and diet, as well as the importance of blood pressure control,” Dr. Barr explains.
Dr. Mittal would agree. Over his time as a cardiologist in Carroll County, he has commonly seen patients with coronary artery disease, rhythm disturbances and abnormalities, and valvular abnormalities. Coronary artery disease, in particular, is preventable, if diet and exercise are made a priority.
“The best thing you can do for yourself is to decide to be proactive about your health in general. You can do this by eating right, being conscious of your daily activities and habits, and taking preventative care to ensure any potential problems are found early,” explains Dr. Mittal.
We all know that exercising regularly and being mindful of what we eat are essential for staying healthy, but we need to make them a priority in order to keep our hearts healthy, according to Dr. Mittal.
“The best thing a person can do to keep their heart healthy is to engage in regular aerobic activity, eat a protein-enriched diet, and avoid substance abuse,” says Dr. Mittal.
Dr. Barr recommends exercising for at least thirty minutes, at least five days per week.
“You should exercise enough that you feel like you need to take a shower afterwards. Like so much so that after you’re done, you think, ‘I can’t go out like this, I can’t go anywhere like this until I take a shower,’” he explained.
Barr and others are quick to note that emotional health is critical to heart health as well.
“There is definitely a link there between emotional health and heart health, so it’s important, too.” he explains.
While a broken heart may just sound like a figure of speech, it can have serious health implications. In the past couple of years, there have been at least half dozen news stories of elderly couples passing away within hours of each other.
Most recently, in November, former New England Patriots quarterback Doug Flutie’s parents died within an hour of each other, his father first, followed by his mother shortly after. Flutie claims that she died of a broken heart, and he might not be too far off.
According to the American Heart Association, when a particularly stressful event occurs, like the death of a loved one, a surge of hormones can result in short term muscle failure in the heart, or broken heart syndrome.
Although most people aren’t aware of that link, researchers have been trying to understand it for years. Dr. Barr notes that one of his mentors at the University of Maryland Medical Center, Dr. Michael Miller, even dedicated an entire study to how laughter can improve heart health.
That study found that laughter helps to reduce stress, which, in turn, protects the heart from harmful chemicals that are released in our bodies when we are stressed out.
According to Vickii Engel Thomas, the co-founder and owner of the Center for Healing Arts in Westminster, meditation can also improve emotional heart health.
Citing techniques from the HeartMath Institute, she recommends a three-step meditation process for de-stressing and improving heart health.
“The three step meditation is heart focus, heart breath, and heart feeling. This practice can be done in just a few minutes, anytime and anywhere,” Vickii explains.
In this process, first, you focus your attention on your heart. Then, you concentrate on breathing slowly for several minutes. Lastly, you think about a cherished memory.
“You bring to mind any time when you felt good inside and allow yourself to re-experience it. According to the HeartMath Institute, briefly re-experiencing a cherished memory creates synchronization in your heart rhythm in seconds. It increases healthy, energizing hormones like DHEA and reduces the level of damaging stress hormones like cortisol,” she describes.
