Men's Health Month: Here's what men need to know about Heart Disease

Men's Health Month: Here's what men need to know about Heart Disease

Dr. Ahmed Ansari, Chief of Cardiology for Memorial Hermann Southwest hospital, talks with Owen about the most important preventative measures men can take to maintain heart health. Plus, early warning signs every man should know.

June is Men's Health month and we're starting a conversation this morning about heart disease it is the number one killer in men so we're going to get to it with Dr Ahmed Ansari the chief of Cardiology for Memorial Herman's Southwest Hospital right around the corner here doc good morning thanks for being here good morning thank you for having me so here we go this is uh men's health month and uh we're going to get we're going to get right to it with heart disease and and as a man with a heart that's beating right now uh heart disease just scares me on the surface I'm not sure I understand exactly what it is can you define it for me so there's a wide uh range of heart disease so there's multiple structures within the heart you can have something as simple as just high blood pressure you can have blockages within the arteries of the heart leading to heart attack you can have valve issues you can have arrhythmias or something as severe as a heart failure uh the most common cause or the most common type of heart disease is going to be either high blood pressure or coronary artery disease which is plaque buildup in the arteries of the heart which we're kind of going to be addressing today so under that umbrella how many of those things do we really have control over how many are we born with how many are just affected by our environment around us so so yeah exactly some of the conditions are congenital something that we're born with or degenerative so as we get older things wear out and some people like their valves May wear out sooner than other people and some of the conditions we actually do have a lot where we can control risk factors and uh try to mitigate any progression of the disease or even onset of the disease okay and how can we learn or know or what's the what are the symptoms what should we be feeling when these areas are starting to find problems or things are starting to go wrong so very common symptoms that we get with any type of heart disease are going to be decreased exercise tolerance you might notice that you may not be able to do the same physical activities that you used to do chest pain shortness of breath palpitations often that's a warning sign for uh Rhythm issues or electrical conduction system issues with the heart uh swelling of your extremities or uh high blood pressure and so forth okay and how do we how do we test for these things I I'm sure there's a variety of tests that we can do so uh um there's two types of tests so there's screening tests based on just uh for the general population and then there's tests that we do specifically based on certain risk factors and symptoms that you may be having so if you don't have established cardiovascular disease you should be seeing your primary care at least once a year uh during that visit your primary care doctor will assess your risk factors uh see what they find and depending on the symptoms uh they can do a wide variety of tests like stress tests calcium scores check your cholesterol make sure you know you're not diabetic and so forth okay so um where do we go from there I mean for long-term heart health is it enough to just build up these good habits are there tests that we should get in each decade of Life how do we go from here right so uh I do like to do routine uh stress tests so I think that's something that I definitely like to do you say routine what's that every month every year I say about once every every two years on um uh male patients over the age of 40 but if uh if patients have certain risk factors of early onset heart disease in the family or other cardiac conditions then we do screen for those sooner but this is just for the general population okay is is are there any other sort of general advice for those once we get past 40 or it's like hey unless you have a symptom and you're calling there's no reason to do anything no so your primary care will definitely be doing routine tests like EKGs they'll be checking your blood pressure making sure you check your hemoglobin A1c to make sure you're not diabetic they'll be examining your heart to make sure they don't hear any murmurs or any other irregular heart sounds they'll be doing physical exams um but again as stress test I think is uh something that definitely every male should get over the age of 40 and uh I think along with a stress test and echocardiogram to check for any or screen for any congenital heart disease or any degenerative heart disease and you think we should talk to our primary care about setting up a routine if we're above that age and we haven't already started yes so some primary care doctors actually provide that service within their office and some Primary Care Providers will uh refer you out to a Cardiologist who then can do that testing um what kinds of symptoms should we not ignore or at any age when they happen I think chest pain with exertional activity that's one thing uh that what would be an example of that like I'm playing sports and I feel so you'll be going up a flat of stairs and all of a sudden you'll feel like a chest heaviness and then you rest a little while it goes away or you may be playing sports or something like that and that's something that's really uh uh indicative of something going on and so I think that along with shortness of breath and is it a is it a one-time thing is it's like okay you know what maybe I'm cuz sometimes we'll make excuses so I'm just just dehydrated it's just it's just hot out today versus is this something we're going to be feeling repeatedly if I walk up the steps today then when I do it tomorrow I should have the same feeling yeah it should be kind of predictable that you're getting these symptoms often if you get it just one time and it never reoccurs and you know for months and months after that you're find that must be just some fluke or something but it's something that's happening routinely and uh uh then definitely should be something that you don't ignore also chest pain that doesn't go away so sometimes patients I'll have patients come in with a heart attack and they're like yeah you know the chest P started 3 days ago and I thought it would go away and I kept waiting and waiting and like you know that's where the problem should be a problem if you have uh chest pain and it's just not going away and we don't have any explanation for it then you should definitely seek emergency treatment for that indeed yeah I mean some of these things you want to be tough you want to be strong but we really just shouldn't ignore I'm glad we got the talk going Dr Amed anari chief of Cardiology at Memorial her in Southwest it was great to meet you and thanks for your help today thank you for having me

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