Help Patients Connect With In-Depth Resources on Heart Health, Sleep

Family physicians now can send their patients to a wealth of online information on maintaining a healthy heart, learning to live with heart disease and achieving healthy sleep habits thanks to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

Your Guide To A Healthy Heart discusses general risk factors, personal risk levels, effects of heart disease and taking charge of heart health. The resource also includes sections on what patients need to know about heart disease, risk estimation charts, smoking cessation, eating healthier and executing a successful exercise program.

A related guide, Your Guide to Living Well With Heart Disease, starts at the ground floor, defining terms and discussing testing and treatment, how to control risk factors, and how to get help achieving health goals. The guide also includes medication information, advice on maintaining exercise levels, and a chapter on recovering from a heart attack or surgical procedure.

Finally, Your Guide To Healthy Sleep describes how and why humans sleep, gives advice for getting adequate sleep, and presents tips for adjusting to jet lag and shifting work schedules. The text also provides information on adequate sleep levels, factors that disrupt sleep patterns, snoring and common sleep disorders.

The guides may be downloaded as PDFs or purchased as hard copies for $3.50 or $4 each by calling (301) 592-8573 or (240) 629-3255. An older guide, Your Guide To Lowering Cholesterol with Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes, also is available.