Heart disease is a broad term that describes a range of conditions affecting your heart. Heart disease kills 600,000 people in the United States every year, making it the leading cause of death in the U.S. The symptoms and treatment of heart disease vary depending on the type of heart disease you have, so understanding your specific disease is important to getting the care you need.
Lifestyle Changes and Medical Procedures
Although the term heart disease is often used interchangeably with the term cardiovascular disease, heart disease actually includes several blood vessel diseases, arrhythmias, and congenital heart defects. While heart disease treatment largely depends on the type of heart disease and age of the patient, many types of heart disease can be prevented or treated with healthy lifestyle choices or medical procedures.
- Quit smoking – Smoking can raise your risk for heart disease and heart attack. Try talking with a physician about programs and products that can help you quit.
- Follow a healthy diet – Avoid food and drink that are high in added sugars and sodium and limit your intake of solid fats and refined grains.
- Be physically active – Physical activity can lower your risk for heart disease by lowering your cholesterol, high blood pressure, and excess weight.
- Maintain a healthy weight – Being overweight or obese increases your risk factor for heart disease. Cutting back calories and getting more physical activity can help you reach and maintain a healthy weight.
- Manage stress and depression – Stress and anger have been known to trigger heart attacks, and the ways some people manage stress can be bad for heart health. Learning to manage stress can improve your health and lower your risk for heart disease.
- Medicine – If lifestyle changes aren’t enough to treat your heart disease, you could need medications to relieve your symptoms, decrease your chance of having a heart attack, lower your cholesterol or blood pressure, or reduce other risk factors.
- Procedures and surgery – Sometimes heart disease requires treatment in the form of procedures or surgery, such as coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) or angioplasty.
If you still have questions about heart disease treatment or want to speak with a medical professional about heart disease, visit your local FastMed Urgent Care. Our medical professionals can perform a physical evaluation and provide a recommendation for further treatment based on your symptoms.
About FastMed
FastMed is a leading provider of high-quality, convenient, affordable, and compassionate healthcare in 34 counties across North Carolina. FastMed serves both urban and rural communities across the state with a wide range of care options, including preventive, telemedicine, occupational health, and primary and urgent care. FastMed is one of the few urgent care providers in the nation that has earned The Joint Commission’s coveted Gold Seal of Approval® for quality, safety, and infection control in ambulatory healthcare. For more information, visit www.fastmed.com.