The news of celebrated newsman and Meet the Press moderator Tim Russert's sudden passing last Friday took many people by surprise. He was only 58 years old; even his own father, who became the basis for Tim's last book, has outlived him.
By Monday morning, the stories about this prominent and beloved man's life were still circulating, and talk about how or why he died so young started brewing stronger. People began asking about heart attack avoidance. Newsweek magazine featured a story about the "science of sudden cardiac arrest".
I heard Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC's chief medical editor, answer general questions about Tim's previously diagnosed health problem: coronary artery disease. He was doing everything right to manage his disease, which included occasional stress tests to check out his heart (the last of which he passed on April 29), medication, daily exercise (he had used a treadmill the morning he died), and watching his diet. His blood pressure and cholesterol were "well-controlled." So what went wrong?
With the buzz about terrorist attacks and cancer running routinely
in the media, we often forget that heart disease is the number one
killer for both men and women.
That's right: we're all more likely to
have a heart attack than be struck by a missile or get cancer.
We do
have an impressive array of technology, tests, and drugs today to help
detect, treat, manage, and combat heart disease. But for some, as was
the case for Tim, it's too late by the time the "big one" hits.
Sudden cardiac arrest accounts for 310,000 deaths in America every
year, or 850 a day--more than those caused by breast cancer, lung
cancer, stroke, and AIDS combined. According to his own personal
physician, his particular heart disease resulted in hardening of his
coronary arteries. A fresh clot ruptured in Tim's left anterior
descending coronary artery, causing the fatal heart attack. The autopsy
also revealed that he had an enlarged heart.
The risk factors for heart disease are well-documented. They include
high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, being overweight, a
sedentary lifestyle, and tobacco abuse. Russert apparently had these
risk factors under control (I don't believe he was a smoker). But he
did have a very busy, over-scheduled career that had him juggling a
stressful load of responsibilities. He may not have viewed his life as
"stressful" because he loved what he did so much, but his body no doubt
must have been crying out for a respite. Sometimes you'd see him
fervently commentating into the wee hours of the night during the peak
of a political campaign or election, only to see him again on
television a few hours later that next morning. As if he never went to
bed.
He was indeed a passionate man, dedicated to his thriving career as
well as his family. He wasn't the type to take an extended time-out
because he couldn't stand being far from his job--even if he sacrificed
sleep. I hear that he flew back from Rome early, where he'd been
celebrating his son's recent graduation from college, because he wanted
to prepare for Sunday's show. He'd gotten just two hours of sleep on
the plane before hitting the ground running again at work.
When you've already got coronary artery disease you have to consider
more than the obvious risk factors. You have to think about what your
body--not necessarily you--need. Otherwise, you could be setting yourself
up for an unexpected, asymptomatic, and untimely health problem.
For Tim, coronary artery disease was probably his single biggest
risk factor for having a fatal heart attack. Going on little sleep just
compounds that--and other--problems. In fact, sleep plays directly into
all of the chief risk factors for heart disease. Dr. Snynerman
underscored this during her interview: "We are a sleep-deprived nation...
The less sleep you get, you're at an increased risk for heart disease."
This is not to say that Tim's untimely death was caused by
sleep-deprivation or could have been avoided had he given his body
proper rest. But it's worth noting that adequate sleep can lower your
risk for heart disease and lower some of the risk factors, such as
diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure. In addition, sleep takes
the edge out of our stressful lives and helps us restore our bodies for
the next busy day.
With all this in mind, I leave you with a new list of things to do to avoid a heart attack.
- get your cholesterol and blood pressure checked and under control if high
While it's true that we get to "rest in peace" after our time on
earth has ended, we need to rest up for a third of that lifespan in
order to make it a long one. May Tim's death be a reminder for us all
to take sleep to heart.
This post is cross-posted at Dr. Breus's blog, The Insomnia Blog.