DAYTON–Every year we celebrate National Heart Month in February, and the President has signed it as official again this year.

Columbia County Health System (CCHS) is promoting celebrating the Healthy Heart with our "Keep the Beat Campaign." Bright red Keep the Beat shirts, with a heart around the CCHS Logo on the front and an EKG over a beating heart and Keep the Beat with CCHS logo on the back, are here, and we will be soon to them out so that employees can sport the color red EVERY Friday this month.

CCHS is also celebrating by sponsoring Dayton and Waitsburg "PAINT THE TOWN RED" Campaign. We are inviting businesses and offices to do their best creative work decorating their windows in RED. We plan on having citizens vote via our social media on the best windows for prizes.

On Thursday, February 23, CCHS will sponsor a Dayton Community Heart Month Event at the Senior Center from 2:00-4:00 with multiple CCHS departments, and our partners from our HRSA grant funded "Partners Improving Patient Health" program. We have Aging and Long-Term Care Dayton office, Columbia County Public Health, Elk Drug and more. The program emphasizes aspects of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and Congestive Heart Failure (CHF). This will be for anyone interested in heart disease. We'll have a short presentation on types of heart disease and then time to visit the various tables with your "Bingo Card for Prizes" which we will be giving away. ANYONE with concerns of heart disease, who knows someone interested in CVD or CHF, or just wants to come by, is very welcome.

The heart is an amazing organ. It has the electrical system inside to Keep the Beat with a path that electricity goes along that makes the top two chambers, the atria to beat, a pause, and then the two lower chambers, the ventricles, to beat. The electricity stimulates the heart muscle to contract which pushes the blood down the line. There are 4 valves in the heart between and after the chambers to keep blood headed one way only. It's also a double pump, the right-side atria and ventricles are the low-pressure side, blood from the body gets pushed into and through the lungs, then the left side is the more muscular high-pressure side that has to push blood around the whole body.

Heart disease still remains the number one killer in the U.S. and one out of every three of the 800,000 annual deaths are UNDER age 65. Consider that just small changes in our diet (like meatless Monday, or a few extra low-fat meals per month) and/or light exercise (a walk around the block a few days a week) can make some real difference.

Spend just a little time this month to "Keep the Beat" of that heart of yours.

Dawn Meicher, ARNP

Columbia County Health Systems