BACK TO CARDIOLOGY

Monday, June 20, 2011

As I’ve noted, I came to study diet and weight loss only via my specialty of preventive cardiology. I fully agree with a quote from the famous Framingham Heart Study group: A heart attack or stroke should indicate a failure of medical therapy rather than the beginning of medical intervention. I am convinced that preventing most heart attacks and strokes is not a pipe – dream but something that is feasible today. Even people who come to me with family histories of premature heart disease can, in most cases, overcome the genetic predisposition. The important thing is to begin prevention early. The earlier it is started, the easier it is to prevent future catastrophe. In too many cases, the first manifestation of heart attack or stroke is also the last. Diet is, of course, a crucial component of our prevention strategy. For many patients, particularly those with diabetes or prediabetes, it is our primary focus. Exercise is important, but proper diet is absolutely the most essential element.

If you neglect that, you may someday have to take your chances with the so-called miracles of modern cardiology – angioplasty, coronary artery bypass, transplant, perhaps even the totally artificial heart. Such measures may restore sufficient cardiac function to keep you alive. These are the extreme, invasive, last – ditch efforts required once the patient and his or her doctors have proven unable to keep the cardiovascular system working as nature intended. In some cases there’s a disease or dysfunction that caused the ailment. But overwhelmingly, most problems cardiologists treat can be prevented.