by Danielle Kuznetsov, AWO Moscow & Health Team Co-Chair
September 29, 2020 is World Heart Day – a global campaign to raise awareness of our own personal responsibility to guard our heart health for a long and quality life. The campaign unites people from all countries and backgrounds to fight against cardiovascular disease and the burden it creates on communities by motivating international action to educate and encourage heart-healthy living across the world.1 Most of us don’t give much thought to our own heart health when life is going along predictably. The pandemic has taken the world’s pulse in a new way in 2020. Awakened to the need for change and healing, vital signs are being measured, healthcare systems diagnosed, and a plan of treatment is slowly emerging as a priority, individually and collectively. The human heart plays a paramount role in both the physical and emotional health of all people, especially the most vulnerable.
In May 2012, world leaders committed to reducing global mortality from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) by 25 percent by 2025.2 Since more people die from cardiovascular disease (CVD) worldwide than from any other cause, education is the way to prevention. According to the World Health Organization, 17.9 million people die from CVD each year, with 80 percent of these due to coronary heart disease (heart attack) and cerebrovascular diseases (strokes), mostly in low and middle-income countries.3
Your heart is approximately the size of your fist and the strongest muscle in your body. It started beating about three weeks after you were conceived. If you lived to be 70, it will have beaten two and a half billion times.4 Each minute, the heart pumps 1.5 gallons of blood, with the right side pumping into the lungs and the left into the body.5 This amazing organ commands our respect and diligence in keeping it functioning optimally throughout our lifetime.
There are clear ways that we can own our heart health. Since the heart transports nutrients, gases and waste products around the body, protects us from infection, maintains body temperature, and maintains fluid equilibrium,6 owning our heart health is the first step toward living well and influencing others through example to do the same.
Thankfully, heart health from a physical perspective is something that for most of us in the developed world can choose. Prevention and proactivity are key. The American Heart Association website offers more information. A healthy eating plan, regular physical activity, watching your weight, refraining from smoking in all its forms, and limiting alcohol consumption are the basics. Following this are regular check-ups (you are your best health care advocate), moving throughout the day, and managing your conditions by taking needed medications and knowing your health risks. Maintaining good dental hygiene, getting enough sleep, and proactively caring for your mental health and stress levels are last in this list, but certainly not least. In other words, we need to take good care of ourselves and those we love. Easier said than done.
One interesting aspect of the heart is the connection with emotion. Cleveland Clinic researchers have found a significant increase in patients experiencing stress cardiomyopathy, also known as broken heart syndrome, during the COVID-19 pandemic.7 I first learned about broken heart syndrome several years ago, when my grandmother passed away. My mother was rushed to the hospital with heart attack-like symptoms triggered by her death. Since my mom was managing many other health conditions, we were very surprised that there was a condition that mimicked a heart attack, with chest pain and shortness of breath – also known as takotsubo cardiomyopathy. Doctors perform a series of tests to diagnose and then prescribe medicines used to treat heart failure while the patients recover. It is amazing that the heart as an organ has the capacity to interpret and react to the external events that cause us emotional pain, and not only to physical complications due to disease in the body. Take a look here for more information on this fascinating fact.
As you have seen, this brief article barely covers the surface with regard to our great organ, the heart. It is my hope that we, the wonderful women of FAWCO, will take advantage of the great period of reflection that 2020 has offered us personally and corporately to become more intentional in caring for our own hearts, the hearts of those in our communities and the ones we steward around the globe.
Sources:
1. Hajar, Rachel. “The Pulse in Ancient Medicine Part 1.” Heart Views: the Official Journal of the Gulf Heart Association, Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd, 2018, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5965015/.
2. “What Is CVD?” World Heart Day, www.world-heart-federation.org/world-heart-day/world-heart-day-2019/cvds/.
3. “What Is CVD?” World Heart Day, www.world-heart-federation.org/world-heart-day/world- heart-day-2019/cvds/.
4. “What Is World Heart Day?” World Heart Day, World Heart Federation, 2020, www.world-heart-federation.org/world-heart-day/about-whd/.
5. Milanowski, Ann. “26 Amazing Facts About Your Heart.” Health Essentials from Cleveland Clinic, 30 July 2020, health.clevelandclinic.org/facts-about-the-heart/.
6. “Major Functions of the Cardiovascular System – PT Direct.” Personal Training, 2020, www.ptdirect.com/training-design/anatomy-and-physiology/major-functions-of-the-cardiovascular-system-2013-a-closer-look.
7. Wheeler, Tracy. “Cleveland Clinic Researchers Find Rise In Broken Heart Syndrome During COVID-19 Pandemic.” Cleveland Clinic Newsroom, 9 July 2020, newsroom.clevelandclinic.org/2020/07/09/cleveland-clinic-researchers-find-rise-in-broken-heart-syndrome-during-covid-19-pandemic/.
Photo: courtesy of AIWC Düsseldorf