Beating heart woes: Making midcourse corrections

At Arlington National Cemetery, the changing of the guard happens like clockwork. Since 1937, regardless of weather or world events, it’s taken place every 30 minutes from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., April 1 through Sept. 30; every 60 minutes Oct. 1 through March 31; and every two hours when the cemetery is closed. Heart patients should take note, suggest researchers from the University of Alberta at a recent Canadian Cardiovascular Congress. Many folks with heart disease spend most of their waking hours sitting, lying down and watching TV, and they need to change that up with an ironclad schedule of seven minutes of light activity, such as walking, every 20 minutes. That way they’ll burn around 770 extra calories a day, help circulation, reduce inflammation and raise their spirits.

But sometimes, as we discussed in our feature a few weeks ago on MitraClip to remedy mitral regurgitation caused by a leaky heart valve, more than lifestyle intervention is needed. Sometimes we have to make a midcourse correction. Our correction: The MitraClip device, from the health care company Abbott, has been used to treat more than 70,000 (up from 33,000) patients since it was first approved in 2008 (2013 in the U.S.).

Yours: It’s time to change how you guard your heart health by taking charge of your wellbeing (get that pedometer and timer) and working with your doc on medical interventions (be it the MitraClip or antihypertensives, statins, aspirin or diabetes meds). That’ll give you big rewards. So move it and use it, or lose it!