Why heart health starts with knowing your numbers
eart disease isthe leading cause of death for men and women across nearly all racial and ethnic groups in the United States, killing one person every 36 seconds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
So when your doctor mentions to you that it’s time to take your heart health seriously, it’s probably a good idea to do so.
And, purely based on the state and local numbers, if you’re in Kern County, there’s a decent chance you or someone you know might be at risk or
Hwant to follow heart health advice with particular care. That’s because, according to information from Kern County Public Health Services released in February, 78 percent of Kern County adults are either overweight or obese, and more Kern County residents die from diabetes than anywhere else in California. The county also has the fourth-highest out of 58 counties for deaths from heart disease at a clip 43 percent higher than the state average.
“Unfortunately, we see a lot of morbid obesity in Bakersfield,” said Dr. Jared Salvo, founder of the Kern Cardiac Institute and the medical director for the American Heart Association of Kern County, who’s been practicing in Kern for about 15 years. “Our community here loves their barbecue, they love their cultural food
... you just have to be careful about how much you ingest and try to balance it.”
If you’re thinking that any of this might involve you, there are several significant and important ways you can monitor your heart health specifically, as well as local resources that are working to address unhealthy habits.
Locally, Kern Public Health officials have come up with several ways to help people keep a closer watch on their own potential warning signs.
“Our #KnowYourNumbers program is actually really poised to help you with that information,” said Brynn Carrigan, director of Kern Public Health. “If you come out and get your initial screening, you understand what your body mass index is, your blood pressure, your blood-glucose and your cholesterol levels. Those are all key indicators that really helped inform you where you’re at with your health. And then our nurses are there to kind of talk you through what levels you should be looking for.”
The idea is to get health
guidance from one of a halfdozen nurses the county will have at the screenings, and then return in six weeks and check your progress.
Diet is also a big component of the county’s program, as it
is a big part of cardiovascular health, too, leading officials to create a Safe Diner app that lists restaurant options with nutritionist-approved meal options for dining out. For those who like to eat at home, Salvo recommends trying the Mediterranean diet, which is based on the traditional diet of the region and has fewer saturated fats and healthier proteins, and the DASH diet, which is rich in vegetables, fruits and whole grains, and includes fat-free or low-fat dairy products, fish, poultry, beans and nuts, according to the mayoclinic.org.
The idea behind any kind of lifestyle adjustments, which become especially important as people age, is to make sure the changes are sustainable, according to Dr. Deepa Nandyal, chief of the cardiology department at Kaiser Permanente in Kern County.
“So whatever patients are implementing, you know, that should last a lifetime for them. It’s not just something that you do for a day or for a week or a month. So obviously, the recommendation is to not make any drastic changes that you can’t live with, and nothing that isn’t sustainable in the long term — but to start slow and gradually make changes as you go along,” Nandyal said.
And the experts agree, this is true with both diet and exercise.
While the recommended heart health guidelines suggest the baseline goal for someone to maintain healthy cardiovascular levels is about 150 minutes a week, which is suggested in 30-minute blocks, that can be a bit challenging for someone who rarely exercises or might consider themselves too busy to set aside so much time.
“My typical recommendation for patients who are very sedentary is to just start with 15 minutes of walking just four times a week,” Nandyal added. “And just doing that is gonna make them feel so much better. And once they feel better, they are actually going to do more of it. So it kind of becomes a perpetual cycle in a good way.”