Does it surprise you to learn that heart disease is responsible for approximately 600,000 American deaths each year?
How about the fact that many can go years without being diagnosed with the “silent killer” known as heart disease?
What if you knew that even young, healthy and fit soldiers are at risk?
Startling study finds more than 1 in 12 US service members who died in Iraq and Afghanistan had heart disease before being deployed!
“These are people who are asymptomatic, they feel fine, they are combat deployed,” says Dr. Bryant Webber, lead author of the study and a physician at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. .
The study results were drawn from autopsies performed on 3,832 US military personnel who died between October 2001 and August 2011 during combat or unintentional injuries. Service members where an average age of 26 and nearly 9% were found to have buildup in their coronary arteries, while around a quarter had buildup in their arteries that resulted in severe blockage. It is also noted that approximately 98% of service member study participants were male.
However, Webber points out that the study shows a positive decrease in heart disease among young American men and women.
“Healthy young people are likely to have a lower disease burden today than their parents or grandparents decades ago,” Webber says. In part thanks to better control of blood pressure and cholesterol, as well as an overall decrease in smoking, obesity and diabetes, which are closely linked to heart disease.
Source: Reuters
Emilie Lockhart
Emily Lockhart is a certified yoga instructor and personal trainer. She believes that being healthy is a lifestyle choice, not a punishment or a temporary fix for achieving a desired fitness or body image goal. Anna helps her clients take responsibility for their own health and well-being through her classes and articles on ActiveBeat.
