Is Colorado More Prone to Heart Attacks?

Heart disease is a serious issue impacting Americans. Each year, it consistently ranks as the leading cause of death for men and women in the United States. Approximately, 1.2 million Americans suffer a heart attack each year, and one third of these heart attacks are fatal. For this reason, it’s critical to live a heart healthy lifestyle.

If you’re concerned about optimizing your heart health, you may want to think carefully about where you live. Certain states have significantly lower rates of heart disease than others. Fortunately for Colorado residents, they live in one of the most heart healthy states in the country.

Colorado Has One of the Lowest Heart Disease Rates

Not only are Colorado residents not more prone to heart attacks, but they are actually some of the least likely people in the country to develop heart disease. Value Penguin, a subsidiary of LendingTree, released a comprehensive evaluation of CDC statistics detailing the heart disease rates among adults across the country, and Colorado ranked extremely well across the board:

• 7% heart disease rate with an age-weighted score of 2.2% (3rd best in the country)
• 7 deaths from heart disease per 100,000 adults between the ages of 45 and 64 (5^th best in the country)
• 82.5% of individuals live a heart healthy lifestyle (highest ranking in the country) based on the following factors:
  • Nonsmokers – 84.4% of Colorado adults (10^th best in the country)
  • Physically active during leisure time – 85.4% of Colorado adults (highest ranking in the country)
  • Not obese – 77.7% of Colorado adults (highest ranking in the country)
• 3% of individuals have high cholesterol (a significant risk factor of heart disease) with an age-weighted score of 25.7% (8^th best in the country)

In general, Colorado has one of the healthiest populations of any state in the country, and this is strongly reflected in the heart disease statistics. In fact, half of the top 10 counties in the country with the lowest rates of heart disease deaths are in Colorado.

Heart Disease Risk Factors

There are a variety of factors that may increase your risk of heart disease. These include:

• Gender (men are at greater risk than women)
• Age
• Family history of heart disease
• Smoking
• Obesity
• High blood pressure
• Diabetes
• Physical inactivity
• High cholesterol

How to Lower Your Risk of Heart Disease

There’s nothing you can do about some of the risk factors listed above. For example, you can’t control your gender, the fact that you will continue to get older each year, or your family history. However, you do have the ability to control many of the other risk factors listed above. By focusing on the risk factors you can control, you can significantly lower your risk of heart disease.

Making the following healthy lifestyle choices can help you improve your heart health:

• Eat a healthy diet
• Maintain a healthy weight
• Exercise regularly
• Avoid smoking
• Limit alcohol consumption
• Take steps to control your blood pressure and cholesterol levels
• Manage stress levels

In addition, it’s important to have proper health insurance coverage, as this is a critical way to manage your long term health. Having insurance makes it much easier to take control of your heart health. With insurance, your annual wellness checkups will be covered. These checkups typically include routine screenings that can help you detect heart disease risk factors, such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure or diabetes as they begin to develop. This allows you to be more proactive about getting these issues under control, which will reduce your risk of heart disease.

South Denver Cardiology Can Help You Maintain a Heart Healthy Lifestyle

While living in Colorado may place you at an advantage over individuals in other states, you still have to make the effort to live a heart healthy lifestyle. The team at South Denver Cardiology Associates can help you make any lifestyle adjustments necessary to minimize your risk of heart disease.

Our preventive cardiology clinic offers comprehensive diagnostic testing to identify any issues or conditions which may potentially elevate your risk of heart disease. Based on these results, we’ll work with you to develop a customized plan that will optimize your heart health.

As part of this plan, we may recommend that you take advantage of our:

• Nutritional counseling services to establish heart healthy eating habits
• Medical fitness gym to develop an individualized exercise program aimed at improving your cardiovascular health
• Weight loss clinic to establish and maintain a heart healthy weight

Contact us today to schedule an appointment at our preventive cardiology clinic. South Denver Cardiology Associates serves patients in the South Denver area and Littleton.