Stayin' Alive With Heart Disease (page 3 of 3)

Lifestyle Changes

Kathy continued to exercise regularly, often with her good friend Mary Ellen Rippert. Still, her cholesterol lingered on the high side. After her first marriage ended in divorce, she met and married Patrick Kirschling, a food marketing professor. By her late 40s, her total cholesterol had skyrocketed to 350 mg/dL (under 200 is a safe level).

Her good cholesterol (HDL) was a healthy 55; some experts say a high HDL is more important for women than a low bad (LDL) level. But in Kathy's case, her LDL, at 275 (under 100 is optimal), was significantly raising her risk. She tried vitamins and herbal remedies that promised to lower cholesterol, but nothing worked.

By the time Kathy turned 52, her doctor had convinced her nothing she did on her own would fix the problem. He referred her to the vascular medicine clinic at the University of Pennsylvania Health System in Philadelphia.

Despite her dangerous numbers, Kathy was still reluctant to consider medication, even as she sat in one of the clinic exam rooms for her first appointment. Emile Mohler III, MD, director of vascular medicine, knocked on the door and entered. He reassured her that statins were safe and suggested she start with a mild one. But first he scheduled a CT scan to look for calcium in her arteries (calcium sticks to cholesterol). Kathy's arteries showed so much calcium that she fell in the 90th percentile for people her age. "She was at such a high risk, I needed to treat her like she'd already had a heart attack," Dr. Mohler says.

There was little question that Kathy and her family suffered from a family legacy of high LDL levels that started at birth. A mutated gene was causing Kathy's liver to overproduce cholesterol. Even more concerning, Kathy may have had a type of plaque prone to rupture, leading to the formation of clots, which can lodge in an artery and cause an attack without warning.

It took several years of trying different statins and doses, but by 2004, a blood test indicated that Kathy's total cholesterol had dropped to a respectable 190, with her LDL at a manageable 119. Dr. Mohler says as long as Kathy continues to eat right and exercise, she'll live 15 years longer than she would have without the drugs. She'll be around to sail the Chesapeake Bay on her trawler, First Boomer, with husband Patrick, travel to her vacation home in Florida, and take part in every crucial moment of her grandchildren's lives -- maybe even her great-grandchildren's.

For now, Kathy is focused on passing on her good habits to her children and grandchildren. But she also worries about others of her own aging generation. Boomers tend to think they are going to "live forever," or that they can simply take a pill and erase the price of all those years of good living. Take a pill, be happy. That's classic Boomer, she says.

"I have to be on drugs. I don't have a choice. But I wonder how many people would need to be on medication if they just changed their lifestyle," Kathy says. "If you're healthy and feel good inside, that comes across outside. You'll never replace that with a pill."

From Reader's Digest - February 2007

 

• • Get Motivated
• • Anti-Aging
• • Medical Dramas
• Heart Disease

• Warning Signs of Heart Disease
• Important symptoms to watch out for.
• 
• Genetic Heart Disease Factors
• Know your inborn risks to better manage cholesterol.
• 
• Stress: A Heart Disease Risk Factor on a Par With Smoking
• An underlying problem that can have severe physical consequences.
• 
• The Stages of Heart Disease
• How cholesterol wreaks havoc in your body.
• 
• Cut Your Heart Disease Risk
• Reduce the possibility of a heart attack with lifestyle modifications.
• 
• Your Heart Disease Prevention Plan
• Lower your risk for the number one killer of Americans.
• 

• Be Inspired
• 10 Celebrities Who Give Back
• 7 Amazing Stories, $700,000 to Charity
• Virginia Cervasio: Making It Matter
• PLUS:
• Quiz: What's Your Celebrity Cause IQ?