Heart Health: a Beginner's Guide to Cardiovascular Disease

Closed
Course
en
English
12 h
This content is rated 4.5 out of 5
Source
  • From www.futurelearn.com
Conditions
  • Free Access
  • Fee-based Certificate
More info
  • 4 Sequences
  • Introductive Level
  • Starts on September 8, 2019
  • Ends on October 12, 2019

Course details

Syllabus

Your heart beats around 100,000 times a day, pumping blood around your body to deliver oxygen and nutrients, while taking away waste products. When your heart is unhealthy, it can’t perform this vital task so effectively. This can cause significant health problems – heart disease is one of the biggest killers in the UK and an estimated 17 million people die of cardiovascular disease each year worldwide. Heart disease is something that touches many lives, but can be difficult to understand. An introduction to heart health This four-week course aims to improve your knowledge of how the heart works, the effects of heart disease and what you can do to avoid it. We’ll explore the anatomy of the heart, explaining how the circulatory system works and what it does. We’ll then introduce some of the most common cardiovascular diseases, such as heart attacks, strokes, high blood pressure (hypertension) and heart failure. We’ll help you understand their effects on the body, why they happen and what can be done to prevent them. We’ll also highlight some wonderful resources from the British Heart Foundation including up to date statistics, patient leaflets and videos describing many of the tests that cardiac patients undergo. In the final week, we’ll examine the risk factors for heart disease and what you can do keep your heart healthy. Hands-on exercises to understand your own heart Each week you’ll have the opportunity to get hands on and do a practical activity, helping you to apply the knowledge you’ll gain on the course, to better understand your own heart. You can find out more about these activities in Natasha Barrett’s post for the FutureLearn blog: “A heart in your hands.”

Prerequisite

None

Instructors

  • Natasha Barrett

Editor

The University of Reading was founded in 1892 during a period of rapid development in the city of Reading, England. This is one of the Red Brick University.

 

Platform

FutureLearn is a massive open online course (MOOC) learning platform founded in December 2012.

It is a company launched and wholly owned by The Open University in Milton Keynes, England. It is the first UK-led massive open online course learning platform, and as of March 2015 included 54 UK and international University partners and unlike similar platforms includes four non-university partners: the British Museum, the British Council, the British Library and the National Film and Television School.

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