Understanding Heart Health

The Importance of Cardiovascular Wellness

Your heart is a crucial organ maintaining blood circulation throughout your body and delivering oxygen and nutrients to cells and tissues.

Heart and cardiovascular problems are one of the leading causes of death in Canada; keeping your heart healthy and strong is a key determinant of a healthy and functional body.

Smoking

Smoking makes your heart work harder than needed and increases your risk of a heart attack two-fold compared to non-smokers. Individuals smoking a pack a day are 5 times more likely to die from heart disease.

Quitting can be quite challenging and often may seem impossible with everything going on in our busy lives. However, any step toward quitting is a positive one; just 24 hours of being smoke-free lowers your risk of a heart attack. If you or a loved one is seeking advice on smoking cessation, our team of pharmacists is here to help, free of judgment.

High Blood Pressure

High blood pressure is categorized as 140/90 mmHg or above. Untreated high blood pressure can cause damage to your blood vessels and increase your risk of a heart attack, heart failure, or a stroke. Through proper therapeutic management, this risk can be drastically lowered. Let’s look at some common medications and how they help protect your heart:

How Your Pharmacist Can Help

• ACE inhibitors -common medications such as ramipril, enalapril, perindopril, and lisinopril
• ARBs -common medications such as candesartan, losartan, irbesartan, valsartan, and telmisartan

These medications relax blood vessels and help your kidneys remove sodium from your body, reducing blood pressure. They are highly effective and often the first line treatment for newly diagnosed hypertension.

• Diuretics(sometimes referred to as water pills) - common medications such as furosemide, hydrochlorothiazide, indapamide, and spironolactone

These medications block the effects of adrenaline in your body, helping slow down the heart rate and reducing workload to lower blood pressure.

• Calcium channel blockers – common medications such as amlodipine, nifedipine, and felodipine

Calcium makes your heart and arteries squeeze harder, blocking this allows your blood vessels to relax and lowers blood pressure.

Many of these medications work best when taken consistently at the same time every day. Missing even a few doses can significantly increase your risk of complications.

Always speak with your pharmacist before starting any new over-the-counter vitamins, supplements, or cough and cold products, as some can interfere with your heart medications.

High Cholesterol

Cholesterol is a type of fat your body needs to make healthy cells and hormones. It is commonly separated into the good (HDL) and bad (LDL) cholesterol.

Why is this relevant to heart health? Coronary arteries supply oxygen and nutrients to the heart. When LDL levels are too high, a plaque can begin to form in these arteries and restrict blood supply. This is what we call coronary artery disease (CAD).

CAD can progress over many years to stable angina (pain with exertion) and potentially lead to unstable angina or acute coronary syndrome (heart attack) when a plaque ruptures. Understanding this connection is highly important.

High cholesterol usually has no symptoms, meaning you may not know your levels are dangerous until a heart event occurs.

Some risk enhancers to heart disease include a sedentary lifestyle, a poor diet, excess alcohol intake, and stress. While medications can help control your risk, lifestyle changes are always encouraged to optimize your health.

Here are some health behaviour changes to consider: