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Category: Health published by Shameen Published on: June 02, 2019, 8:03 pm EST Update: June 02, 2019, 8:03 pm EST
Washington: A recent study says that following seven healthy measures, such as proper nutrition, exercise and more, could help predict the future risk of cardiovascular disease.
The study was published in the journal AMA Network Open.
The team of researchers, including three from Penn State, has been studying the link between seven key health measures and people's cardiovascular health over time.
They identified five positive or negative performance patterns of the seven health measures over time. These patterns predicted the future risk of CVD among participants.
For example, people who consistently scored well in all seven measures were less likely to develop cardiovascular disease than others. The researchers also found that improving these parameters over time was linked to a lower risk of CVD in the future.
Xiang Gao, one of the researchers in the study, suggests that people can help influence their CVD risk in the future.
"In our study population, and probably around the world, many people have suboptimal or bad heart health," said Gao.
"But even if most people do not meet the ideal criteria for the seven indicators, if we can work to improve them, the future risk of CVD can further decrease," he added.
The American Heart Association has identified the seven health parameters as being the most important predictors of heart health. They include four user-controlled behaviors and three biometric settings that must be maintained at healthy levels.
Modifiable behaviors include not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight, eating well and staying physically active. The biometric data are blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar.
Each metric has a low, intermediate or ideal score. For example, smoking regularly would be considered "mediocre"; smoking in the last 12 months would be "intermediate" and never smoking or quitting more than a year ago would be "ideal". Combining the score for each of the seven indicators – 0 for mediocre, 1 for intermediate and 2 for ideal – results in a global "cardiovascular health score," or CHS.
"Only 2% of people in the United States and other countries meet all the ideal requirements for these seven factors," said the researcher.
"This raises the question of whether the improvement of these parameters is related to reducing the future risk of CVD. This should be the case, but no one had the data to support this idea. "
The researchers used data from 74,701 Chinese adults from the Kailuan study. At the beginning of the study, participants completed health questionnaires and had three clinical and laboratory tests in the first four years. Over the next five years, researchers tracked all new CVD cases among participants.
Once the information was collected, the researchers badyzed the data to see how CHS for the first four years was badociated with whether or not participants developed cardiovascular disease afterwards. They found five distinct patterns – or trajectories – that people followed during the four years
These trajectories included the maintenance of a high, medium or low CHS, as well as the increase and decrease of CHS over time. Gao said that these different trajectories were badociated with different risks for the development of CVM in the future.
Gao said he found similar results by badyzing the risk of stroke and myocardial infarction, commonly known as heart attack.
"We also examined whether improving the cardiovascular health score over time had an impact on the future risk of CVD," he explained.
In addition, he said, "we found that improving overall cardiovascular health overtime helped reduce future CVD in this population, even for people whose condition Cardiovascular health was poor at the beginning of the study.
In addition, researchers wondered if one measure of health was more important than the others. They did repeated tests, each time removing a different and unique health measure. They found that the scores always predicted the future risk of CVD in a similar way.
"This suggests that overall cardiovascular health is always the most important thing and that one factor is not more important than the others.This also confirms that these seven parameters are valid and constitute a very important tool. useful for developing a cardiovascular disease prevention strategy, "said the researcher.
Source: ANI
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