Rense: Nearly All Heart Risk Due to Bad Habits

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Misty L. Trepke

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Nearly All Heart Risk Due To Bad Habits

8-20-03

 

CHICAGO (Reuters) -- The vast majority of heart attacks strike

people who either smoke, have high blood pressure, high cholesterol

or diabetes, debunking the perception that heart problems can strike

anyone, researchers said on Tuesday. Roughly nine out of 10 patients

surveyed suffered from one of the four risk factors, often for

years, before experiencing a heart problem, according to a pair of

reports that analyzed accumulated data from previous studies.

 

The finding challenged claims repeated in medical literature that

half of those who suffer heart-related events do not have any of the

risk factors, said study author Dr. Philip Greenland of Northwestern

University in Chicago.

 

Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association,

Greenland found risk factors were present in 92 percent of men who

suffered heart attacks, and 87 percent of the women.

 

" Based on these and related findings concerning the major risk

factors, we suggest that preventing development of unfavorable

levels of blood cholesterol and blood pressure, cigarette smoking,

diabetes, and unfavorable body weight (as a precursor of unfavorable

blood lipid and blood pressure levels and diabetes) should be given

even greater priority than is presently the case, " he wrote.

 

Greenland's study analyzed data from three previous multiyear

studies that surveyed nearly 400,000 subjects.

 

The second study, which analyzed surveys from outside the United

States, found at least 85 percent of roughly 120,000 patients with

angina or who underwent angioplasty or similar treatment had at

least one of the four risk factors.

 

If the patient smoked, the heart event took place nearly a decade

earlier than it did in patients who suffered from one of the other

risk factors.

 

" It is increasingly clear that the four conventional risk factors

and their resulting health risks are largely preventable by a

healthy lifestyle, " wrote study author Umesh Khot of Indiana Heart

Physicians in Indianapolis.

 

The studies provided " evidence that convincingly challenges the

frequent claim that 'only 50 percent' of coronary heart disease is

attributable to the conventional risk factors of smoking, diabetes,

hypertension, and hyperlipidemia, " wrote John Cano and Ami

Iskandrian of the University of Alabama in an accompanying

editorial.