Dr Anna Rolleston The Cardiac Clinic

I'd like to dispel some of the myths about heart disease risk.

I am on cholesterol medication therefore I do not need to strictly manage my diet.

Incorrect. Cholesterol medication moderates the natural cholesterol production by your liver. Any cholesterol that you consume is not affected by the medication and therefore you still need to be diligent with your nutrition when on a cholesterol lowering therapy.

I walk every day along the beach, I get more than enough exercise to keep my heart healthy.

Not necessarily the case, especially if you walk the same route every day. Our body is very adaptive. Doing the same type of physical activity or exercise consistently is beneficial from an overall health point of view but variety and change is needed to optimise your heart health. Your heart needs to continually adapt to what you are doing so to maintain its efficiency – if you do the same thing over and over, it has nothing new to adapt to. Walking every day is better than doing nothing but if your aim is to optimise your health then you need to change your routine on a regular basis

Everyone in my family has high blood pressure, it is inevitable that I will have high blood pressure too.

Not always the case. There is a genetic component to high blood pressure – a family link whereby the condition is likely to occur in family members. However a genetic tendency is not a given. In the case of high blood pressure, if your family is prone, then it means you need to be more diligent with your lifestyle management than your friend next door who does not have a family history of high blood pressure. Often we are the product of our environment more than the product of our genetics. If we eat what our parents ate, if we are active (or inactive) in the same way they were and live a similar lifestyle to them then it makes sense we will suffer from the same illnesses they suffered. If we modify our lifestyle to be different from our parents, we modify our personal health outcomes.

Heart disease is a men's issue

Incorrect. Women are very good at being proactive with their health – however not in the case of their hearts. Traditionally heart disease was the realm of men, but unfortunately that is becoming less and less the case. In the Bay of Plenty for example there is a higher incidence of high blood pressure in women than in men. Women have a certain amount of natural heart protection up until menopause but after that their risk is similar to a man's. So ladies, when you send your husbands to me to get their heart checked can you please make an appointment for yourself as well. Better to know your heart is working efficiently, than not know that it is not!