. 'Mum died with new symptoms and didn't make it. But that was 30 years ago – and a lot has changed,' she says. 'I like to think that she would have survived nowadays with the treatments we have.' She is vocal in her belief that we can take steps to manage our heart health. 'You cannot change your family history of coronary disease,' she says, 'but we can use it as a motivation to make the changes that can save lives – to try to stop a heart attack from happening in the first place.' More than half of us will have some kind of circulatory problem in our lifetime and now a new study from Our Future Health – which is set to be the UK's biggest health study, by the BHF – has found that over 50 per cent of people have high cholesterol and one in four have high blood pressure, putting them at risk of future heart problems and other serious diseases including stroke, diabetes and dementia. The results were collected from more than half a million people, who attended a clinic appointment where their blood pressure and cholesterol was tested. The researchers are now aiming to recruit a further five million volunteers across the UK to create a detailed picture of the nation's health, with the aim of preventing and treating common diseases. Working in collaboration with the NHS, the programme is sending invit){kind=link}
A new study has found that more than half of people in the UK have high cholesterol and one in four has high blood pressure
Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan understands the importance of the most vital organ in our body only too well. When she was in her 20s and embarking on her career in medicine, her mother died from a heart attack at only 42. It came out of nowhere, as she had no known history of heart disease. “I always knew I wanted to be a doctor,” she says, “but that day inspired me to specialise in the heart.”
Dr Babu-Narayan is now a consultant cardiologist at Royal Brompton Hospital, and associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation (BHF).
“Mum died with new symptoms and didn’t make it. But that was 30 years ago – and a lot has changed,” she says. “I like to think that she would have survived nowadays with the treatments we have.”
She is vocal in her belief that we can take steps to manage our heart health. “You cannot change your family history of coronary disease,” she says, “but we can use it as a motivation to make the changes that can save lives – to try to stop a heart attack from happening in the first place.”