As we enter the second year of living with COVID-19, it’s important for those of you living in retirement communities and assisted living communities to get back on track with one important area of your life: Your heart.
Every year in the U.S., February is American Heart Month as part of the Million Hearts® initiative. For 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a campaign called “Start Small. Live Big.” The idea is to raise awareness for improving heart health.
This is especially important for senior living. If you’re over the age of 55, living in retirement communities, assisted living communities or assisted living facilities, or even senior apartments, you can get back to living big in 2022.
Simple, easy steps
Cardiovascular health for seniors doesn’t have to be intimidating or complicated. Don’t let the idea of improving your cardiovascular health overwhelm you and don’t think it’s too hard for you to take on. That’s why the CDC is focusing on “Start Small. Live Big.”
The easy steps to better cardiovascular health for healthy senior living involves small things like scheduling medical appointments, becoming more active and eating healthy. These are all things you can do in your retirement communities, assisted living communities or any senior living facility.
One of your first steps is to work with your doctor and to come up with a plan. Here’s a quick guide to how your doctor can help:
- Check your blood pressure and your cholesterol numbers. Your doctor can also teach you how to check your numbers yourself.
- Share their advice for healthy eating and physical activity.
- Support you to make other healthy changes that are good for your heart. This may include quitting smoking.
- Connect you with specialists to treat your heart problems and other conditions.
- Prescribe you medicines if you need them.
Raising heart health awareness
The Million Hearts® initiative is a national effort co-led by the CDC and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to prevent 1 million heart attacks and strokes within five years and improve the cardiovascular health of all Americans. The Million Hearts® campaign does this by raising awareness of healthy hearts by avoiding unhealthy behaviors that put people at risk of heart attack and stroke and improving the care of those with key risk factors.
One of the alarming trends in the U.S. is that the death rates due to heart disease appear to be stalling for adults ages 35 to 64. This is happening even though death rates due to heart disease have been declining steadily for the past four decades.
This reinforces the idea that people in older age groups should work on improving their cardiovascular health. You can do the things by taking small steps to lower your risk of heart attack and stroke and lower your risk factors.
And often, it’s that first step that’s the biggest.
Look for the next steps you can take to ensure a healthy heart in the next blog post.
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