A Degree a Day Keeps the Doctor Away
The relation between higher education and heart disease
You might be a little confused when reading this title. You might be asking yourself what does a degree have to do with being a doctor? The relationship between your heart health and education is one that no one seems to pay attention to. Without an explanation and supporting data, you might be confused as to what we are talking about. If the factors of a healthy heart have to do with nutrition and exercise, how does that correlate to if you attained a college degree? The answer isn’t that simple, but it can be explained. But, I, Valentina Sanchez and my peer,Sebastian Zambrano, will explain it to you using data and expert knowledge from Doctor Juan Pablo Zambrano.
As seen in the chart above, there has always been a steady correlation between heart disease and education. With for the most part one rising while the other is dropping. With the exception of 2019, however this is for the most part due to the start of the covid-19 pandemic. When we first saw this data we were intrigued and were surprised to find a few articles which had linked the two before. However an explanation as to why was scarce. So we decided to talk to an expert, Doctor Juan Zambrano.
After talking with Dr. Juan Zambrano, head of cardiology at Jackson Memorial Hospital, we learned a lot more about what goes on when a doctor treats a patient for heart problems. Dr. Zambrano explained to us the process that each patient undergoes in order to analyze what exactly is going on with the person’s heart. Half of the time, the answer isn’t always in the organ itself, but rather from what the patient is going through. Dr. Zambrano taught us that when he has a patient, the first thing he asks is what problems they are having with their heart. After he takes note of the patient’s symptoms, he automatically changes his discourse from doctor to friend. He wants the patient to open up about their life and see if any stress or anxiety that they might be having at home or at work is being the cause for their heart problems. He tells us that people don’t realize how connected everything is and that problems at work can lead to high levels of stress, therefore affecting the heart. Most of the time, he notices that his patients aren’t even aware that they are having some sort of anxiety and Dr. Zambrano tries teaching them how to control it in a much safer manner. He also really puts importance on making the patients aware of when exactly these flare up happen and how identify the symptoms quickly.
When asked about the correlation, Juan Zambrano said it made sense. First off, for the most part having an advanced education usually means you can land a better paying job. More money can lead to less stress as well as better eating decision. These two aspects are major when talking about cardiovascular health.
Now knowing this information Sebastian and I wanted to see how true this was for Florida. So we separated data into counties and began to see the relation between degree attainment in those counties and heart disease.
When the data was looked at, it was found that for the most part this correlation was true. For the most part, areas with higher degree attainment had lower heart disease rates and vice versa.
This data is interesting to look at, but what can we do with it? Well, first we have to understand that there are obvious data points that have to be looked along side this, such as mean age of the population for each county as well as other external factors. But, this data could be useful to find out where a strong education system is lacking and has to be put in place. Because who knows, colleges might just be the new hospitals when it comes to preventative care.
