But even heart specialists who are supposed to preach this advice to every patient, every day, are failing to take their own medicine, Dr. Lynn Smaha, president of the American Heart Association, says. He took his fellow heart specialists to task on Sunday for their bad habits and for their failure to stress to patients that heart disease, in many instances, is self-inflicted.
Heart disease is by far the biggest killer in the United States and other industrialized countries.
As diets in developing countries become richer, they too are seeing death rates from heart disease rise. Nearly 18 percent are obese and more than half are overweight. The bad news is, the doctors who are supposed to be advising people on their health habits are often just as bad. It was easy to prove Smaha was right. A quick check around the outside of the conference center turned up several cardiologists skulking with cigarettes.