Heart Disease Plummets, Could the Trends be Misleading?

Wellness must be having an impact on people's behaviors and daily lifestyles right?. Though wellness programs themselves are not the sole contributor to this decline, none the less health promotion and disease prevention are significant factors. Just consider the fact that back in 1999, the American Heart Association set a strategic goal of reducing the death rates from coronary heart disease and stroke, and reducing the risk factors for these diseases by 25 percent by 2010. Flash forward to 2008, and ahead of schedule the American Heart Association announced yesterday that goal has been met. Better yet, recent studies suggest this is the result of people eating better, smoking less and getting better preventative medical care than has been demonstrated in previous generations.

However this is no time to sit back on our laurels, potential problems loom for the future, as all of the major risk factors for these leading causes of death are still too high and several are actually on the rise. We should also keep in mind that we haven't realized the full impact of these trends, especially as the obesity epidemic in our children that began over 20 years ago continues to snowball. If this trend effecting our youth continues, death rates will begin to rise again in the years ahead.

Continuing to build peoples awareness and giving them the tools and resources, along with improved methods of detecting and treating cardiovascular disease will need to be reinforced to maintain this positive momentum. This is especially true when it comes to stemming the upward course of childhood diabetes and adolescent obesity related trends which threaten any of the headway we have achieved. If left unchecked we will see our children developing heart disease earlier, experiencing early deaths or needing major medical care sooner.

Irregardless of this exciting news, heart disease is still the nation's leading killer, with stroke only a mere shadow of the leader in third place. So if you are in the trenches working with at risk populations, or you yourself are at risk don't give up the good fight. To put this into perspective this next generation may the first in history to not out live their parents.