Support million hearts initiative

About 2 million people have a heart attack or stroke each year, resulting in about 800,000 deaths. Those who do survive have a lower quality of life.

All of this results in a tremendous cost in lost productivity and annual health care expenditures totaling $444 billion; these costs are increasing each year.

These facts are especially alarming since the primary risk factors for cardiovascular disease (smoking, high blood pressure, elevated blood cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, inactivity and obesity) are preventable and can be treated at a low cost. It does not take a doctor to tell someone that he needs to discontinue these things that are making him sick.

It is estimated that controlling these risk factors would reduce the risk of death from stroke or heart attack by more than half. In fact, according to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, written some 35 years ago, “97 percent of the heart attacks could be prevented by following a vegetarian diet.”

The Seventh-day Adventist Church has advocated this diet for more than 100 years, and those members who have followed this practice almost never have a heart attack or stroke. The Centers for Disease Control are advocating an elaborate program aimed at saving one million hearts, but if each person in America would assume the responsibility for his own health, this enormous problem could be readily solved.

Let’s each resolve to do our part.