Cardiovascular Risk Factors

What is hypertension?

High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, is a medical condition which happens when the pressure of the blood in the arteries and other blood vessels is too high. High blood pressure is recorded with 2 numbers. The systolic pressure (higher number) is the force at which your heart pumps blood around your body. The diastolic pressure (lower number) is the resistance to the blood flow in the blood vessels. They're both measured in millimetres of mercury (mmHg). Hypertension is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease. A high systolic blood pressure has a higher impact on the risk for cardiovascular diseases compared to a high diastolic pressure. According to the medical guidelines high blood pressure is defined as 130/90mmHg or higher. The hypertension guidelines emphasize the importance of lifestyle modifications including a balanced diet and physical activity.

What is diabetes?

Diabetes causes a person's blood sugar level to become too high. Two main types of diabetes can be distinguished:

• Type 1 diabetes: the body's immune system attacks and destroys the cells that produce insulin
• Type 2 diabetes: where the body does not produce enough insulin, or the body's cells do not react to insulin.

An estimated 400 million adults in the world live with either type 1 or type 2 diabetes. Diabetes is an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Among individuals with diabetes, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality among individuals with diabetes. Lifestyle modifications, such as regular physical activity and proper nutrition, are key therapeutic modalities to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease in individuals with diabetes.

A recommended healthy, balanced diabetes diet includes Mediterranean, DASH, and other plant-based diets to maintain blood sugar and lipid control. The DASH diet consists of vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, including low-fat dairy products, poultry, fish, legumes, non-tropical vegetable oils, and nuts, while limiting sweets, sugar-sweetened beverages, and red meat, Nutritional optimization can delay or prevent complications from diabetes. Along with a healthy, regular physical activity and smoking cessation is vitally important for managing diabetes.

What is hypercholesterolemia?

If we take in more cholesterol than the body can use, the extra cholesterol can build up in the walls of the arteries, including those of the heart. This leads to narrowing of the arteries and can decrease the blood flow to the heart, brain, kidneys, and other parts of the body. Total cholesterol is the overall amount of cholesterol in your blood, including both "good"and "bad" cholesterol. Good cholesterol (called HDL) makes you less likely to have heart problems or a stroke. Bad cholesterol (called LDL) makes you more likely to have heart problems or a stroke. Triglycerides are a fatty substance similar to bad cholesterol. The risk for cardiovascular disease is highest when the HDL cholesterol is low combined with a high LDL level or increased triglycerides level. The cholesterol ratio is further often calculation, which is the ratio between the total cholesterol and the HDL cholesterol, which predicts risk for future cardiovascular diseases more accurately than the total cholesterol level.

Guidelines recommend physical activity and dietary management of high cholesterol along with pharmaceutical therapy. A diet consisting of vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, including low-fat dairy products, poultry, fish, legumes, non-tropical vegetable oils, and nuts, while limiting sweets, sugar-sweetened beverages, and red meat, which is a similar dietary pattern that is recommended to lower blood pressure.

Overweight

Being overweight is defined as a body mass index (BMI) of more than 25kg/m2. The BMI is calculated by dividing your weight by your square height and is considered a measure to calculate if your weight is healthy.

Both overweight and obesity represents a significant risk of developing diabetes and hypertension which increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. Obesity is the result of an energy imbalance, since energy expenditure and energy intake are crucial in the energy balance equation. Therefore, both nutritional and physical activity components of lifestyle intervention are crucial to both short-term weight loss and also long-term maintenance of healthy body weight.