State of the nations health

[Fab Foodie]

If you stay physically active, does the increased flow in blood help to "flush away" any cholosterol build up?

No apparently.

 

[Fab Foodie]

Simple answer no. I'm 58, fitter than a fit thing, cycled most of my life, club rider for about twenty five years, though I smoked for about ten years, mid teens to mid twenties. Thought I was in great shape, then in 2008 started getting chest pains, thought I had a chest infection. Turned out I had angina, had to have angioplasty and stenting. Now back to normal, but have four stents in my chest. As I'm sure Fab Foodie will agree its something thats a terrible shock at the time.

Absolutely, just the 1 stent here (so far), butb there's a lifetime now of statins, Beta-blockers, Aspirin and avoiding stress.

Regarding high cholesterol, there are some people who can radically influence their cholesterol levels by diet modification, but there are also many (like me) where it makes bugger-all difference as I'm an over-producer. My GP has taken me off a drug that prevents cholesterol uptake from the diet simply because it's a waste of time.
In general though, excercise an improved diet (particularly with less Saturated fats) and low Blood Pressure will certainly be of some benefit. On the other side, smoking, stress, poor diet and high BP will of course be working against you. In my case, it's the Statins that will have by far the biggest cholesterol lowering effect.

@ Longers. You should have a test and act on the result. I had one in my mid 30s and was offered Statins and told to quit the ciggs. I thought it unnecessary at the time, but I was wrong. It's never too late to improve your health!

 

[Crankarm]

No, bits flake off the walls of blood vessels then travel into heart/brain causing a heart attack/stroke. Also arteries become inelastic/hardened and blocked by smoking and eating sh1t. This makes the heart's job to pump blood around the body much harder. High salt and cholesterol also affect the heart muscle itself affecting it's electrical impulses which affect it's efficiency when pumping and ability to pump.
Blood vessels supplying the heart with oxygen can become blocked or collapse - aneuryism.

It's hardly rocket science to realise that if one smokes, over eats, boozes, eats sh1t and is pretty much a sofa slob, that one is massively increasing one's risk of a heart attack, stroke or any other illness or condition that ends people's lives prematurely. There is now more than enough in the media about adopting a healthy lifestyle, eating properly and exercising regularly.

I believe the massive rise in the number of FAT people is due to the fact that these people genuinely want to be obese as otherwise why would they over eat or troff on all that sh1t, doing no or little exercise thus putting their health at risk?

FF - good source of natural statins is broccoli and brussell sprouts, preferably raw. Wash them both first of course. Beetroot is pretty good as well.

 

[mangaman]

Sorry to hear about your friend. There's no consolation in satistics if it affects you or a close friend.

But actually the rate of heart attacks has fallen consistently for some time.

There are far fewer people dying from heart attacks than 10 or 20 years ago (probably related to less smoking).

As for cholesterol - I have to be careful as I have already let slip I'm an NHS Consultant and a few minutes googling would probably find me. These are therefore (as are all my comments on the site) my own and not the NHS / my trust or medically to be treated as gospel) - go to you GP if worried.

I'm 44 - so the same as you Mark. I have no cardiac history in the family. I would fight off with a pointed stick any GP that tried to check my cholesterol. If it were high, the GP would have to decide on dietary advice (which rarely helps that much) or statins, which have potentially serious side effects.

Partly this is medical evidence - there is none whatsoever to show reducing your cholesterol at aged 44 with a statin will prolong your life if you haven't already had a heart attack or stroke.

Also, despite (or maybe because of) being a Doc, I don't want to know my exact risk of death or be over-screened in case I may develop a horrible disease in 5 years.

I'm happy as an active 44 year old and would prefer to keep on exercising, eating OK, not smoking, drinking a bit too much maybe and letting nature take it's course.

I worry we are become addicted to the medical profession and forget life is to be lived. If you're not well and want to see me, I'll do my utmost to address the problem you want addressing, but I won't try to persuade you to see me if you don't want to. If the problem is not medical I will try to refer to someone else who can help.

I mainly deal with older people and spend my time stopping drugs / operations that the older people don't actually want (if you ask them and present the evidence). Most pills can be quite toxic in very old people (who are invariably excluded from drug trials on the grounds of age)

There endeth my rant - sorry. As I say purely personal. A lot of my peers would disagree.

 

[Crankarm]

Sorry to hear about your friend. There's no consolation in satistics if it affects you or a close friend.

But actually the rate of heart attacks has fallen consistently for some time.

There are far fewer people dying from heart attacks than 10 or 20 years ago (probably related to less smoking).

As for cholesterol - I have to be careful as I have already let slip I'm an NHS Consultant and a few minutes googling would probably find me. These are therefore (as are all my comments on the site) my own and not the NHS / my trust or medically to be treated as gospel) - go to you GP if worried.

