#19. Health Screening Monday, November 9, 2020 If you want to live a tediously long life, you should keep your heart in good working condition (Clarke et al., 2009; Li et al., 2020). Exercise is the best way to accomplish this. But before getting started, it's good to evaluate your heart's current working condition. There are several ways of doing this. Some easy assessments are blood pressure, resting heart rate, and heart rate recovery (how quickly after activity you return to resting values). You can measure these at home with little equipment and even less effort, and they'll give you a reasonable starting point. It's also important, before participating in anything too vigorous, to get an idea of how many "risk factors" you have. The American College of Sports Medicine offers some of the best information on this type of screening in Chapter 2 of their Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription book. Let's go through the screening process together. For each of the following, if it describes you, give yourself one point. Age. I'm a male who is at least 45 years old or a female who is at least 55 years old. Family history. I have a father or brother who experienced an adverse cardiovascular event (e.g., heart attack or stroke) before the age of 55 or a mother or sister who experienced one before the age of 65. Smoking. I smoke or quit within the last 6 months, or I'm a pretty huffy secondhand smoker. Sedentary lifestyle. I would be at least exaggerating, if not lying, to claim I lived a physically active lifestyle. Obesity. When I plug my height and weight into an online BMI calculator, the number it gives me is over 30. Blood pressure. When I check my seated, resting blood pressure, and I'm not all anxious at the time, the systolic value reaches 140 or the diastolic reaches 90. (If it's a fluke one day, don't tally the point, but if it happens commonly-ish, count it.) Blood sugar. When I wake up in the morning and check my fasted blood sugar, the value I get is three digits. Anything over 99. Cholesterol. My LDL cholesterol is at least 130 or my HDL cholesterol is under 40. Or, if I don't know those specific values, my total cholesterol is at least 200. Or I know all of my values and they're totally fine, but the reason they're fine is that I take a cholesterol-lowering prescription. Bonus. Take a point off of your score if your HDLs are 60 or higher. That's it. Do you have a score? There were eight points possible. How many did you get? Whatever that number is, take it with you to the tips: Tip 1) If you have no more than 1 risk factor, you're in the "low risk" class. The only reason to hold back on exercise intensity is laziness. So go be a maniac. Tip 2) If you have between 2 and 8 risk factors, you reside somewhere on the "moderate risk" spectrum. Yes, 8 is obviously riskier than 2, but for everyone in this camp, the only thing to avoid is vigorous exercise. Just until you've gone to a doctor to get your heart checked out in a little more detail. Probably an electrocardiogram (ECG), maybe an echocardiogram (which would also be ECG, so it doesn't get an abbreviation). In the meantime, do as much light and moderate-intensity exercise as you want. Tip 3) If you have a known cardiovascular condition (e.g., peripheral vascular disease), pulmonary condition (e.g., asthma), or metabolic condition (e.g., diabetes), or if you've never received a diagnosis, but you're not a hypochondriac and you're worried about some symptoms, take a trip to your doctor before doing any moderate or vigorous-intensity exercise. Better safe than... unable to read the next blog.