World Heart Day, 29 September 2024 - Theme, History and Importance

World Heart day is an important annual event, witnessed every year on 29th September. The day is celebrated by organizing various activities and awareness events globally to raise awareness about the heart disease and its preventive measures to manage the cardiovascular diseases. 

The events mainly focuses on educating people about the sign and symptoms of cardiovascular disease to avoid any further complications and encouraging peoples to inculcate healthy lifestyle to prevent and control any heart related ailments.

Importance of World Heart Day

Heart is one of the vital organs of human body, malfunctioning of it may lead to fatality, so it is very essential for everyone to take care of heart health. Due to lack of awareness about the cardiovascular health and certain lifestyle habits, cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) is one of the leading reason for mortality worldwide. Every year, around 1.7 crores people die due to cardiovascular disease, accounting approx 31% of all global mortality.

Heart attack, Stroke and coronary heart disease are one of the most common reason of deaths due to cardiovascular disorders. These heart disorders accounts for nearly 85% of total deaths due to cardiovascular ailments. World Heart day plays a vital role in creating awareness to educate people across the world to understand the importance of heart health and bringing other organization together to actively participate in organizing various events to create awareness.

World Heart Day Theme 2024

This year, 2024, the World Heart Day theme is “Use Heart for Action”. This theme highlights a shift from awareness to empowering with a clear purpose and goal. There is also the two-way nature of action: efforts to influence policies and advocate for behaviour change and physical activity. It reflects the requirement for sustained efforts and collaboration.

Year by year, the themes for World Heart Day are:

• World Heart Day 2023 Theme: Use Heart, Know Heart
• World Heart Day 2022 Theme: Use Heart for Every Heart
• World Heart Day 2021 Theme: Use Heart to Connect
• World Heart Day 2020 Theme: Use Heart to Beat CVD
• World Heart Day 2019 Theme: Be a Heart Hero

The theme for World Heart Day 2024 is "USE HEART FOR ACTION." This theme encourages individuals to take care of their hearts and urges everyone to prioritize cardiovascular health.

Awareness and support for cardiovascular disease management in different countries varies, poor and developing countries doesn't have adequate access to heart care awareness and facilities, causing 75% of all cardiovascular death in these countries, which can be improved by organizing and participating awareness program globally to help the humankind.

Everyone can contribute for the healthy nature in their own way to fight air pollution, which accounts for 25% of all cardiovascular death and around 70 lakhs death every year globally.

Stress and poor lifestyle have been the prominent risk factors of heart attack, which can be dealt with improving our lifestyle by inculcating good habits like exercise, mediation, and getting quality sleep.

History of World Heart Day

The idea of having heart day globally was introduced by the Antoni Baie de Luna, former president of the World Health Federation, based on his ideas along with the collaboration of World Health Organization, World Heart Day was established in 1999.

The world witnessed the first official World Heart Day celebration on September 24, 2000. Till 2011, the day continued its mission of creating awareness about the management of cardiovascular disease on the very last Sunday of September. In 2012, with the idea to curb the global mortality due to non-communicable diseases by 25 percent by 2025, global leaders came together and urges to the world to actively participate for this cause and 29 September, was marked as global World Heart Day. More than 90 countries participates on this day to organize awareness campaigns to raise awareness and educate people about the cardiovascular health.

Preventive Measures to Keep Heart Healthy

• Keeping body mass index under control (BMI), BMI Ranges - Underweight = <18.5, Normal weight = 18.5 – 24.9, Overweight = 25 – 29.9, Obesity = 30 or greater
• Keeping an eye on high blood pressure (hypertension) and high level of cholesterol (Hyperlipidemia) 
• Limiting the consumption of excess sodium - risk of high blood pressure (hypertension)
• Understanding the early signs & symptoms and taking appropriate action to avoid any complications
• Avoiding sedentary lifestyle, opting for active lifestyle by indulging in physical activities
• Monitoring heart health through consultation and awareness programs
• Eating healthy and balanced diets, avoiding trans fat and junk foods
• Avoid smoking & alcohol consumption
• Learn to manage the stress & get quality sleep

Exercises for Cardiovascular Health

Cardiovascular health termed as the health of blood vessels and the heart, cardiovascular diseases are a group of diseases of the heart and blood vessels.

Being physically fit is one of the key to keep cardiovascular disease like coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, peripheral arterial disease, rheumatic heart disease, congenital heart disease, deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, heart attacks and strokes etc under control and managed. It helps to tackle the risk factors of cardiovascular diseases like high cholesterol (hypercholesterolemia), diabetes mellitus, being overweight or obese, family history of CVD, smoking, alcohol intake and more.

Exercise helps strengthen the heart muscles, keeping BMI under control, reducing the risk of artery damage due to high cholesterol, high blood sugar and high blood pressure, avoiding the occurrence of Heart stroke.

Different type of exercises have different effects in cardiovascular diseases (CVDs).

Aerobic Exercise

Aerobic exercises like Brisk walking, running, swimming, cycling, playing tennis and jumping rope, improves circulation, which lowers high blood pressure and heart rate. It helps in cardiac output by improving the heart pumping. It also helps in managing type 2 diabetes.

Recommended: At least 30 mins/day for 5 days a week

Resistance Training 

Resistance training helps in the case of obesity, people with big belly fat. Resistance training helps lower LDL (bad) cholesterol and improves the HDL (good) cholesterol.

Working out with free weights like hand weights, dumbbells or barbells, weight machines, push-ups, squats and chin-ups are the good options for the resistance training.

Recommended: At least 2 non-consecutive days per week

Stretching, Flexibility and Balance

Flexibility workouts, such as stretching does not directly contribute to resolve cardiovascular conditions, but it helps to be flexible and free from joint pain, cramping and other muscular issues. Moreover being flexible is an important part to carry out the aerobic exercise and resistance training.

Recommended: Every day ,before and after other exercises

Department of Cardiology