I'm 44 - so the same as you Mark. I have no cardiac history in the family. I would fight off with a pointed stick any GP that tried to check my cholesterol. If it were high, the GP would have to decide on dietary advice (which rarely helps that much) or statins, which have potentially serious side effects.

Partly this is medical evidence - there is none whatsoever to show reducing your cholesterol at aged 44 with a statin will prolong your life if you haven't already had a heart attack or stroke.

Also, despite (or maybe because of) being a Doc, I don't want to know my exact risk of death or be over-screened in case I may develop a horrible disease in 5 years.

I'm happy as an active 44 year old and would prefer to keep on exercising, eating OK, not smoking, drinking a bit too much maybe and letting nature take it's course.

I worry we are become addicted to the medical profession and forget life is to be lived. If you're not well and want to see me, I'll do my utmost to address the problem you want addressing, but I won't try to persuade you to see me if you don't want to. If the problem is not medical I will try to refer to someone else who can help.

I mainly deal with older people and spend my time stopping drugs / operations that the older people don't actually want (if you ask them and present the evidence). Most pills can be quite toxic in very old people (who are invariably excluded from drug trials on the grounds of age)

There endeth my rant - sorry. As I say purely personal. A lot of my peers would disagree.

There's sense in what you write mangaman. A rant it is not.

If heart attacks have been falling for some time, is it the case that those who experience them only experience one which is fatal, rather than many smaller attacks or are people just dying of something else?

 

[mangaman]

There's sense in what you write mangaman. A rant it is not.

If heart attacks have been falling for some time, is it the case that those who experience them only experience one which is fatal, rather than many smaller attacks or are people just dying of something else?

Yes, heart attacks tend to happen to the 40-60 year old. They are more likey to survive them as you say. Sadly some people still die of heart attacks, some survive with damaged hearts and breathlessness and a cocktail of drugs, but generally things are a lot better.

Also they are less common, so people die of other things late in life - mainly, sadly cancer. So a lot of people who may have died in their 40s of a heart attack will die in their 70s of lung/bowel/breast cancer.

Also with an ageing population dying later we see a lot more diseases like diabetes/arthritis wich never go away (chronic diseases in other words) and the burden of health care costs is on caring for people with several chronic diseases which the unfortunate person never is free of, but flare up every now and again.

User, if he reads this, I imagine has to juggle the equation chronic disease (ie a disease you can never cure) + an ageing population = very expensive healthcare.

In my job I see small but significant group of 90-110 year olds (seriously) who are as a fit as fiddles. They have obviously inherited the genetic equivalent of a Royal Flush and are immune to vascular problems / cancer and tend to pass away peacefully in their sleep.

Everyone will die, of course, and one of the reasons for the rising elderly population is the reduction in early death in that cohort of people born in about 1930. This is likely to continue - ie older people will get healthier for longer. The maximum lifespan - ie the oldest a human can live (about 120 I think) won't go up, but more people will reach it and need healthcare / pensions / social and family support etc along the way.

I've not watched the election debates as I think they're superficial blather, but the ageing population is a ticking time bomb in every sphere of society.

That's why I don't want to be doom and gloom about my health. I don't have life insurance, just insurance to pay my mortgage if I drop dead. (I don't have dependents or I would think differently of course)

I'd rather spend my dosh while I'm still fitt(ish) and able to enjoy myself

 

[madguern]

Interesting points guys, I am hoping he will make a full recovery and to be fair he is in the right place. From a stats point of view between my four main friend we have had one cancer (me) , two heart attacks and a flesh eating bug mixed with DVT's. Most of all this I put down to the stress of modern life !

One of the reasons I took up cycling was to reduce my stress and it has worked pretty well. As well as giving up the ciggies 6 years ago. My mate was one of those I used to be in regards to 'I will give up when less stressed'. In fact stopping smoking reduced my stress in a dramatic way. I do eat red meat but only one a week, could however reduce the beer but only drink once or twice a week. Had to give up all spirits so only beer and wine.

Hey ho

 

[Deleted member 1258]

madquern hows your friends progress so far? hope it all goes well for him. I consider myself to be, in some ways, lucky. Because I am active the angina showed up early, if I had been sedentary it would have not shown up till later and could been much worse. It would appear that a major part of my problem was diet, got by my love of fried stuff. since then I have cleaned up my diet, its not perfect but a lot better. All cholesterol and blood pressure checks have come back normal and I am now of medication.

 

[Arch]

Talking about weight...

I re-read Three Men on a Bummel last week, before my trip to Germany, and last night I decided to re-read Three Men in a Boat, first published in 1889.

For the first time, I read the Foreword. In it, the author describes the three of them as 'not peotic ideals, but things of flesh and blood - especially George who weighs about 12 stone'.

George is often descibed as lazy and a bit gluttonous - and yet he's 12 stone, and that's considered hefty! I was 11 stone myself until I took myself in hand.

