You can’t get better if you stay in the environment that made you sick.

You can’t get better if you stay in the environment that made you sick.

I read this sentence and paused for a moment. How seriously do we actually take prevention when the environment we live in constantly pushes us in the opposite direction? We treat high blood pressure. We lower cholesterol. We treat diabetes and obesity. We perform angioplasty and place stents. But meanwhile, nicotine, alcohol, and highly processed, sugary foods are cheap, widely available, and often deliberately designed or marketed to make us consume continuously. And then we tell the patient, 'You need to live healthier.' Something doesn’t add up.

The mechanisms differ. A cigarette is not a glass of wine, and sugar is not nicotine. And trans fat is yet another story. But ultimately, many of these pathways converge in the same body: inflammation, insulin resistance, high blood pressure, vascular dysfunction, atherosclerosis, arrhythmias, and ultimately: cardiovascular diseases. Perhaps we should formulate prevention less often as:

Why doesn't this person make a healthier choice?

How do we make the healthy choice the easiest choice? Because preventing or improving heart health requires more than just changing behavior. The heart demands a different environment, as it cannot become healthy in an environment that continues to feed heart disease.

#PUTITON #prevention #hearthealth #cardiology #lifestyle #womensheart #publichealth