 92.7 WOBM, Sean and Sue with you on this Tuesday morning. It is the 6th of February, and Sean and Sue are joined today by Dr. Renato Apolito, a cardiologist with Hackensack Meridian Health's cardiovascular network to talk about heart health. And of course, February is heart month. Good morning, doctor. Hi, doctor. Good morning, everybody. How are you? Very good, thank you. February is heart month, but why should listeners take serious when it comes to their heart health all year round, not just this month? Well, unfortunately, despite advances, cardiac illness is still the leading cause of death among men and women, and obviously doesn't take time off, so although we call attention to it this month of the year, it clearly is always an issue 12 months of the year, so we should be very attentive to it. Now, we talk about men and women and heart disease. How are things different for the sexes when it comes to dealing with heart disease or the prevalence of heart disease? Well, I think classically, early on in our experience, many years ago, we paid more attention to men, but we've learned that it affects both sexes equally. Men typically get heart disease somewhat earlier in life, but women catch up pretty quickly after men have pause and things get pretty equal once we hit middle age and beyond, so we should clearly pay attention to symptoms on both sides. Okay, and what are some of those symptoms? Can we talk about them? Absolutely, so some of them are classic. You probably know already, chest tightness, chest pressure, that radiates to the arm, the neck, the left arm specifically, those are classic textbook symptoms, especially if they occur with exertion and then they go away when you rest. That's something to take note of for sure and see a doctor, but sometimes it could be pretty subtle, especially in diabetics or women, they may just get heartburn, like an epigastric sort of above the stomach, just below the chest bone, a burning, a nausea, a sweating, either at rest or with exertion, it may just be shortness of breath that has become worsened over the last several months with the same amount of exertion, so all these things you have to pay attention to. Okay, okay. Now, is there particular ages, you mentioned middle age, is that sort of like the buffer age group when you start to look and deal with the more conscious of your heart? That's as strong, you would mean middle age. Well, clearly it can affect all ages. I've seen patients as young as 19 with heart disease, although that's rare, thank God, but typically, I'd say once you get into your 30s, men are very fair game, 40s, 50s, obviously, but obviously in the 50s and 60s, the prevalence of heart disease really starts to climb, especially in both sexes, starts to really equalize pretty quickly, and I don't wanna make it sound as if you can take your eyes off the road at a very young age, you should always be attentive to the symptoms, recognize it can affect all ages and both sexes, but clearly the prevalence does increase with age. And how can we keep our hearts healthy? What's the best way? Hereditary, does that play into it as well? Genes? Yes, I mean, there's definitely a factor where familial history, if you're surrounded by a family with a significant premature early heart disease that will increase your risk clearly, but I think paying attention to the stuff we all know, I think that's important. If you have bad habits like smoking, you should stop. There really is no safe dose that you can get away with. You should eat a heart healthy diet. I think the simplest thing, you should forget these fat diets really and just try to live by a non-processed diet. If it grows on a tree or comes from a farm, you probably will be much better off than eating some health snack bar that they touts as being healthy because if you look at the label of that processed stuff, there's a lot of bad stuff on the back. 10 to 20 minutes of cardiovascular exercise, five times a week is beneficial. That means treadmill, stationary bike, or a regular bike. Five times, oh, I thought you meant five minutes a week. I'm like, wow. 10 to 20 minutes, five times a week. But any amount helps, it's been shown that even the little dose of exercise will be better than none. Just getting into that little extra walk or maybe using the stairs at work and things like that. Easy to do, park the car far away, walk to where you gotta go. Use the stairs all day long, no reason not to. And maintaining a healthy weight, that absolutely falls in line with what we just said, a healthy diet and exercise will maintain that weight. And weight is a factor because it does lead to sleep apnea, diabetes, and high cholesterol and other high blood pressure. So those things are cardiac risk factors. So if you can eliminate your weight as a risk factor, the other things fall in line. I just checked my heart rate 79 while I'm sitting here. Is that pretty decent? I guess I'm a fairly exciting guy. Yeah. Not so bad. That's a little up, a little up. How do you check your heart rate? My watch. So if I ever need that, you can check it for me? No. That's neat. No. What do you mean, your watch checks your heart rate? Well, yeah, it's keeping my pulse on my wrist. Did you know that, doctor, that some watches do that? I think, yeah, they have these really newfangled devices that do a lot of different things. And it can't check your suit. It would just make my heart race this technology. It can't check yours. You're not wearing it. That's right. You'd have to borrow it. Oh. Yeah, you'd have to put my watch on. That's right. Okay. That's true. Duh. I wasn't even thinking, sorry, doctor. We're talking with Dr. Renato Apolito, who has heard of some of these newfangled devices. How do we get more information about heart health, doctor? Well, I think you can visit the website. We have a fairly comprehensive website that can help you learn about how to stay healthy. There's recipes. It will also put you in touch with cardiovascular specialists should you want to visit one. And that website is hackandsacmeridianhealth.org forward slash H-M-H. You can Google it, I'm sure, and get it pretty quickly. You know, doctor, this is just something I have to say. Do patients ever tell you, because you're sitting next to me now, I have a pain in my arm. Does, I mean, do people ever tell you that? Just talking to you, do you like, do they get pains? Am I, do I have an issue? Yeah, we hear it. Psychosomatic? Yeah, like, well, we hear it all, and we take nothing for granted. We take it all very serious. It's like, you know, calling a fire department about smoke coming out of a window. We really can't dismiss these things. So if someone does have some symptoms that are concerning, we do test them. Okay. And take a look and think it's. You need to borrow my watch. Yeah. I think I better give her my watch. Don't tell the heart doctor, I got pains going down my arm. He just got done telling you that's the biggest symptom, too. All right, well, maybe we'll have a check you out here and see what's going on there after we get done. Doctor, thanks for being with us today. Don't forget the website to go to is hackandsacmaridianhealth.org forward slash HMH for more details about heart health. And of course, February being heart month, and we'll get more details there.