Article

Keep Your Heart Happy

Your heart is one great muscle. Think of it as a car engine. A car needs regular checkups and it needs gas and oil. If you put in bad gas or forget the oil, your car does not run well. Sometimes, even, it cannot be fixed. The same can happen to your heart.

Diabetes or high blood pressure can harm your heart. If you have diabetes and high blood pressure, you need to take special care to keep them under control. And it is possible that you can have either condition and not know it. Lab testing is the only possible way to diagnose some diseases.

As a Gateway Health Plan® (Gateway) member, your insurance provides a doctor checkup for you at least once every year – and it does not cost you anything.

Family advice is great, but home remedies cannot lower blood pressure or get rid of diabetes. The Healthy Returns Diabetes Program lets you contact the people who can answer any questions you have about diabetes. Even if you have just a “touch of sugar,” call the nurses at 1-866-366-9415 to learn more about what you can do to manage that condition.

The Help Your Heart Program is for Gateway members who have had heart failure, a heart attack or heart surgery. Even if the problem cannot be fixed, you may be able to keep it from getting worse. Call the Help Your Heart Cardiac Program at 1-800-642-3550, Option 3 (TTY 1-800-654-5988).

We invite everyone to call about these two programs. It has been shown that African Americans and Hispanics are at a higher risk for developing these conditions and once they occur, they are harder to control.

Let us know that you read this item in the newsletter and you would like us to help you … Keep Your Heart Happy.