Review your own heart health in just a few minutes
Heart Failure Specialist
CentraCare Heart & Vascular Center
My Life Check
Take the American Heart Association’s online tool now. After answering a few questions, you can understand your current heart health and identify steps to help you improve your quality of life.
Participating in National Wear Red Day. Attending a local heart month event. Or learning CPR. There is a lot you can do to educate yourself and show support during Heart Month.
But February also is an opportunity to check and monitor how your own heart is doing. Fortunately, the American Heart Association has an online tool that allows you to do so in just a few minutes.
The My Life Check is a tool that asks you a series of questions that allows you to measure how you are doing for each of Life’s Simple 7. These are:
- Managing your blood pressure
- Controlling cholesterol
- Reducing your blood sugar
- Getting active
- Eating better
- Losing weight
- Quitting smoking
As part of this questionnaire, you will be asked questions about your blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar levels. If you know this information, you can enter it to get a better idea where you stand in these categories. But even if you don't know this information, you can still complete the survey.
Once you complete it, My Life Check will help you identify what areas of Life’s Simple 7 you are doing well in and also may identify some areas where you could use some assistance.
If the questionnaire identifies a possible problem, it will suggest that you follow up with a health care professional. If you need to make an appointment with your CentraCare provider, you can contact them for more assistance using MyChart.
If you don’t have a primary care provider, you can view our online list of those who are currently accepting new patients.
Heart Disease Facts
- In America, heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women.
- It’s estimated that heart disease is responsible for one in every four deaths in this country.
- Forty-seven percent of cardiac deaths occur outside of a hospital, suggesting that many lives could be saved if people learned the warning signs of a heart attack and knew to call 9-1-1 when someone was showing these symptoms. Someone could be having a heart attack if he or she has:
- Chest pain or discomfort
- Upper body pain or discomfort in the arms, back, neck, jaw or upper stomach
- Shortness of breath
- Nausea, lightheadedness or cold sweats