I like when there are lots of fat people. It makes me feel thin.

 

[Fab Foodie]

... until I took myself in hand.

I like doing that too, but I never get any thinner

 

[Davidc]

If your friend gets through it he should be almost as good as before the attack. I had one a couple of years ago, at 56, and it was a big shock. In my case a specific reason was found and is now bypassed, and the only reductions in abilities are because of the effects of the drugs I now have to take.

Since then I've got to know a number of other people who've had heart attacks, ages from 30s to 80s. They're all people who've followed the recovery and rehab programmes, and few have had any further problems. Some have been well for decades since their heart attack.

Get him out on a bike when he's told he can! I was told that I'm probably only still alive because of riding them.

 

[potsy]

I think 18 months ago I was well on my way to an early heart attack,16 stone,very little exercise and terrible diet.Thankfully I have started to do something about it,and whilst I still don't have the best eating habits have at least shed some weight and am fairly active again.
So easy to get into a rut,take-out food and no exercise is so much easier than making an effort

 

[ColinJ]

I'm sorry to hear about your friend too and hope that he makes a good recovery. A good friend of mine phoned me up about 8 years ago and told me that he had been feeling ill and had just found out that he only had 1 working kidney and that was at about 40% and on the way out. That was a real shock. Fortunately, his dad donated a kidney and they are both doing well now.

I'm 44 - so the same as you Mark. I have no cardiac history in the family. I would fight off with a pointed stick any GP that tried to check my cholesterol. If it were high, the GP would have to decide on dietary advice (which rarely helps that much) or statins, which have potentially serious side effects.

Partly this is medical evidence - there is none whatsoever to show reducing your cholesterol at aged 44 with a statin will prolong your life if you haven't already had a heart attack or stroke.

Also, despite (or maybe because of) being a Doc, I don't want to know my exact risk of death or be over-screened in case I may develop a horrible disease in 5 years.

That's really interesting! My attitude to the medical profession is that less is more. If I break a leg. I'd like it repairing please but if I want to avoid a heart attack then I'll try to sort that out myself. I'll get my weight down more, will carry on eating healthy food, not smoking and doing as much cycling and walking as I can to keep fit. Hopefully, that will do the trick. I'm lucky in that most of family live well into their 80s, many into their 90s and a few have made it to over 100.

A friend of mine said that if he could afford it, he would have every medical check known to man done on him because he wanted to know if anything was wrong and try and fix it.

I have the opposite view. I would like to live a life free of stress, and if something horrible is going to happen, then I'd like to find out about it as late as possible! Obviously there are some things that are curable if caught early enough, but I'll take my chances.

I think if doctors look hard enough, they always think they have found something. The number of things that they thought that someone I know had, when it was obvious to me that obesity was the real problem. Obscure conditions that hardly anybody has ever heard of and hardly anybody ever gets. They did all the tests... Obscure condition #1 - no, that wasn't it, Obscure condition #2, nope... Don't most people who are pretty sedentary and 25% overweight have problems with mobility?

I worry we are become addicted to the medical profession and forget life is to be lived. If you're not well and want to see me, I'll do my utmost to address the problem you want addressing, but I won't try to persuade you to see me if you don't want to. If the problem is not medical I will try to refer to someone else who can help.

I mainly deal with older people and spend my time stopping drugs / operations that the older people don't actually want (if you ask them and present the evidence). Most pills can be quite toxic in very old people (who are invariably excluded from drug trials on the grounds of age)

There endeth my rant - sorry. As I say purely personal. A lot of my peers would disagree.

Brilliant!

I think that NHS should be renamed the NIS (National Illness Service), have its budget gradually reduced by 50% and the other 50% phased in to a new NWS (National Wellness Service). That would be responsible for promoting wellness through good nutritition, avoidance of smoking and drugs, major reductions in alcohol abuse, promotion of healthy exercise, reduced motor vehicle usage, removal of toxic chemicals from the environment, stress-reduction strategies and so on and so forth.

(You watch, after all that I'll go and disappear from the forum in about a week's time and you will eventually hear through the grapevine that I came down with Obscure condition #3, that the NHS caught it in time and saved my life with some miracle new therapy!)

 

[Fnaar]

After half a lifetime of too much beer and fags, I feel fitter now that I've ever been
I take statins, however, as familial hypercholesterolaemia meant my level (when first tested about 9 yrs ago) was sky high... same my siblings... strangely, no history of heart trouble in the family...

 

[Riverman]

The one thing that I've learnt since I started cycling is that I WILL NOT do regular exercise unless I ride a bike. Some people are different, however I imagine the majority are abit like me and find it very difficult to have a regular exercise regime.

Cycling is one of the best ways to get it because it becomes a necessity just to get around. We need far more people to take this up. It would help our economy no end because we wouldn't have people having heart attacks in their 30s etc and people developing cancer because they're obese.

Sorry to hear about your friend by the way.