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Show Heart condition may be told by profile Your risk of suffering a heart attack may be drawn from your coronary profile. To obtain a profile, this is what a medical census taker would want to know: Your sex. It makes a difference, differ-ence, since men in their middle mid-dle years (45-64) die of heart attacks almost three times more often than women in the same age group. At age 50, men are five times more likely than women of the same age to suffer a heart attack. Your age: This is no shield. A quarter of a million people in the United States who died of coronary disease last year never reached 60 years of age. Evidence is mounting that ath-ersclerosis ath-ersclerosis (the artery clogging that sets the stage for heart attacks) starts early in life perhaps even in infancy. Your weight: Everybody may love a fat man, but among middle-aged men who are 30 over normal weight, the risk of heart attack is twice as great as among middle-aged men of normal weight. Do you smoke cigarettes? Cigarette smokers in a population popula-tion study which has been going go-ing on in Framingham, Mass., since 1949, had twice the risk of having a heart attack as non-smokers. This study also indicates that smokers who give up cigarettes reduce their risk to nearly the level of people peo-ple who have never smoked. It was also found that pipe and cigar smokers have no more risk of heart attack than non-smokers. What do you do for a living? Is your job sedentary or physically phys-ically active? If it's sedentary, do you try to engage in physical phys-ical exercise after work, to compensate for the lack of activity on the job? If you're not getting much (or any) exercise ex-ercise after office hours, you may be putting yourself in a high-risk category. Surveys of several occupational groups suggest a recurrent theme. The heart attack death rate is significantly sig-nificantly higher among the sedentary working groups: the clerical personnel vs the field workers on Israeli farms; the drivers vs stairclimbing conductors con-ductors on London's double-decker double-decker buses; railroad clerks vs switchmen and other active railroad workers; the post office of-fice clerk vs your friendly neighborhood postman. The more they move, the longer they live. How's your blood pressure? Cholesterol? Only your doctor can answer these questions, and it might be a good idea for you to see him for regular physical examinations. High blood pressure and high blood cholesterol levels spell high risk of heart attacks. If you have either or both of these ailments, with the help of your doctor you can reduce your risk from them. No one has discovered the fountain of youth, nor is anyone any-one suggesting that you alter your sex; but everyone can do something about overweight, smoking, exercise, high blood - pressure and high blood cholesterol, chol-esterol, the Utah Heart As- . sociation report states: Instead of a stuffed tomato salad, serve cooked chilled artichokes ar-tichokes filled with your favorite fa-vorite salad mixture ham, eggs, seafood or chicken. Before Be-fore stuffing, remove the choke from the center of each artichoke arti-choke with a metal spoon. A thought for the day French writer Henri Boyle Stendhal said 'One can acquire everything in solitude . . . except character.1' |