Health Awareness
Cardiovascular Health 2019
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Resetting attitudes on heart failure for 1 million people
“Failure is not an option… how about we think of it like this: success is an option,” says Nick Hartshorne-Evans, the founder and CEO of the Pumping Marvellous Foundation, the UK’s Heart Failure charity. Training our mind to see and experience success is an essential component of winning. In 2017, I uttered the bold words...
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Heart and circulatory diseases – the facts
Your body holds a 60,000 mile network of blood vessels, with your heart at its centre. But if anything goes wrong with this system, there can be devastating consequences. There are around 7.4 million people living with heart and circulatory diseases in the UK 170,000 deaths from heart and circulatory diseases each year – an...
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Heart Failure: An Overview from the British Society for Heart Failure (BSH)
Most people have heard of heart failure, but it is frequently misunderstood and often confused with a heart attack, a cardiac arrest or other heart disease. Heart failure is the inability of the heart to pump blood around the body. This leads to symptoms of breathlessness (either on exertion or at rest), extreme tiredness and...
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Diagnosis does not mean the end to an active and fulfilling life
Almost seven years ago, MP, Steve McCabe had open heart surgery to repair his mitral valve. The surgery was intense; hours in the operating theatre, vast volumes of anaesthetic and time spent on a ventilator. “When I eventually came round, I wasn’t actually sure if I’d survived,” he says. After the major surgery, he was...
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Innovations are transforming heart valve disease treatment
Innovations in heart valve technology and implantation systems are set to transform the lives of more people with heart valve disease. Heart valve disease is a common condition that can turn into a killer Half of UK over-65s have some level of disease related to heart structure. Over one in 10 – around 1.5 million...
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The simple check that saved Alison’s life
Alison Banayoti has a new lease of life after treatment for an unsuspected heart condition. Now, she’s urging everyone to get a simple stethoscope check for the disease. In May, Alison Banayoti, 59, abseiled down St Thomas’ Hospital in London to raise awareness of heart valve disease. Six months earlier Alison had surgery there for...
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A simple pulse check could save your life
A pulse check is an effective way of detecting atrial fibrillation, the most common heart rhythm disorder and the leading cause of stroke. It’s time more of us learned how to do it. Many of us are aware of our heart rate, says Trudie Lobban MBE, Founder & CEO of Arrythmia Alliance, a coalition of...
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Do you know about heart valve disease? Knowing your symptoms can save your life
Know the symptoms – if you are feeling dizzy, breathless, fatigued and have chest pains, it could be a sign of heart valve disease. Across the UK, approximately 1.5 million people aged over 65 are affected by heart valve disease. According to the OxVALVE Study, this will increase by 122% to as many as 3.3...
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Do you know how to spot coronary heart disease?
Dr Simon Davies spends his days as a cardiologist performing operations on hearts. Yet, as he tells us, effective screening with sophisticated imaging techniques is helping to make the process of diagnosing the UK’s most dangerous disease a less invasive process for the patient. We all know that our lifestyles are likely to have a...
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My heart, your heart: uniting for heart health on 29 September, World Heart Day
Every year, 17.9 million people die from cardiovascular disease (CVD), including heart disease and stroke. Cardiovascular disease has many causes: from smoking, diabetes and high blood pressure – which are very common and affect a wide range of age groups and geographical regions – to less-common causes, such as Chagas and Kawasaki disease, and rare conditions such as...
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Are plant-based diets good for your heart?
Eating a plant-based diet has never been so trendy, and it’s not just a passing craze. Meat-free options now line supermarket shelves – but how good are they for your heart? Estimates vary, but as many as one in three UK adults eats a plant-based diet some or all of the time (1). Growing concern...
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Striving for a world without heart and circulatory diseases
Heart and circulatory diseases cause pain on every street. Life-saving research has helped halve the number of UK deaths from these conditions, but more must be done if we want to beat heartbreak forever. Incredible advances have helped reduce the number of people dying from heart and circulatory diseases in the UK. However, new data...
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Fainting could be a sign of a fatal condition
Fainting or palpitations may be signs of an underlying heart rhythm disorder that could potentially prove fatal. Here's how to check whether you are at risk.
