American Heart Association Promoting Cardiovascular Health, CPR Knowledge

With Feb. 2 being National Wear Red Day, the American Heart Association is promoting healthy living practices to support your cardiovascular health.

Joining the News 9 team at the Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages Porch is Mark Fried with the American Heart Association.

National Wear Red Day helps to raise awareness for those with heart disease, and the AMA is working to promote practices to better protect your own health.

Mark Fried said heart disease is the number one cause of death in the world, with strokes being the third-most common cause of death, meaning it is important to take care of your own heart.

"When you look at those... it's very obvious that we have an opportunity to take control for ourselves," Fried said. "So understanding who we are, what our numbers are, what our blood pressure is, what our cholesterol numbers are, our A1C, all those things that to help lead us to a healthier life."

Fried said even less-than-noticeable things our body does can indicate whether our hearts are healthy.

"How our blood flows, the strength of our heart, whether there is some hindrance on our blood being able to get through our body," Fried said. "Being able to address it and get the treatment, that's necessary."

One of the American Heart Association's large initiatives is increasing the number of CPR-certified people.

"Our desire is to become a nation of lifesavers," Fried said. "That's our new initiative. Right now, there's 350,000 Americans that will suffer heart attack here this year, and 90% of those will not survive."

Freid said the best thing that we can do is to become familiar with CPR so that we can intervene in a crisis situation and bridge that gap between when there is an emergency and when the EMTs are able to arrive.