Asked & Answered Podcast
The Texas Heart Institute Center for Cardiovascular Care's general and interventional cardiologist, Dr. Alexander Postalian, answers patients' questions about cardiovascular health.
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Asked & Answered Podcast
If I’m Overweight at What Age Should I Start Being Concerned About Heart Disease?
On this episode of Asked and Answered, Dr. Stephanie Coulter sits down with Dr. Briana Costello to discuss when patients should start to be concerned about heart disease if they are overweight.
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If I'm overweight, at what age should I start to be concerned about heart disease? So 50? Yeah. So if you're a female, it's right around 50. If you're a male, you know, a little bit younger. So and it depends on what group you're in. If you are in a high risk family, if you have a strong family history of heart disease, you should consider what can I do in my lifestyle as I'm living to mitigate the risk for heart disease, I recommend that you really start screening. Well, this is a beautiful thing about being a female is that most of us have children at some point in our lives, and we get screened for cardiovascular disease. You don't know that the OB is screening you for diabetes, for hypertension, and actually pregnancy is a risk and stress test for, the female, body. And so I actually had high blood pressure in pregnancy. I had early pre-eclampsia and so I knew my whole life that I was at increased risk for high blood pressure. And I monitored my blood pressure and it stayed pretty good. I ran, I kept it down and when I turned 50, bam, bam. you know, and that's something we don't talk about. And I'm sure not many people have heard this, but if you have had pre-eclampsia or eclampsia, in pregnancy, then you are at higher risk in the future. And that is something that I don't. You will get high blood pressure. Yeah. And I hate and I hate to say women when they come to the office and I ask them about their pregnancies, they're looking at me. Yeah. Like, why do you care? Yeah. And I'm like, well, let me tell you why it actually makes a difference. So, a lot of women here, whatever your age might be, if you had these issues, you know, it's something to keep in mind. Yeah, it's something to monitor. So on average age of 50 for women is when they really need to start really thinking about it. Unless they smoke or have diabetes. And if you smoke or have diabetes, your risks are accumulating at an earlier age.
