10/22/2025
Millions of adults in their 20s or older have coronary artery disease. But this common condition doesn’t have to be an inevitable part of aging! THIS IS WHAT WE DO HERE AT WHOLE HEART FAMILY MEDICINE!
There are steps you can take to reduce your risk of developing cardiovascular diseases, which are the leading cause of death globally. The key, however, is starting much earlier than you might think.
“This disease in modern Western society develops at a very early age,” said Steven Nissen,Source comment a cardiologist at Cleveland Clinic, who has been one of the leading voices championing early prevention. In the United States alone, more than 900,000 people died of heart disease in 2023, which is the equivalent of one in every three deaths.
A growing body of cardiologists and public health experts agree that millions could be saved if the medical system shifted how we treat heart disease by focusing on detecting and managing atherosclerosis, or the build up of plaque that narrows arteries over time, before overt signs or symptoms appear.
“Unfortunately, most of our systems have been set up to consider that the moment that you look for coronary artery disease is the moment when someone tells you they have symptoms or the moment they have a heart attack,” said Rasha Al-Lamee, who led a research team of more than two dozen experts from around the world that looked into changing how heart disease is identified and treated. “This is a disease that starts much earlier. There’s a continuum. If we intercept much earlier, we can prevent people from ever having those events.”
While several treatment guidelines — published by the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology — focus on prevention, many cardiologists say more needs to be done to identify and provide care earlier to people with risk of developing heart disease.
Heart experts widely agree that shifting focus to preventing plaque buildup is critical. Researchers estimate that if risk factors that cause plaque to accumulate are eliminated by 2050, the rate of death from heart disease could decrease by more than 80 percent, potentially saving 8.7 million lives worldwide annually, according to an article published in the Lancet, a peer-reviewed journal, earlier this year.
“Most of us want to live more than 10 years,” Best said. “We need to be starting to look at younger ages and looking more at a lifelong risk rather than shorter risks of 10 to 20 years.”
Because many of the cardiovascular risk assessment tools are designed for people with symptoms, catching atherosclerosis early would require new screening strategies and changes to risk definitions, researchers wrote in the Lancet article. They also called for greater investment in research and the development of novel treatments that would prevent disease onset or progression.
At Whole Heart Family Medicine, we are ALREADY using the more "novel" testing and treatments available. It is our passion and niche to help you beat the nation's leading cause of death - that does NOT have to be your trajectory. If you are over 40 and have not had an advanced work-up, please give us a call. There can be many hidden risk factors causing increased risk, things that don't cause any symptoms. This is why we are here and we want to help! You don't have to let your genetics have the last word.
Cardiovascular disease experts propose a new approach to treating heart disease, focusing on atherosclerosis prevention and early detection
