By Special to the Town Crier
Did you know that, worldwide, 23 people each minute have a heart attack? This adds up to about 12 million heart attacks a year. More than 1 million Americans will have a heart attack each year, and 14 million Americans now living have had a heart attack or angina. In fact, if you live in an industrialized country, heart disease is either the number one killer there or a major cause of death.
These stark statistics are from the opening paragraph of “Heart Attack! Advice for Patients By Patients,” a book that, as the title indicates, is written from the perspective of the patient who has had a heart attack and has recovered.
From the outset, “Heart Attack!” is a different kind of health book because its authors are health professionals as well as victims of cardiac disease. The latter were so inspired by their experiences as patients who have been through cardiac rehabilitation that they wanted to share what they had learned with the rest of the world. Instead of merely lecturing to the reader about making lifestyle changes, this book is a collection of narratives that describe the variety of ways that heart disease can be discovered - mostly, in these cases, by heart attacks - and the ways in which sound, healthful recovery takes place. “Heart Attack!” is divided into three sections: “Heart Attack Basics,” “Patient Perspectives,” and “The Health Professionals’ Perspective.”
The first chapter, “Heart Attack and You,” is written neither from the patients’ perspective nor by any of the patients featured later in the book, but rather by two health professionals who write about the current understanding of heart attack, its symptoms, causes and long-term effects. This chapter provides a good overall primer on the subject and illuminates certain aspects of the individual case histories that are to follow in the second section of the book.
The section on the patients’ perspective makes fascinating reading as we encounter 11 different people and their stories, in their own words. For anyone who still has the typical notion of what a heart attack looks like, this section of the book might save your life - we hear from men who fit the typical profile, women who often don’t, and people who are too young to have heart disease. As this book points out again and again, forewarned is forearmed.
The third section of the book, “The Health Professionals’ Perspective,” has information on nutrition, testing and treatment for heart disease, and cardiac rehabilitation programs. This section gives the reader important tools for making overall changes that can affect their health. Especially useful is the chapter “The Complexities of Nutrition,” because the author includes recent information from different studies indicating that very different diets might need to be prescribed for people with differing conditions.
If your doctor has urged you to lose weight, your blood pressure is a little too high, you live with stress, or you don’t exercise much, “Heart Attack! Advice for Patients By Patients” is a book that might encourage you to investigate your health a little more closely and make simple changes to avoid heart disease. If you have had a heart attack, the book will encourage you as you begin your recovery.
The Health Library resources are not intended as a substitute for medical care. The main branch is located at 2-B Stanford Shopping Center. For more information, call 725-8400 or logon to www.healthlibrary.stanford.edu.
