February is American Heart Month, a time to focus on heart disease awareness and prevention. Friday is National Wear Red Day to help bring awareness and fight cardiovascular disease, which is the number one killer of women.
“Heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death in women,” said Catherine Campbell, the chief of cardiology for the Baltimore service area at the Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group. “Prevention and awareness of this is very important, because most heart disease events are preventable.”
Campbell says exercise has a huge impact on your cardiovascular health, and she recommends 30 minutes of exercise a day. But if that goal feels too big to tackle, you’re urged to start small.
“If you’re not able to do 30 minutes all at once, you can do short bits of exercise,” she said. “Just doing a few minutes a day, spread throughout the day, can still lower your risk compared to no activity.”
Short bursts of activity include taking the stairs, parking farther away from the entrance, actively playing with your children or pets, carrying groceries, or doing simple household chores like vacuuming.
A recent study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine looked at “vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity” or VILPA, which are shorts bursts of physical activity you can easily include in your daily routine. It found even small amounts of VILPA in women were associated with substantially lower risk of overall major adverse cardiovascular events, myocardial infarction, and heart failure.
“Women engaging in these short bursts of just a few minutes of vigorous activity throughout the day had a 45% lower risk of major cardiovascular events,” Campbell said.
Gradually, you can increase the intensity and duration of physical activities as you build up to that daily 30-minute goal.
In D.C., the city’s heart disease mortality rate is higher than the national average. Campbell says you can also lower your risk of cardiovascular disease by eating well, quitting smoking, losing weight, getting adequate sleep and controlling your blood pressure.
“Be educated about the risk for heart disease,” Campbell said. “Make the changes that you need in your lives to reduce your risk and to continue living healthy lives.”
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