GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (KSNB) – As National Heart Month continues, doctors at CHI Health St. Francis say trends popular with young people could cause heart problems.
Trends like vaping and energy drinks have been popular with people under 40 for the past several years. But the doctors say they could be hard on your heart.
They’ve seen an upward trend of people under 40 with hypertension and other heart conditions older people get coming through their doors.
They cite vaping because of the nicotine and heavy metals in vaping products, and energy drinks because of the caffeine overload they contain.
Dr. Jeffrey King says this can create a series of problems with your heart.
“High blood pressure leads us to higher risk for strokes, higher risk for heart disease. The other thing that we’ll see with energy drinks with high caffeine and such is that we can run into arrhythmias. So, people will have SVT, which stands for supraventricular tachycardia or a fast heart rate,” King said.
In addition to this, King says the muscle-building supplements used by athletes may also cause heart problems.
“When we see people that are doing supplements, there’s oftentimes caffeine in there, but then there are things like steroids and other things. What we run into is that they can raise the blood pressure. So anything that raises blood pressure puts us at long-term risk for strokes and for heart attacks and for heart failure,” King said.
King says the rise in vaping has led to heart problems in people under 40.
“What we’re getting is people who have nicotine with the vaping, and we know nicotine can lead us to problems with hypertension and vascular disease. And in addition to that, the vaping oftentimes has other heavy metals and things like that, so that can be a real issue for us, too, in that it affects the endothelium of the vasculature, leads to hypertension,” King said.
All of these trends have doctors worried about future generations.
“With the supplements and with the vaping and energy drinks and things like that, I do think we’ve seen some younger-aged patients with things that we wouldn’t have expected,” King said. “So we’ll see maybe people that are having heart attacks a little bit earlier, strokes a little bit earlier, heart failure a little bit earlier, and arrhythmias.”
To prevent heart issues, Dr. King recommends living a healthy lifestyle. This includes drinking more water, adding more vegetables to your diet and cutting out unhealthy habits.
For more tips on unhealthy trends to avoid and other healthy habits to help you take care of your heart, you can go to the American Heart Association website.
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