Today in this new franceinfo conso meeting, we decipher the special issue on the heart of the INC monthly, 60 Millions de consommateurs which has just been released. With everything you need to know about the foods to choose to protect it, the habits to adopt to strengthen it, but also about innovative treatments to treat it.
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This is a first this month for the magazine 60 Million consumers, the monthly magazine of the National Consumer Institute, a special issue on the heart, with many practical tips for taking care of your heart. Details from Sophie Coisne, deputy editor-in-chief of special editions of 60 Million.
franceinfo: Why this choice? What is the link between the heart and consumption?
Sophie Coisne: You know, a lot of what we consume has an impact on heart health. We obviously think about the choice of fats and proteins. But there is also access to care, to sport, the choice of blood pressure monitors, which you have to choose carefully if you want to take your blood pressure correctly, at home.
So this special issue begins with a long questionnaire intended for readers, because can you be a person at risk without knowing it?
Absolutely, after menopause, for example, women see their cardiovascular risk increase very sharply. Today we are also discovering how bad being exposed to pollution is for the heart. So, it’s good to do a little personal assessment based on this Quiz to know roughly where we are.
There are surprising figures, we learn for example that heart attacks are the leading cause of death among women, and that young people are increasingly faced with cardiovascular diseases, how can we explain that?
But yes, women now live like men. They smoke, they drink alcohol, they sometimes take a type of pill which increases the risk of blood clots, and therefore of cardiovascular accidents, if combined with tobacco. So it’s not surprising at all that the risk of heart attack, for example, increases.
You talk in your supplement about sneaky enemies of the heart. We could also talk about stress, but does that mean that we are in a stressful society, in a risky society?
Ah yes, the mental load, in particular, and the stress every day. A very heavy weight on the heart, hypertension too. This is a real subject because one in two people in France are unaware that they are hypertensive. So society absolutely does not help us to pay attention to our hearts.
I take the preponderance of screens for example, or television platforms, where we can chain series, and which will push us to stay on our sofa, sedentary, while sometimes snacking on things which will also weigh on our hypertension, because it is salty, or on our body.
And so, when we read Sophie Coisne to you, we learn that the heart’s best friend, I thought it was the cardiologist, but you tell us it’s the dentist?
So yes, the heart’s best friend is the cardiologist, the general practitioner, he is also well placed. Let’s say that on the podium, we will say, in third position, it could be the dentist. Because when you suffer from cardiovascular disease, you really need to take good care of your teeth and have them monitored regularly, because certain infections can cause major cardiovascular problems like infective endocarditis. So it’s not extremely common, but it still requires taking care of your teeth.
What advice could you give to France Info listeners to have a healthy heart?
So you just need to change a few lifestyle habits, even modestly, to significantly improve your cardiovascular health. Walk every day, stop taking the bus, one or two stops before it stops. Adopt a Mediterranean diet rich in fruits, vegetables, cereals, home-cooked fish, to avoid ultra-processed products.
And then take your blood pressure from time to time at home, we have a little comparison of blood pressure monitors which allows you to check that you don’t have hypertension. And above all, don’t hesitate to ask your doctor for a cardiovascular check-up, to make sure that everything is going well.