If your mother and your father had heart disease, and their parents before them, you may feel doomed to heart failure. While it is true that heredity is a cause of heart disease, it is only a factor among many others. One recent study even says heredity accounts for less than 10% of a persons risk of developing heart disease.
So, What is the Other 90%?
Doctors do not agree on the number one cause of heart disease, but smoking, obesity, and high cholesterol are the front runners in any study.
The chemicals in cigarettes damage artery walls, making it easier for cholesterol deposits to build an unhealthy, blood-blocking home in the body. Smoking also makes platelets, the component of blood that causes clotting, to be more active, and hence the risk of a killer clot rises.
A body needs cholesterol and can actually produce all it needs, so when we ingest foods high in cholesterols, like dairy and meat products, our bodies get a lot more cholesterol than they need. The body saves cholesterol instead of excreting it, and that cholesterol gets stored along the walls of the arteries. Too many cholesterol deposits lead to artery blockage and clots.
High blood pressure is also a major cause of heart disease. Imagine this, your arteries are narrowed because of all that cholesterol stored in there, yet your body is the same size and needs the same amount of blood; so your heart is trying to pump a lot of blood through a passage that is getting too small. Just as the motor of an air conditioner can get worn out trying to push air through a filter that no one has cleaned, your heart can overtax itself trying to force blood through blocked passages.
Obesity, not just because of all the health problems that come with it, is another cause of heart disease. Often obesity comes with high cholesterol and blood pressure, which we know increase the risk of heart disease, but new studies are also showing a correlation between abdominal fat and heart disease in a way that is not yet fully understood. Either way, as the circumference of stomach increases, the risk of heart disease seems to increase more.
Also, stress causes an overall decline in health and is particularly associated with heart disease. So, unless your parents are stressing you out enough to cause a heart attack, they are not the cause of heart disease.
So angiogram was in my immediate future. I'm told this is a safe and relatively painless procedure and not to worry. There were plenty of things to worry about however. They don't want to shove a camera up through my body and into my heart because of no reason. Still, an angiogram is an outpatient procedure where the cardiologist opens an artery in your leg and works a camera into the heart muscle arteries. It sounds a lot worse than it is but the benefit is that you know exactly what the status of your heart and arteries are at that point in time. So I'm ready!
At least this will finally answer how serious a problem, if any, I truly had. The Cardiologist however must have been concerned because he scheduled the angiogram 4 days later.
On the day of this adventure, I checked into the Cardiology center at a local hospital and prepared to undergo the angiogram. An IV was inserted and I was ready to go. Once in the angiogram theater, I was given sedatives that although kept me conscious, there was no pain, nor did I hear anyone working as they sent through me to check out the problem. When the nurses and technicians talked directly to me in a loud enough voice however, I was able to respond.
The good thing about an angiogram is that if blockages are found, the cardiologist can usually place metal stents or pipe like devices in the arteries to maintain blood flow if needed. This is a far cry from the open heart, crack your chest type of surgery that would have been required just a few years ago. After about an hour, the doctor apparently lowered the dosage of sedative as I remember him giving me a status on my condition.
The Verdict! The bad news was that I did have calcium deposits on the inside walls of my arteries. This was what they had seen with the other tests. The good news however was that my arteries or pipes were absolutely smooth on the inside and were considered very large. Big pipes with a thin smooth coating of calcium equaled a potential problem only.
Being a big person from a family of big people for many generations, the fact that my arteries were considered "big" didn't surprise me. I can't prove it but have to think that the vitamins and minerals I've been taking for over a decade have protected me from developing a life threatening heart disease at this point in my life. The cardiologist however continued to be concerned for long term survivability given the high calcium scores from the blood tests.
Where we go from here! So it's changes in lifestyle for me. I've gone from a relatively sedentary person to one who rides an exercise bike almost 7 miles a day, everyday. I continue although now on doctors orders, to take an adult aspirin daily and have changed my eating habits. It's a process so there's some good days and some worse but I'm now sensitive to how much and what I eat. Although my bad cholesterol is at 90 (anything under 110 is considered good) the Cardiologist has prescribed statins to lower the bad cholesterol even more. Once again I can't prove it but I do believe that statins will soon be considered a critical part of living a long healthy life.
So that's my story. Exercise and an aspirin a day to thin out the blood. Statins to lower bad cholesterol even more and daily vitamins just because I've done so well with them up to this point. With any luck, I'll live long without having to deal with the debilitating effects of serious heart disease.
Both Michael Crockett & Abigail Franks are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Michael Crockett has sinced written about articles on various topics from Disease & illness, Mobile Phone Reviews and Heart Conditions. Michael Crockett's website official weightloss4idiots.com has the latest selection of information on how to lose weight. . Michael Crockett's top article generates over 9900 views. to your Favourites.
Abigail Franks has sinced written about articles on various topics from Home Schooling, Health and Mortgage. Abigail Franks writes on many subjects having to do with home, family, and health. For more information on heart issues and heart monitoring visit the site at