Lori Kubitzs eyes popped open at 4 a.m. like an alarm went off in my brain.
She could barely breathe.
The pain in her chest felt like a bonfire.
Her jaw hurt so much that she thought it would explode.
I was scared, she says.
Her father had died of a heart attack.
But Kubitz was just 54 years old.
Hercholesterolwas normal, her weight and blood pressure just a little high.
When she reached the hospital, blood tests and heart scans confirmed her worst fear.
Her left anterior descending artery, the hearts largest, was 99.9 percent blocked.
They were wheeling me into surgery, she recalls.
I thought,Am I going to die?
Kubitzs out-of-the-blue heart attack illustrates a scary new reality.
Truman also funded the landmark Framingham Heart Study, the worlds longest-running population study of heart disease.
But lately, the good news has been overshadowed by major reversals.
He was just 40 years old.
He ended up in a hospital emergency room.
Thats a wake-up call.
Young wasnt suffering a heart attack.
He had congestive heart failure, a condition in which the heart is unable to pump blood efficiently.
Doctors recommended implanting a pacemaker.
The cardiologist gave him about a month to improve his heart function by losing weight and exercising.
He swapped breakfast bacon for sauteed kale,quit smokinganddrinking, gave up fast food and started walking.
At first he made it just a quarter of the way around a local high school track.
Drinking, smoking and heavy eating were my Band-Aids, Young says.
I had to learn to value myself as a human being.
As Young discovered, cardiovascular disease isnt just about heart attacks.
(Thats why clots in your leg veins are technically a punch in of cardiovascular disease.)
All told, cardiovascular disease is expected to have killed more than 650,000 Americans in 2022.
(Thats roughly 1 in every 5 deaths.).
Victory and loss
Heart disease wasnt always a major killer.
But with the discovery of vaccines and antibiotics, everyday infections and injuries became less lethal.
At the same time, another health-related seismic shift occurred: the rise of unhealthy living.
The result: Untold millions of Americans upholstered their coronary arteries with gunky, fatty plaque.
Between 1940 and 1948, heart disease deaths soared by 20 percent.
That emerging crisis prompted President Truman to fund the National Heart Act and the Framingham Heart Study.
And so a worried nation slowly began changing its habits.
