Yourwellness Magazine Follows Up NICE Heart Attack Care Update
London, UK (PRWEB UK) 29 July 2013 -- On the 12th June 2013, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published updated guidance to improve the care of people who have survived a heart attack. The original guideline, published in 2007, gave recommendations about programmes to help people recover after a heart attack. However, despite this guidance, there remains a relatively low uptake of such programmes and so the new guidance includes interventions which aim to ensure more people take up and complete cardiac rehabilitation programmes.
The draft guideline has also eliminated recommendations for eating oily fish, or taking omega-3 fatty acid supplements, as new evidence has shown the effects of this are minimal. Professor Mark Baker, Director of the Centre for Clinical Practice at NICE, commented, “This updated draft guideline takes on board the latest evidence on the best ways to prevent further heart attacks or strokes in people who have already suffered a heart attack. Its aim is to provide the growing number of people who now survive a heart attack with the good quality, systematic care that is essential to improving long term outcomes and quality of life.” (http://www.nice.org.uk/newsroom/pressreleases/NewGuidelinesReducePrematureDeathsHeartAttack.jsp)
With this in mind, Yourwellness Magazine gave readers ways to identify if they’re at risk of heart disease. According to Yourwellness Magazine, “Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, causing heart attacks, stroke, high blood pressure, hardening of the arteries, heart failure and congenital heart disease among many other conditions. While heart disease can often be inherited, most cases of cardiovascular disease are as a result of lifestyle, such as smoking, lack of exercise, unhealthy diet and excess alcohol.”
Yourwellness Magazine outlined the five most common risk factors for cardiovascular disease:
1. Age and gender: Four out of five people who die of a heart attack are over the age of 65. Meanwhile, men face a higher risk of heart attack earlier in life than women but women are twice as likely to die of heart disease as they are from cancer.
2. Genetics: Parents with heart disease increase children’s risk. People from ethnic minorities such as Afro-Caribbean also face an increased risk of heart disease.
3. Smoking: Smokers are twice as likely to have a heart attack as non-smokers.
4. Alcohol: Regular consumption of alcohol increases heart disease risk.
5. Cholesterol levels: High blood cholesterol levels will raise the risk of coronary heart disease, especially when other risk factors are present.
To find out more, visit the gateway to living well at http://www.yourwellness.com, or read the latest issue online at http://latestissue.yourwellness.com.
Michael Kitt, Yourwellness Publishing Ltd, http://www.yourwellness.com, 0208 588 9553, [email protected]
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