New type of heart disease identified and 1 in 3 adults are at risk

And welcome back this morning on Your Health, some important news from the American Heart Association. According to the latest research, one in three adults has three or more risk factors that contribute to cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, and or metabolic disorders. And the AHA is now defining it as a condition called CKM syndrome. And here to walk us through everything we need to know, NBC News medical contributor, Dr. Natalie Azar. Dr. Azar, always good to have you. I had not heard of this until now, CKM, what is that? Yeah, so it's important to remember that the conditions that make up CKM syndrome are not new. It stands for cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, and metabolic diseases or syndromes. And what's encompassed, Craig, in the metabolic is stuff that we have known increases the risk for heart disease for years. We're talking type two diabetes, obesity, things like that that fall under that sort of label. But what has happened here with the AHA in defining the syndrome is that they're really wanting to sort of reset the framework of how people think about cardiovascular disease risk, prevention, and management. And they've done so, they've made it sort of easy for us because they've stratified CKM into four stages. So let's talk about these stages so we know what to be aware of, these four stages. So stage zero is where we hope to all be. That means you have no cardiovascular or kidney or metabolic risk factors. And in this group, Craig, what you're doing is all the lifestyle things. Diet, exercise, no smoking, all of that kind of stuff. In stage one, however, you might already have some excess fat or some excess fat, especially in the belly area, or you might have prediabetes. We're also talking here about lifestyle interventions, losing 5% of your weight loss, for example. Now in stage two, we're starting to have those metabolic risk factors. High blood pressure, type two diabetes, maybe you have some kidney disease here. This is where, and this is why it's so important, this is where we can really intervene and we want to start intervening with medications. For example, Ozempic, Wigovi, different medications to prevent progression of the kidney disease. And then stage three, we have asymptomatic heart disease. That means you've already have established heart disease. Maybe you're also on a statin. And then stage four, where you actually have symptomatic heart disease with or without kidney failure. It's a lot and there's a lot in there and I really want to reinforce to people listening and also to providers like myself, this is actually a sort of guidance and a framework that we can all look and say, where do I fit along here? Where do my patients fit along here? The point is to not progress. The point is to regress. That if you're in stage three or two or one, you want to go backwards, not forward. And I understand there's also this risk calculator now that's also being unveiled as well. And this is a new component. So the old risk calculator was used to predict a 10-year probability of a heart attack or stroke in people between the ages of 40 and 75. Now the risk calculator is gonna start for people at age 30. It's gonna predict a 10-year and a 30-year probability for having either a heart attack, a stroke, or congestive heart failure. And the best thing about the new calculator, Craig, is that it is going to incorporate these new kidney numbers, diabetes numbers, and also what we refer to as the social determinants of health, right? Because think about people who don't have access to a gym or don't have access to good nutrition. And they really stress the collaboration amongst specialists and sort of this more coordinated care for people. So again, not a new disease, just a different way to think about cardiovascular disease in the syndrome of all these factors that actually interplay with one another. Dr. Azar, thank you. It was a lot. I just learned a lot too. So thank you, thank you very much.