Hearty Health in Canada

"Cardiovascular disease, which includes heart disease and stroke, is the second leading cause of death in Canada and is associated with disability, low quality of life and high economic costs."
Research findings, Canadian Medial Association Journal

Shocking new statistics have emerged to paint a heart-health picture of general society within Canada. There is no reason to believe that those same statistics would not generally apply elsewhere, in most economically advanced countries of the world. And they have a great deal to say about our values, our responsibility to ourselves and to our societies, and the lifestyle choices we make. Fundamentally, we ignore the need to live a healthy lifestyle.

And that cavalier attitude to our own well-being leaves us vulnerable to ill-health. The older we grow, the more susceptible we become. Well, there's nothing unusual about that. We all assume that in youth we are in fine physical mettle simply because all the complex systems which we inherit as human beings at birth are new, and they age as we do. The older we get the more 'used' those systems become, and they then, naturally enough, tend to suffer the strains of burn-out.

So knowing that, it comes as a bit of a shock to learn that the result of a study using data from 464,883 people aged twelve and older responding to Canadian Community Health Survey cycles between 2003 and 2011 revealed that a mere 9% of Canadian adults -- one in eleven -- is able to meet the criteria for "ideal" cardiovascular health.

All right, so that's older people, and as shocking as those figures are, there's always the blooming health of the youth of the country. But their figures are only marginally improved, with only 17% of those age 12 to 19 - about one in five - receiving good scores for healthy behaviours.

Thirteen percent of women and six percent of men were deemed to be in ideal cardiovascular health over the period of the study. Gender differentials were more pronounced than even that gap in early middle age. Men score lower than women on every index but for physical activity; higher among males. High blood pressure was similar between the genders.

And the lifestyle choices that make for a promising health future are also geographically inclined. The best scores were realized in British Columbia, the most deleterious in Newfoundland and Labrador. "We need to do better", commented senior report author Dr. Jack Tu, scientist with the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto, a cardiologist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.

The calculations for the heart health scores in accord with the CANHEART (Cardiovascular Health Ambulatory Care Research Team) index uses six measurements of "ideal" heart health:

1. Being a non-smoker or former smoker who quit over 23 months earlier;
2. Having a body mass index (BMI) of less than 25;
3. Doing the equivalent of 30 minutes of walking per day;
4. Eating five or more servings of fruits and vegetables daily;
5. No diabetes or high blood pressure.

The resulting scores ran the gamut from zero (worst health results) to six (best). Over the study period it became clear that adults were eating fruits and vegetables and exercising and fewer people were smoking. On the other hand, people became weightier, and in response to that critical fact, they became more susceptible to diabetes and hypertension. In 2009-2010 overall, 9.4% of Canadian adults were in ideal cardiovascular health.

The "Intermediate" group (earning four or five points on the heart health scale) stood at 53%, and 37% represented the poor cardiovascular health category (zero to three healthy factors or behaviours). Mean scores decreased from a high of 4.1 in British Columbia, to a low of 3.5 in Newfoundland and Labrador, where obesity and smoking rates stand the highest in the nation.

For youth 12 and over, "ideal" heart health is defined as never having smoked, being a healthy weight, exercising the equivalent of at least 60 minutes of walking time daily and consuming a minimum of five servings of fruits and vegetables daily. Though there was a dramatic drop in young smokers, almost half -- 49.7% -- were deemed to be in poor cardiovascular health.

Ouch, and oops!