New program aimed to help BC heart patients
Posted August 9, 2011 12:18 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The BC government hopes an expanded heart program will encourage more people to get treatment for heart disease and stroke a little closer to home. Each year 74,000 people die from heart disease.
People who have the illness or have suffered a heart attack can sign up for Happy Hearts, a free personalized exercise, diet and counselling plan now being offered at the Downtown Vancouver YMCA and the Kensington and Dunbar Community Centres.
Clad in a workout shirt and shorts, Health Minister Mike de Jong revved up his heart rate on an elliptical machine and pumped some iron, as part of the roll-out.
He says they hope to expand the program and they want to save a lot more health care dollars.
“The amount we save from even more person not having a heart attack, I mean, the treatment involved there is measured in the hundreds of thousands, sometimes in the millions of dollars.”
The minister explains patients can learn more online or talk to their doctor to sign-up.
Former Langley school district assistant superintendent Alex Holm is one of Happy Hearts’ success stories. He says his high-stress, sedentary position combined with a love of doughnuts led to breathing problems and trouble sleeping 13 years ago.
“My rule was, if I couldn’t sleep for 48 hours, I would get up during the night, drive myself to Langley Memorial Hospital and get what I’m afraid I called ‘a hit of oxygen,'” he says. He says he never told his wife of his problem and was eventually diagnosed with heart disease.
Faced with a short to mid-life span, Holm signed up for Happy Hearts and underwent a radical diet and exercise change.
Holm says he’s now enjoying time with his grandchildren and eating much better.
“When I’m ready to have that Twinkie, I think about the knowledge that I have learned. I know how long on one of these machines it will take me to work off that Twinkie and maybe, just maybe, I pass by.”
