Columns
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
taking prevention to heart
For a long time, people have thought of February as a month associated with sweethearts. What many may not know is that this month is also American Heart Month, which is all about healthy hearts.
I'll leave the topic of sweethearts to advice columnists, but the topic of healthy hearts is my business—and it should be your business, too. Heart disease is the single leading cause of death in America, but there are many things we can do to prevent this killer.
One of my top Senate priorities is ensuring that Americans have the resources and information they need to prevent heart disease and chronic health problems. Americans spend a whopping $1 trillion every year on health care! Three quarters of that cost is accounted for by chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes that, in many cases, are preventable.
We can save hundreds of billions of dollars on unnecessary hospitalization, treatment, and disability, but we must make the up-front investment in prevention. My goal is to empower Iowans—with information and resources—to take charge of their own health. We each have a responsibility to make smart choices in order to stay healthy. But, too often, many American's don't know about—or lack access to—health screenings and preventive services. This has got to change.
Let me focus a little on women and heart disease, especially since February 16 is National Women's Heart Health Day. Heart disease is often thought of as a man's disease, yet it is the leading cause of death for both men and women. More than one in five women have some form of heart disease, and it kills nearly half a million women a year—that is about one per minute.
The good news is that, in so many cases, heart disease is preventable. Consider some of the major risk factors for heart disease: smoking, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol levels, being overweight or physically inactive. By raising people's awareness of these risk factors, and by encouraging healthy choices, we can dramatically reduce the incidence and severity of heart disease.
One of my prevention priorities is ensuring that customers have all of the information they need to make smart decisions about their health. For example, it is true that "You are what you eat." Eating healthy food leads to a healthy heart. Unfortunately, most restaurants do not provide customers with easy access to nutritional information, so it is often difficult to tell if you are eating a heart-healthy meal. I have a bill requiring chain restaurants to provide nutrition information on their regular menu items. With this important information, customers can make informed decisions about what they eat.
Exercise also plays a critical role in reducing the risk of heart disease. This is one reason why it is important to be physically active throughout our lives. Children need to be encouraged to enjoy physical activity while they are young so they will develop healthy habits. I will soon introduce legislation to help communities promote physical activity by building playgrounds and walking trails and putting in place healthy policies and activities. This will help Americans stay on the right track for healthy hearts for life!
In America, too often it seems that instead of a true "health care" system, which keeps people healthy, we have a "sick care" system that is focused on helping people after they get sick. It is time to change this. By seizing the opportunity to focus on prevention, we can lower health care costs, and much more importantly, save lives.
