The Value of a Wellness Checkup
Going to your doctor when you’re sick is natural, and makes good common sense. But how about when you’re feeling well? How important are those routine annual checkups anyway? Read on to learn more.
A Closer Look at Cardiac Rehabilitation
Each year, an estimated 935,000 Americans experience some sort of coronary event such as a heart attack. The American Heart Association reports that more than 30% of these patients will have a second and potentially fatal one sometime after. As sobering as these statistics are, there is hope.
Just because you have heart disease or have had a heart attack doesn’t mean it’s inevitable that you’ll have another heart attack even if heart conditions run in your family. In this blog, the highly skilled team of experts at Cardio Metabolic Institute discuss cardiac rehabilitation and how this program can put your life on a heart-healthy, life-changing trajectory.
Cardiac rehabilitation explained
If you or someone you know has heart problems, you know the entire experience is overwhelming and stressful. Understanding what’s going on from a medical perspective can be difficult enough, but the uncertainty of what lies ahead can be downright frightening. Is another coronary event going to happen tomorrow, next week, next year? Will you survive it?
Knowing how to recover and learn to live with your heart condition is an equally challenging journey. The experience may leave you feeling like your life is spinning out of your control. And that’s where cardiac rehabilitation comes in.
Cardiac rehabilitation is a medically supervised, multidisciplinary wellness program for patients who have heart issues such as heart attack or heart surgery, who have chronic stable angina, or who have undergone heart valve repair. Cardiac rehabilitation focuses on three main areas: exercise and fitness, nutrition, and counseling for stress reduction.
The ultimate goal of a cardiac rehabilitation program is to get you back to living a full and productive life. While you can’t do anything about the coronary event that’s already happened, there’s a lot you can do to lower your risk of issues in the future. Cardiac rehabilitation puts you back in the driver’s seat.
Lower risk for future heart issues
Looking at the lifestyle factors that may be contributing to your heart issues and making changes is difficult, but can it pay off in big ways. Clinical studies show cardiac rehabilitation can reduce mortality rates by more than 50% compared with patients who don’t pursue cardiac rehabilitation. And hospital readmissions for all causes can also be reduced by 25%.
The bottom line is that cardiac rehabilitation significantly lowers the risk of future heart problems by slowing, stabilizing, or in some cases even reversing the progression of cardiovascular disease.
Personalized approach for heart-healthy living
Another key aspect of cardiac rehabilitation is that every program and treatment plan is customized for each patient’s circumstances. Heart issues and healing from a coronary event looks a little different for each person because the aspects of their lives such as what they eat and their activity and stress levels may vary greatly.
There are no cookie-cutter solutions here. A good way to think of cardiac rehabilitation is that it’s your own personalized plan for your heart health.
Team approach with monitoring throughout
Faced with the prospects of eliminating bad habits like lack of exercise and poor diet can seem daunting, but with cardiac rehabilitation, you don’t have to go it alone. In fact, you have a whole team of medical professionals working with you throughout your journey.
We know that high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and being overweight are things that don’t happen overnight, and neither does the course-correct. We’ll be there to monitor your progress during regular checkups and provide support for both you and your family.
We use diagnostic tests like blood tests and stress tests as well as conduct ECG monitored fitness sessions to track the progress of your heart health. As a Pritikin Certified Intensive Cardiac Rehab™ center, our experts at Cardio Metabolic Institute are especially trained in the tenets of the Pritikin Program and the Pritikin Eating Plan, further enriching our cardiac rehabilitation for our patients.
If you have cardiovascular issues or if you’ve had a heart attack and want to learn more about cardiac rehabilitation, make an appointment for a consultation at Cardio Metabolic Institute in Somerset, Monroe Township, or East Brunswick, New Jersey. Book your visit online, or call our office at 732-846-7000, extension 152.
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