Healthy Heart Project offers free screenings at 9 Henry Ford Health locations

Free health screenings available at Healthy Heart Project

You might be walking around with high blood pressure or have a heart that's off beat and you don't know it.

FOX 2 - In April we have a little unofficial holiday around here. It's the Healthy Heart Project including free heart screenings.

The backstory:

You might be walking around with high blood pressure or have a heart that's off beat and you don't know it.  That's why our Healthy Heart Project that offers free screenings, is so important and revealing.

Let's go behind the curtain. The EKG, or electrocardiogram, is one of the most valuable screenings - it is free there, but it's priceless.

"Virtually everyone needs an electrocardiogram," said Dr. Shukri David.

A few electrodes, some technology and about 5 minutes later, doctors can read a whole story about your heart health.

"It can tell you if you've had a heart attack or not," said Shukri. "It can tell you about valvular heart disease whether or not you have an enlarged atrium due to a valvular abnormality. It can tell you if you have a thickened heart muscle due to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. It is something you see in younger people that may be at risk for sudden cardiac death."

Dr. David is a Henry Ford Health cardiologist who explains those electrodes can translate the heart's rhythm into a graph.

"If you have high blood pressure, diabetes, kidney problems, high cholesterol, if you are a smoker, overweight," he said. "All of those risk factors matter and an electrocardiogram can be very helpful."

Even if you say I don't have risk factors — I feel fine, there are many conditions that are silent unless you get screened — like AFib.

Here's the info you need: It's happening at 7 a.m. Saturday April 18th, and there are nine Henry Ford Health locations taking part.

Open this link for the nine locations.