Young adults at risk of cardiovascular disease: research
January 25, 2010
Joseph Hall
HEALTH REPORTER
Move over Joe six-pack. Your kids have now joined you in the growing group of Canadians who are at risk of cardiovascular disease, according to a new report by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.
“In this country heart disease simply is no longer a disease of middle aged white men,” says Dr. Marco Di Buono, research director for the foundation’s Ontario branch.
“The (foundation) is officially declaring young adults aged 20 to 39 years of age as Canada’s new ‘at risk’ group,” Di Buono told a news conference Monday.
A combination of rising obesity rates, poor fitness and the emergence of new ethnic groups genetically prone to develop heart disease at an earlier age has pushed the problem down to the younger age group, foundation officials said.
As well, the growing epidemic of obesity among Canadian children identified a decade ago has now come home to roost in actual disease conditions as they have entered adulthood.
“The children we have been worried about over the years have now become young adults, beginning their lives with multiple risk factors for heart disease,” says Dr. Beth Abramson, a top Toronto cardiologist and foundation spokesperson.
“We predict an explosion of heart disease in the younger generation if these trends continue,” Abramson says.
Currently, some 250,000 Canadians in their 20s and 30s suffer from high blood pressure, Abramson says.
“That’s almost a doubling in the last 15 years,” she says.
And this disturbing trend follows naturally on related figures the foundation released this morning in its annual report card on Canada’s heart health.
This showed that some 3 million adults aged 20 to 34 consider themselves physically inactive, while 2.5 million are obese, 2 million smoke and 66,000 have type 2 diabetes.
Disturbingly, Abramson says, obesity rates among the young are based on self-reported weight estimates, which inevitably fall below those that a bathroom scale would show.
And while overall rates of tobacco use are down, young Canadians continue to be the country’s heaviest smokers, she says.
“These 20 year olds are setting themselves up for poor long term health effects,” Abramson says.
“We know that when a young person comes to the emergency room with a heart attack, they’re more likely to be smokers.”
High blood pressure rates among Canadians aged 39 to 49 increased by 127 per cent over the past 15 years, while the prevalence of diabetes and obesity among this group shot up 64 per cent and 20 per cent respectively.
Couple that with an aging and widening baby boom population and new, more-vulnerable immigrant groups, and you have a population pushed to the cardiovascular breaking point, the foundation says.
“The magnitude of this problem has now become so large that we are in dire need of a comprehensive strategy,” says Stephen Samis, director of health policy for the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. He says the country has a “patchwork quilt” of initiatives that federal and provincial governments must coordinate.
Samis says the foundation has introducing just such a strategy while presenting their annual report card on heart health across the nation.