February marks heart month, which means it's the perfect time to bring attention to the fact that heart disease is a major problem in this country.

There are many risk factors that cause heart disease, and most of them centre around lifestyles -- what we eat, drink, smoke and exercise.

Heart disease can also be hereditary, which means those at risk need to pay closer attention to factors such as smoking, lack of exercise, being overweight or post menopausal, high cholesterol, high-fat diet, diabetes, high blood pressure, and gender.

Royal Gazette sports writer, Colin Zuill, suffered with high cholesterol for a while, a heart condition he contributes to years of a diet of hamburger and fries.

It appears that his regular jogging routine over the years extended the inevitable heart problem he was to encounter.

But in 1996, within months after his 50th birthday, heart disease caused him to experience "a rather tumultuous period'' of his life. As he tells it: "Unlike others, the only symptom I experienced was fatigue, which came after a casual stroll of only about 300 yards. This would force me to stop about three times.

"The original diagnosis was that my problem was (probably) stress related, but this proved to be otherwise -- after I was put on the drug prozac for a while,'' Mr. Zuill said.

"However, after a few months I ended up taking an extensive stress test at King Edward (Hospital) which revealed that the condition was more related to heart disease -- so off I went to Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston -- the suggestion from my local doctors calling for a coronary angiography.'' This procedure has the surgeon attempting to blow the arteries to the heart clear before doing any open heart surgery. If that failed further steps to correct the problem surgically was recommended.

"Doctors were fairly confident that the former procedure would be sufficient and as I was wheeled into the mammoth operating room, which was itself a harrowing experience. There was some satisfaction that whatever I was about to endure would be relatively uneventful.'' Mr. Zuill said he woke up later to discover that he had survived his bout with the surgeon's scalpel after having a quadruple bypass, which was a procedure they said would be taken at the same time if there was a problem.

"As far as the operation was concerned, recuperation was virtually straight forward other than a few weeks of utter discomfort in my upper legs, where arteries were taken and placed in the heart.'' And now Mr. Zuill admits that his many years of devouring tasty hamburgers and other delectable high cholesterol foods are now definitely a thing of the past. "Now I have a healthier diet with plenty of exercise.'' Pathologist Dr. Keith Cunningham, had a heart attack almost a year ago on March 31. Luckily, he was in his office at King Edward Hospital.

"I felt typical pain of angina, a sort of gripping pain that you feel when the blood supply to the heart is shut off. You feel it through the breast bone up to the throat and a little later it goes down the left arm,'' he said.

He added: "At the time I was sitting in my office at the hospital but I had been running around prior to that. I walked down to emergency and I told them I was having a heart attack.

"Doctors gave me a clot-dissolving enzyme and they had to get the artery reopened. They also gave me an echocardiogram to confirm that part of the muscle was not moving.

"On the basis of that, I was flown to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore where doctors did an angiogram -- a technique where they injected dye into the arteries to show exactly where the blockage or narrowing is.

"In my case there was only one point of narrowing. They shoved a little spring through the same tube and that expands the narrow part of the artery.'' Asked why he thinks he had a heart attack, Dr. Cunningham said: "I think it was more hereditary than anything else. It has changed me for the better.'' His follow up assessment showed there was minimal permanent muscle damage and the test he had ten months ago showed the part of the muscle that was not moving before was moving again.

"The worse risk is that people think the first symptoms of a heart attack is heartburn and they go soldiering on. I recommend when people have that feeling they should have it checked right away,'' he said.

Barbara Davis had just arrived in New York for a holiday in November 1994 when she experienced discomfort in her chest.

"I had a pain in my chest. It is almost hard to say how I felt because I felt so terrible. I had to have a test to see how much damage was done and then I had bi-pass surgery.

"It wasn't until after I had the bi-pass that I realised I had had a heart attack, during the operation I also had a stroke,'' Mrs. Davis said.

She admitted that her life hadn't changed much although she still has to take a lot of medications. "I am also suppose to be following a proper diet. I do try,'' Mrs. Davis added.

Director of Cardiac Care at King Edward Hospital, Dr. Shane Marshall said: "Our population has a high incidence of diabetes, high blood pressure, and lots of people smoking.

"The diet in general is a high-cholesterol-high-fat diet and all of those factors, when they are occurring in a population where heart disease runs in the families of many of us, contributes to the high incidence of heart disease on the Island.'' Dr. Marshall added that the way to prevent the problem is for people to be knowledgeable about what the risk factors are and to learn which pertain to them.

"For instance it is obvious if heart disease runs in your family and you are inactive and overweight, you are at risk. The more risk factors you can identify, the more important it is that the other risk factors are checked for,'' Dr. Marshall said.

BATTLE SCARS -- Royal Gazette sports writer Colin Zuill bears the scars from his battle with heart disease. After years of eating burgers and fries, Mr.

Zuill found himself state-side, facing a gruelling quadruple by-pass heart operation.