Cardiovascular Atlas
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Living well with heart disease

A suggested order for reading this atlas for an adult who has had a heart event or procedure, or has been told to look after their heart, and for their family. It starts with everyday heart-healthy steps, moves to activity and eating patterns, then to cardiac rehabilitation and why many eligible people do not take part. It is not medical advice.

  • Reading path
  • In this atlas

Overview

Technical summary

Nine steps. Each step restates what the linked page's records say and adds no claim of its own. Claims keep their own context on their own pages: the cardiac rehabilitation review covers adults with coronary heart disease, the dietary trials cover people at risk or with blood pressure above optimal, and none of them covers pregnancy.

Who this is for

Adults who have had a heart event or procedure, or who have been told to look after their heart, and their families. It does not give personal medical advice and does not cover pregnancy.

Reading order

  1. Heart-healthy living

    A US federal heart institute groups everyday heart care into a handful of topics: knowing your risk, checking blood pressure and cholesterol, eating heart-healthy foods, keeping a healthy weight, being active, managing stress, quitting smoking and sleeping well. This page lists the topics and does not measure how much each one helps.

  2. Life's Essential 8

    A national heart association scores heart health from eight measures, each out of 100 points, and averages them for an overall score. The score is that association's own construct; this atlas does not record how well it predicts outcomes.

  3. Physical inactivity

    A global health agency lists not being physically active among the risk factors for high blood pressure, and a US survey put adult inactivity at 29.1% in 2015 to 2016. MedlinePlus says regular exercise lowers the risk of many long-term diseases.

  4. DASH eating plan

    The DASH eating plan stresses vegetables, fruits and whole grains and limits saturated fat and sugary drinks. In a controlled feeding trial it lowered systolic blood pressure at each of three sodium levels, and less sodium lowered it further.

  5. Mediterranean diet

    In a corrected report of a Spanish trial, people at high cardiovascular risk who got free extra-virgin olive oil or nuts with a Mediterranean diet had fewer major cardiovascular events than people advised to eat less fat. The original report was withdrawn after some participants were found not to have been randomized.

  6. Cardiac rehabilitation

    Cardiac rehabilitation is a supervised program of exercise training, education and counseling after a heart event or procedure. A Cochrane review found fewer heart attacks and hospital admissions at 6 to 12 months in people with coronary heart disease, with some other results uncertain.

  7. Low participation in cardiac rehabilitation among eligible patients

    In a large Medicare study, only about 1 in 4 eligible people took part in cardiac rehabilitation, and fewer women and fewer Hispanic and non-Hispanic Black beneficiaries did. A question you could take to a visit is whether cardiac rehabilitation has been offered to you. It is a question, not advice.

  8. Home-based cardiac rehabilitation

    Home-based programs, with remote coaching, are one idea to reach people who cannot attend a center. A scientific statement says they may be a reasonable option for selected clinically stable low- to moderate-risk patients, and that more research is needed.

  9. Million Hearts Cardiac Rehabilitation Change Package

    This Million Hearts toolkit is written for hospital teams who want to enroll more eligible patients. It is useful background if you want to ask a hospital what it does to refer patients to cardiac rehabilitation.

Record details

Record id
cardio:reading-path-living-well
Content hash
c7e1c670ea66b989798660598852d69ac956336c6b2f4ca8dc8b5728dcea1db9