Given the way Americans have put on the pounds in recent years, you might think they were unaware of the link between excess weight and heart disease. But they’re not, as you can see from the chart here, which excerpts data from a poll fielded by Harris Interactive for The Wall Street Journal Online’s Health Industry Edition. Moreover, if unwise diet is driving up blood pressure and cholesterol levels, it’s not as though people don’t know where they stand. The poll found 83 percent of adults saying they’d had their blood pressure checked during the past year. And 58 percent reported having had their cholesterol checked in that period. Do people think medicine can bail them out of problems in these areas? Many don’t. Fewer than half (47 percent) think that drugs designed to reduce high blood pressure are “very effective”; 34 percent believe the same of drugs tailored to reduce levels of cholesterol.
