What Is Heart Month?
Heart Month is a campaign that runs throughout the whole of February made to raise awareness of cardiovascular diseases and promote Healthy lifestyle habits like nutritious diets and exercise.
Organisations including the British Heart Foundation (BHF) who primarily run this campaign also use this to emphasize how important learning CPR is and how quick and easy it is to learn.
This month is also used as a way to fundraise for charity's like the British Heart Foundation and Heart Research UK by doing things like sponsored activity's.
Why Its Important
Currently In the UK, on average someone dies of cardiovascular disease every 3 minutes.
Many people have been affected by heart diseases both directly and indirectly, whether it was themselves affected or a loved one. This is why raising awareness and enabling research is so important for trying to lower the risk and develop treatments.
What Products are used on the heart?
Defibrillators
A Defibrillator is used during a cardiac arrest to restart the heart by delivering a high-energy electric shock.
AEDs (Automatic External Defibrillators) are a type of defib which has been specifically designed so that they are easy for a member of public to use without training. You will commonly spot these in public spaces, offices and schools.
Blood Pressure Monitors
Blood Pressure Monitors are a common way to check how efficient the heart is and diagnose problems.
They come in many forms including ABPM (Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitors) which record blood pressure over 24 hours, Digital Blood pressure monitors which are an easy to use automatic way to get a quick blood pressure reading and sphygmomanometers which are manually pumped monitors used by medical professionals due to their highly accurate readings.
Stethoscope
Stethoscopes can be used for listening to heart sounds to diagnose various cardiovascular conditions by detecting murmurs, arrhythmias and valve malfunctions.
Stethoscopes are also used in conjunction with a sphygmomanometer to detect Korotkoff sounds for measuring systolic and diastolic pressure.
How You Can Help
There are many ways you can help with heart month, the easiest way being just to spread awareness however you can, whether you make a social media post or just tell your friends to get checked.
Another great way to help is to do a fundraiser for one of the many heart charity's, not only does this raise money for them but also brings attention to heart month at the same time.
To learn more about Heart month click the link below to go to the British heart foundations website.