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Heart Attack Prevention

Before discuss the prevention of ischaemic heart disease, we have to know how the disease is produced, what produces it and what factors operate in its causation.

Formation of Atheroma ( Fatty Deposit)
You have already learnt that ischaemic heart disease is essentially an obstructive disease of the coronary arteries, which are the lifelines to the heart muscle. This obstruction is caused by fatty deposits, called atheroma, which is composed mainly of cholesterol.

How does cholesterol get deposited in the wall of the arteries?
Blood, which is constantly flowing in the arteries, carries oxygen, nutrients and water. One of the nutrients is cholesterol, which is an essential element for building of certain body tissues. If the level of cholesterol in the blood is high and remains high year after year, such a situation leads to its deposition and clogging of arteries with consequent obstruction to the flow of blood.

From where does cholesterol come?
Like other nutrients, cholesterol is obtained from the food that we eat. It comes from fatty foods, particularly animal fats like ghee, butter, egg yolk, meat, especially the organ meat of the brain and the liver. Our body also manufactures it in accordance with its needs.

Why are high levels of cholesterol produced in the blood?
The common cause is eating far too much animal fats, and not burning them off by doing enough exercise and physical work. However, in some persons the body production of cholesterol is excessive, which raises the blood levels. Saturated fats (those which are solid at room temperature in winter), like ghee & butter, stimulate the body production of cholesterol.

Which arteries are the most affected?
Atheroma occurs in the large and medium sized arteries - aorta, coronary arteries, arteries of the brain, legs and kidneys are the common sites.

The Risk Factors
Atheroma formation with its consequences of heart attacks is the result of an unhealthy life-style in which many factors play their part. These factor are referred to as ‘risk factors’.

What are the risk factors involved in the production of atheroma and heart attacks?
They are as follows :

Age : As age advances the susceptibility to heart attacks increases.
Sex : Males are more prone to heart attack, but after the age of 50 the sex difference levels off.
Heredity : Members of certain families are constitutionally more prone to heart attacks.
High cholesterol and saturated fat diet.
High blood pressure
Diabetes
Cigarette smoking
Obesity
Lack of physical exercise.
Stress.
Gout and high uric acid ( probable).

You can do nothing about the factors of age, sex and heredity. You cannot help aging; you cannot help being a male if you are one; nor can you choose your parents. All these factors are unmodifiable. But you can certainly modify other factors to your advantage.
I know a hotel - keeper, who is in his mid-fifties. He runs a popular restaurant serving non-vegetarian food, of which he himself is very food of eating. He starts his work early in the morning and closes late in the night. Whenever I have visited his restaurant, I have found him in his seat with a cigarette in his lips and a glass of whisky by his side, but out of sight of his customers. He has diabetes about which he is hardly bothered. By now he has already suffered two major heart attacks, which have left his heart seriously damaged. Yet he refuses to change his life style !

I believe you would not like to drive yourself into such a precarious situation. Read the following pages to learn how you can modify the seven modifiable factors to your advantage and stay healthy. If you have already suffered a heart attack modifying these factors and your life-style becomes doubly important to ward off a second attack.

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