Cardiac Rehabilitation
Cardiac rehabilitation, also called cardiac rehab, is a medically supervised program for people who have had a heart attack, heart failure, heart valve surgery, coronary artery bypass grafting, or percutaneous coronary intervention. Cardiac rehab involves adopting heart-healthy lifestyle changes to address risk factors for cardiovascular disease.
To help you adopt lifestyle changes, this program includes exercise training, education on heart-healthy living, and counseling to reduce stress, helping you return to an active life. Cardiac rehab can improve your health and quality of life, reduce the need for medicines to treat heart or chest pain, decrease the chance you will go back to a hospital or emergency room for a heart problem, prevent future heart problems, and even help you live longer.
Your therapy team will work with you to tailor a program that fits your life and needs as the goal of South County’s program is to help you with your goals.
Cardiac Rehab Involves:
- Medically supervised exercise counseling and training: You’ll learn how to get your body moving, your heart pumping, and your cardiovascular system working in order to promote heart health. Includes programming focused on cardiovascular training, strength and balance with your goals in mind.
- Education for heart-healthy living: A key element of cardiac rehab, learn how to manage your risk factors, choose good nutrition, quit smoking, self-manage diabetes, and other heart-healthy lifestyle changes.
- Counseling to reduce stress: Identify and tackle everyday sources of stress that can affect your heart.
Common benefits of cardiac rehabilitation include increased confidence and energy, optimizing medical management, and returning to previous activity levels.
Pulmonary Rehabilitation
Pulmonary rehabilitation is a program designed for people who have chronic lung disease. Its primary goal is to enable people to achieve and maintain their maximum level of independence and function.
Although most pulmonary rehabilitation programs focus on people who have Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), people with other types of lung disease may benefit as well. People in all age groups can benefit.
South County Health’s personalized pulmonary rehabilitation program can help improve your quality of life by reducing shortness of breath, increasing exercise tolerance and fitness, and promoting a sense of well-being.
Pulmonary Rehabilitation Involves:
- Exercise to help your lungs and heart work better
- Breathing Techniques to control shortness of breath with activity
- Nutrition to optimize body weight
- Relaxation training and counseling
- Emotional and group support to meet other people living with COPD or other lung conditions and share questions/feelings
- Learning more about medications and improving inhaler use
- Strategies for living better with COPD
Most people who complete a pulmonary rehab program feel healthier and more empowered. They report feeling less short of breath, more energetic, and more in control of their lung condition. People who keep up their exercise level can keep their benefits lasting for years.
Rehab may also help prevent you from going to the hospital due to COPD flare-ups or “exacerbations.” Even people with advanced lung disease can benefit from pulmonary rehab.
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