Here’s an incredible fact: During an average lifespan, the heart beats approximately 2.5 billion times. This translates to millions of gallons of blood (which contains nutrients, oxygen, and other crucial things we need to survive) being sent to all parts of a person’s body. It also takes away waste.
Your heart is seemingly tireless and works steadfastly, but lifestyle choices greatly impact its performance. Eating a poor diet, being mostly sedentary (not getting exercise), and unhealthy habits like smoking and drinking too much alcohol hurt our hearts. Unfortunately, genetics can also play a part in heart health and raise a person’s risk for heart disease and heart attack.
However, to support your heart health, there are lots of steps you can take. Start by following these pillars of heart health:
- Eat a nutrient-dense diet of whole foods, like fruits and vegetables, beans, whole grains, lean proteins like fish, nuts and seeds, and healthy fats like olive oil. Avoid overly processed foods, fast food, and fried foods, red meat, highly processed meat (like hot dogs and bacon), and foods high in salt and sugar.
- Move every day and aim for getting at least 150 minutes of exercise per week.
- Manage stress effectively by getting your work-life balance on an even keel, get out in nature regularly, and adopt a mindfulness practice like prayer or meditation.
- Remember to brush twice a day and floss daily — poor oral hygiene is linked to heart disease.
- If you need to lose weight, talk to your primary care provider about a program that might be a good fit. If you smoke, they can refer you to a cessation program.
- Pay attention to your mental health — depression and anxiety have been linked to heart disease. If you’re experiencing symptoms of these disorders or you have another mental health diagnosis, seek help from a mental health professional, who can prescribe medications, refer you to a counselor, or offer other treatments.
At Transylvania Regional Hospital (TRH), we’re proud to offer advanced testing, treatment, and rehabilitation if you do experience a cardiac event such as a heart attack. State-of-the-art testing we offer includes cardiac stress testing, which measures your heart’s performance when you’re active, as well as echocardiograms — this test produces an ultrasound image that shows your provider how effectively your heart is beating and pumping blood. TRH patients also have access to Holter monitoring, which allows a patient to wear a portable device for a 24-hour period that monitors your heart rate and heart rhythm or heartbeat regularity and irregularity.
Our cardiac rehabilitation program is an all-encompassing program for those who have experienced a heart attack or live with a heart condition. Patients work with expert providers who help design customized exercise programs that they can engage in at our health center here at the hospital, are monitored closely, access relevant education about heart health, and get the opportunity to interact with other patients who have gone through similar experiences so they can support each other.
Some exciting news I’m happy to share is that TRH has recently been approved to acquire tomography (CT) machine upgrades that have the capability to perform CT angiography testing, which is a test that combines sophisticated imaging with an injection of contrast dye. Highly detailed 3D images of the heart’s blood vessels are produced, which allow providers to see blockages, tears, narrowed arteries, and aneurysms (a bulge in the wall of a blood vessel in the aorta) if they’re present.
This radiology technology also enables us to discover coronary arteries that have measurable calcium deposits. These deposits are plaque, a harmful sticky and fatty substance that accumulates on artery walls, increasing a person’s risk for coronary artery disease and heart attack.
Advanced tests like these allow providers to create treatment plans that may include recommendations for medications, surgical procedures like bypass surgery, or placement of a stent, which increases blood circulation.
We seek to partner with patients to take the best care of their hearts, help uncover problems if they exist, provide the highest level of cardiac testing and treatment, and offer the best in rehabilitation services.
Michele Pilon, MS, BSN, RN, NE-BC, is the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Nursing Officer of Transylvania Regional Hospital. Her diverse professional experience includes service as a bedside nurse and over a decade as a leader at healthcare institutions in Virginia, Florida, and North Carolina. Ms. Pilon earned a bachelor’s in nursing from Ohio’s University of Akron and a master's in health services administration from the University of St. Francis in Illinois; she is also a Board-Certified Nursing Executive.