6 hours Ago By Katelyn Catanzariti
The setting sun piercing through his windscreen was making Chris Harrison's headache worse. or signup to continue reading The Melbourne council officer was driving home early from work after twice bursting into unexpected tears. He thought he needed to get to bed.
In fact, he was having a heart attack. Had it not been for Mr Harrison's GP calling him that afternoon with the results of an angiogram to investigate heart irregularities and a query about how he was feeling, the man in his early 50s would have gone to bed early. Instead, he was ordered to hospital, where he underwent a quadruple bypass that saved his life.
Each year in Australia, more than 18,000 people die and nearly 150,000 are hospitalised due to coronary heart disease, the Heart Foundation says. About 2.5 million adults are at high risk of having a heart attack or stroke in the next five years.
Mr Harrison's father died at 38 of arteriosclerosis and all but one of his uncles died of heart attacks. Mr Harrison smoked up to 20 cigarettes a day, drank and didn't pay attention to his diet or exercise. He had been diagnosed with peripheral vascular disease in his early 40s and had a couple of stents put in, but he wasn't shaking his bad habits.
The heart attack saved his life, he told AAP. "Not to be flippant, but it's probably the best thing that could have happened. I'm supremely lucky," he said.
Mr Harrison, now 55, has quit smoking and barely drinks since the heart attack three years ago. He watches what he eats and exercise has become a part of his life. He also married his partner of 20 years and the couple spend less time at work and more time together walking their dogs.
"Suddenly ...
we'd been given a second chance. We embraced that," Mr Harrison said. Even though he had been seeing a cardiologist, he didn't think his pre-heart attack symptoms were troubling.
"I thought I was just tired ...
without my GP, you know, I would be dead. "The cemeteries are filled with people who didn't get a call. My dad was one of them.
" The best way to prevent heart attacks and strokes is to take advantage of the 20-minute Medicare Heart Health Checks, the Heart Foundation says. They are available to people from the age of 45, or younger for those at high risk. GPs will check blood pressure, blood-sugar levels and cholesterol, and discuss family history, diet, exercise, sleep and stress to calculate the risk of heart problems over the next five years.
Simple and non-invasive check-ups to prevent heart attacks were a lot better than the possible alternative, Sydney GP Raya Grishina-Gunn said. "Sometimes the first symptoms of heart attacks can be sudden death," she said, adding that her patients often weren't proactive enough about their health. "That's what we're trying to prevent .
.. it's much easier to prevent than to treat after.
" For Heart Week, which runs until Monday, the Heart Foundation is urging people to be less complacent and join the nearly one million Australians who have had a heart health check. "Heart disease remains the single leading cause of death in Australia and yet the majority of heart attacks experienced in this country are preventable," the foundation's Natalie Raffoul said. Daily Today's top stories curated by our news team.
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