Heart disease awareness

I was invited to give a talk on " Heart disease awareness" by the Leicester Kerala Community(LKC). When Binu (the secretary) mentioned this to me, as usual I said 'yes', but later realised that I have undertaken a substantial task and needed a lot of reading, research and references. However, it was a good learning process for me that reiterated a lot of points I already knew, refreshed some and also learned more on a few key issues.

The crowd was mainly composed of families with a nursing or health related background, that made the presentation all the more interesting as well as challenging. I took Achan, Dasachan and Manikutty too.

I wanted to make the talk more interactive and two-way rather than a lecture. I started the talk by asking about the risk factors for the heart and related illnesses. The crowd responded to this question beautifully and said about most of the known risk factors. I then introduced my newly found mnemonic (reminds me very much of my medical-school days) for this

ie "ABCDEFG-SO". I reminded the crowd to remember this all the time.

A- Age and Alcohol (and also being Asian especially from Indian sub-continent)
B- Blood Pressure (Hypertension)
C- Cholesterol (Especially high LDL, TG and low HDL)
D- Diabetes and Diet
E- Exercise (rather lack of exercise)
F- Family history of heart disease, high BP, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes
G- Genes

S- Smoking and Stress, Sex(male)
O-Obesity

I went through all these points one by one concentrating on the CED (Cause-Effect-Do)of these ie
Whats the Cause?
What are the Effects?
What can we Do?

'Nature and Nurture' both plays a part in the development of any problem. Nature is something which we cannot change and these are factors which are irreversible ie Age/ Male-sex/ Genes/ Family history etc. However we can do a lot on 'BCDE' ie BP/ Cholesterol/ Diabetes and Diet/ Exercise (Nurture).

The most important aspect of this whole symptom/ disease complex is that what ever you have (ie hypertension or obesity or heart-disease) the management is more or less the same by adopting a similar solution to many problems.

The strategy includes modification of life style factors ie eating more vegetables/ fruits, less fatty food, physical and mental exercise(like yoga, relaxation techniques), stopping smoking, reducing alcohol, taking regular medications if on treatment etc. I emphasised the age old saying 'prevention is better than cure'.

The feed back after the talk was quite good. I was presented a memento on behalf of LKC. The success of any talk/presentation depends on the home-work we have done. It is important to be simple, crisp and clear, at the same time keeping the crowd engaged and getting the message across.

Tail piece: Manikutty later told me that she felt my talk was boring....:-)