Heart disease- it's your fault?

Heart disease- it’s your fault?

Heart Disease is not a single disease, but a range of disorders of the heart. Heart diseases kill more people in developed nations than any other disease. They can arise from congenital defects, infection, narrowing of the coronary arteries, high blood pressure (hypertension), or disturbances of heart rhythm.

The most common cause of coronary heart disease is a narrowing of the coronary arteries that feed the heart. Like all other muscles, the heart needs a constant supply of oxygen and nutrients, which are carried to it in the blood in the coronary arteries. When these arteries become narrowed or clogged by cholesterol and fat deposits (atheroclerosis) and can no longer supply sufficient blood to the heart, the result is coronary heart disease (CHD). Other things, apart from fat and cholesterol, can cause this, narrowing of the arteries. Damage to the heart or valves due to a congenital defect, inflammation and damage associated with various viral, bacterial, fugal, rickettsial or parasitic diseases, Rheumatic fever or syphilis, and genetic or autoimmune disorders in which cellular proteins in the heart muscles are deranged or which disrupt enzymes affecting cardiac function are also to blame in some cases. Symptoms of CHD include breathlessness, chest pains known as angina and eventually, heart attack or a stroke, which occur if the blood supply to a portion of the heart is completely cut off by total blockage of the artery. This is usually due to sudden closure from a blood clot forming which is too large to pass through the narrowed artery.

There is no way of preventing or predicting causes such as damage from viral infections or other diseases other than having these diseases treated as soon possible. Congenital defects and genetic disorders are also causes that are out of our own control and in this modern day there is, of yet, no sure fire cure. Hormone replacement therapy and new drug treatments like anti-clotting agents can be used to help ease symptoms and lengthen life expectancy of such patients. However you could almost say that heart disease can be “self inflicted” as the main, most common cause of heart disease – Atheroclerosis – can be controlled and prevented to a high degree just by making slight changes to your lifestyle.

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Cholesterol is a waxy, fat-like substance that occurs naturally in all parts of the body. Your body needs it to function normally, it is present in cell walls and membranes and is needed to produce many hormones, vitamin D, and bile acids that help digest fat. You only need a very small amount to meet these needs, in fact, your body makes enough on its own so if you take in to much in your diet, the excess is deposited in the arteries, causing heart disease, so the higher the blood cholesterol level the greater the risk of developing CHD. There are many different factors that affect cholesterol and LDL (‘bad’) cholesterol levels. It is not only affected by what you eat but how quickly your body makes LDL cholesterol and disposes of it. Some of these factors are within our control and some most definitely are not, so is heart disease your fault?

Factors which we can control, to help us reduce our risks of heart disease are:

What we eat
Weight
Physical activity/exercise
Alcohol and smoking
Stress

Factors that are out of our control, but can have just a big affect are:

Heredity
Age
Gender

There are two main nutrients in food that make your LDL cholesterol go up, these are saturated fat and cholesterol, which both come from animal products so try to reduce the amount of saturated fat and cholesterol intake in your diet “Every one percent reduction in cholesterol results in at least a two percent reduction in the risk of CHD”, many people also believe that you should avoid polyunsaturated vegetable oils and refined sugar in processed foods. It has also been shown that it helps to ensure sufficient mineral intake and reduce phytic acid as it blocks mineral absorption. There are also some protective factors, which can be supplemented into the diet such as cod liver oil and iodine. These ideas are based on the fact that countries with these foods as a main part of the diet have fewer CHD mortalities.

Excess weight tends to increase your LDL cholesterol levels, so if you are overweight and have high cholesterol levels, then losing weight will reduce these levels and lower your chances of developing heart disease. Weight loss also helps to lower triglycerides and raise HDL (good) cholesterol. On the other hand, crash dieting should also be avoided as this can also be linked to heart disease by loss of protective nutrients in the diet and added stress. People who are overweight also tend to eat food which contains lots of calories but very little nourishment, this may mean that they have a biochemical imbalance which increases the tendency to form blood clots, which play a major part in heart attacks.

Physical activity and exercise are definitely beneficial in the fight against heart disease; this has been proven in dose- response trials. It helps because when we exercise, our heart beats more rapidly, the arteries widen to provide more oxygen to the muscles and arterial blood flow improves.

Alcohol is a different case; some people actually believe that in the right dosage (about 1-2 units), alcohol can actually prevent heart disease, because it increases good cholesterol. However, it has not been proven that it lowers production of LDL cholesterol and because of the risks associated with alcohol over indulgence such as addiction, high blood pressure, rises in triglycerides, and heart and liver damage, alcoholic beverages are not recommended as measures of CHD prevention. Smoking is also an overwhelming cause of diseases of the heart and lungs; it increases your risk of cancer, lung infections, and heart disease. Within one minute of inhaling tobacco, the heart begins to race as nicotine and carbon monoxide force it to work harder. Smoking also increases the ‘stickiness’ of the blood so clots are more likely to form. It also raises LDL cholesterol and even lowers HDL. The Annual death rate in millions from heart disease in non smokers is 606 which is shockingly high, however in smokers, it is 1184 which shows how much smoking increases your risks of CHD development.

Stress over long periods has been shown to increase blood cholesterols and blood pressure, high blood pressure or ‘hypertension’ makes you six times more likely to develop CHD! One way that stress may do this is by affecting your habits. For example, every one acts differently to cope with stress, some people eat more fatty foods to console themselves. The reason for stress may also be the underlying cause of increased cholesterol levels; stress may be caused by lack of tension release through physical activity, by poor nutrition or by smoking. If we consider this link between factors more carefully, we see that many of the above factors are all connected: trying to lose weight can cause stress, weight is greatly effected by lack of exercise and diet, what we eat can be affected by our jobs, which can also affect, stress, physical activity, etc. So anyone of us could, unknowingly and unwillingly be ‘giving ourselves’ heart disease

More than 100,000 people in Britain have inherited high cholesterol, this is simply when the body produces too much of its own cholesterol and the excess blocks the arteries. Your genes control how much LDL cholesterol is made and removed from the blood so people with inherited high cholesterol conditions such as familial hypercholesterolemia which affects 1 in 500 people will always have an increased risk of developing heart disease at quite a young age. Congenital heart disease is also a problem; babies are often born with defects such as persistence of foetal connections between the arterial and venous circulations and abnormalities in the partition separating the four cavities of the heart.

Age and gender affect each other when it comes to heart disease risks. Before the age of menopause, women usually have total cholesterol levels that are lower than those of men the same age, but as women and men get older, their blood cholesterol levels rise until about 60-65 years of age. After the age of about 50, women often have higher total cholesterol levels than men of the same age. As you get older, the arteries thicken naturally anyway; this is to prevent wear and rupture of the blood vessels. High cholesterol levels can now be treated with cholesterol lowering drugs such as statins, bile Acid sequestrants, nicotinic acid, and fibrates

So are our modern lifestyles to blame for an explosion in CHD mortality? It appears that an outstanding number of heart disease cases are caused by factors that we can easily control; meaning that many deaths are self induced and could have been prevented. There are however, many other causes and so when considering the question “is heart disease your fault” there is no real answer. Nobody knows the extent of the risks they are at and so each CHD case is individual and contributed to by many factors.

The above information, pictures, quotes and facts were all obtained from a mixture of the following resources: