HEALTH PLUS MED­ICAL COR­RE­SPON­DENT

Pa­tient DS knows she should have seen the warn­ing signs. When she looked back at 2018, the year she suf­fered a stroke, the 56-year-old prin­ci­pal re­calls “an over­worked, ded­i­cat­ed pro­fes­sion­al who de­pri­or­i­tized her health and re­mained in de­nial”. “I had let my blood pres­sure go un­con­trolled, and I re­mained chron­i­cal­ly stressed and in­ac­tive for too long,” she says. She knew she was play­ing with her health but got caught in the vi­cious cy­cle of tak­ing care of the world and not her­self. Post-stroke, and lost her abil­i­ty to freely move her dom­i­nant hand and low­er limb, there is much she shares she would do dif­fer­ent­ly.

It’s no sur­prise that many peo­ple feel scared, con­fused and over­whelmed af­ter a car­dio­vas­cu­lar event (heart at­tack or stroke) which are life-chang­ing events. Af­ter your treat­ment, you like­ly re­ceived in­struc­tions and a lot of in­for­ma­tion from your doc­tor. With time to re­flect, you may be try­ing to un­der­stand what hap­pened. You are sure to want to know what you can do to avoid heart prob­lems in the fu­ture. Nav­i­gat­ing the road to re­cov­ery isn’t easy. Ques­tions, con­fu­sion, un­cer­tain­ty and even fear are com­mon.

Make pre­ven­tion your first pri­or­i­ty

Af­ter a first heart at­tack or stroke, most peo­ple go on to live a long, pro­duc­tive life. How­ev­er, around 20% of pa­tients age 45 and old­er will have an­oth­er heart at­tack with­in five years of their first.

5 ways to pre­vent an­oth­er heart at­tack

- Take your med­ica­tions as pre­scribed. Cer­tain med­i­cines can great­ly low­er your risk of an­oth­er car­diac event. That’s why it’s im­por­tant for you to un­der­stand your med­i­cines and take them cor­rect­ly.

- At­tend your fol­low-up ap­point­ments. At­tend­ing your fol­low-up ap­point­ments will help your doc­tors keep track of your con­di­tion and re­cov­ery.

- Par­tic­i­pate in car­diac re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion. Car­diac re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion is a med­ical­ly su­per­vised pro­gramme de­signed to help you re­cov­er af­ter a heart at­tack. You should have re­ceived a re­fer­ral to car­diac re­hab when you were dis­charged from the hos­pi­tal – if you didn’t, ask your doc­tor about it.

- Get sup­port. It’s nor­mal to feel scared, over­whelmed or con­fused af­ter a heart at­tack. Get­ting sup­port from loved ones or from peo­ple who have al­so ex­pe­ri­enced a heart at­tack can help you cope.

- Man­age your risk fac­tors. Af­ter a heart at­tack, it’s im­por­tant to man­age risk fac­tors (such as high blood pres­sure, high cho­les­terol and di­a­betes) by tak­ing med­ica­tions, quit­ting smok­ing, eat­ing healthy food and get­ting ac­tive.

Look out for HEALTH PLUS every Tues­day for more in­for­ma­tive and health­ful ar­ti­cles. If you have any ques­tions or con­cerns re­gard­ing this top­ic, please email Guardian­Health­Plus2020@gmail.com