thehonestdoctor.com

No, I’m not talking about an ex-girlfriend.  

Heart disease is the leading killer of Americans and the ultimate heartbreaker.  If you combine all the deaths caused by the number 4 through 10 leading causes of death in this country, the total is still less than heart disease alone.  In your quest to improve your life odds, anything you can do to lower your risk for heart disease is worth your while, since it’s by far the most likely reason you’ll die.

Heart attacks (the fancy doctor term is myocardial infarction) are responsible for many of the deaths in this general category of heart disease.  A heart attack is usually caused when one of the coronary arteries becomes blocked, which interrupts the supply of blood flow carrying necessary oxygen and nutrients to your heart’s muscle.  What happens is cholesterol-filled narrowed areas called “plaques” form within the inside linings of your arteries in a process called atherosclerosis.  These plaques are soft, fragile, almost as if filled with jelly.  Occasionally, the top will shear off one of these plaques, causing a blood clot to suddenly form at the site, occluding the artery and abruptly shutting off blood flow downstream.  None of your body’s tissues can live for long without oxygen, and this is especially true of your heart muscle since it’s constantly working, pumping blood day and night. 

When this process occurs in the coronary arteries it results in a heart attack; when it happens in the arteries supplying oxygen to your brain, it causes a stroke (which is number 3 on our list of things that kill us by the way).  This is why many of the things you can do to lower your risk of heart attack also reduce your risk for stroke.  So you’re usually going to be lowering your risk for the number 1 and number 3 leading killers in the U.S. simultaneously.  Talk about bang for your buck!

Most of the remaining deaths within the category of ‘heart disease’ are also caused by heart attacks, but indirectly.  When a heart attack occurs, heart muscle dies.  When enough damage occurs, the heart is weakened, and doesn’t pump as vigorously as it should.  This is called congestive heart failure, which is a major cause of death in the category of heart disease.  Most of the rest of the deaths in this category are due to abnormal heart rhythms, the most lethal of which are much more likely to occur after the heart has been damaged by a heart attack.

Now that you have a better understanding of the underlying physiology of what causes a heart attack, it becomes easier to understand what steps you can take to lower your risk.  You want to do anything you can to interrupt the process described above.  You want to prevent those plaques from forming in the first place, and you want to lower your risk for having them rupture and form the clots that cause heart attacks and strokes.

There are many factors that contribute to your risk of developing these atherosclerotic plaques and thus heart attacks and strokes.  There are also many steps you can take that will dramatically modify your odds for developing heart disease and thus your chances of living a long healthy life.  I’ve already discussed one of the most important steps you can take here, and one supplement that will probably reduce your risk for heart disease here.  There will be much more to come in future posts.