| OCR Text |
Show America's No. 1 Killer, What You Can Do About Stopping It Every hour the roster lengthens, length-ens, name by name, Jones, Baker, Ba-ker, Sullivan, Cohen only 31 to 60 years old, each dead of a heart attack. Each had lived his way into a premature heart attack. By habit or choice, each had run certain risks that raised his chances of being stricken. His seemingly sudden heart attack had been building up to crisis for years. Yet, had he known and had he acted, each could have reduced re-duced any of nine risk factors which, by all we know, make a man more susceptible to a heart attack far too early in life. Control one of these nine risk factors, and you take a step to boost your chances for a longer life. Control them all, and then in a sense your heart has nine lives. In a month or a few months time you can reduce your risks. We know the name of the killer. It is atheroscerosis, the hardening or thickening of the vital arteries carrying nourishing nourish-ing blood to the muscles and cells of your body. Spotting the Villians Your heart is the sturdiest, toughest muscle of your body. In our epidemic of heart disease, dis-ease, thousands of hearts are stilled which are actually too good, too sound, to die prematurely. pre-maturely. The basis cause is interference with the heart's own supply lines or arteries from atherosclerosis, a kind of biological rust. Secondly, we know from half a century and more of brilliant medical detective work, that atherosclerosis really is due to a conspiracy of factors. There is no one single cause, but rather a constellation of causes: high blood pressure, high levels of cholestrol, overweight, over-weight, excessive eating, too little exercise, diabetes, exces- sive cigarette smoMnb, tensions ten-sions and stresses and heredity If you are beset by any one of them, your risk of a premature prema-ture heart attack is boosted two to six times above the risk of the person free from such a burdn. With a combination of factors, your risk is far greater A man's chances of having a heart attack before age 65 are only about 1 in 20 to 1 in 50 if he has normal weight, normal nor-mal blood pressure, average or : low blood cholestrol, no diabetes, diabet-es, is not a heavy cigarette smoker, is moderately active, has a normal electrocardiogram, electrocardio-gram, and has no damage to his kidneys or thyroid gland. You Can Do Something You can do something about each of these risks. You can plan to enjoy a onger life. With diet, or diet combined with drugs, you can control higa blood pressure and diabetes, dia-betes, reducing their danger, , . The cigarette smoker who quits; liis habit finds his risk falling toward that of the non-smoker. non-smoker. The obese man who reduces begins paying the standard rate for life insurance, instead of an extra fee. The amount of cholestrol in the bloodstream can be reduced reduc-ed through moderate changes in what we eat. , ; We have, now, a very solid foundation of scientific knowledge knowl-edge from which to fight back the toll of premature heart attacks at-tacks and strokes, especially .among the middle-aged. We .have strong prospects of sav- ing hundreds of thousands of ' lives, and adding 10 to 20 years to our lives. There is no germ or bug that causes heart attacks. Its causes caus-es involve the way we've been living. ' |
