Heart Diseases Info

Adult Congenital Heart Disease Resource

A Guide to the Risk Factors for Coronary Heart Disease


Heart disease is a number of abnormal conditions affecting the heart and the blood vessels in the heart, and coronary heart disease is the most common type of heart disease of all, and is also the leading cause of heart attacks.

Coronary heart disease is a term that refers to damage to the heart that occurs because its blood supply is reduced, and what happens here is that fatty deposits build up on the linings of the blood vessels that supply the heart muscles with blood, resulting in them narrowing. This narrowing reduces the blood supply to the heart muscles and causes pain that is known as angina.

Causes of Coronary Heart Disease

There are a few factors in particular which are considered as being responsible causes of coronary heart disease, one in particular being high cholesterol, and throughout the world cholesterol levels vary widely. Generally people who live in countries where blood cholesterol levels are lower, such as Japan for instance, have lower rates of heart disease, and yet at the same time some populations with similar cholesterol levels have very different heart disease rates.

Another one of the major causes of coronary heart disease is cigarette and tobacco smoke, as a smokers risk of developing heart disease is twice that of a nonsmoker, and studies have actually shown that after five years of giving up smoking, the risk of developing heart disease is the same as that of someone who had never smoked in their life.

Diagnosis of Coronary Heart Disease

Really the only positive way that this heart disease can be diagnosed is through the use of coronary angiography, and this is a procedure that uses a special dye and x-rays in order to see how well blood is flowing through your heart. It is usually done in conjunction with cardiac catherization, and before the procedure starts you will typically be given a sedative to help you relax.

Prevention

However the best thing that you can do is prevent heart disease to begin with and there are many things that you can do in order to guard yourself against heart disease as much as possible. The most important is to ensure that you are maintaining a healthy lifestyle. This means eating a healthy and nutritious diet and making sure that you get a decent amount of physical activity on a regular basis.

By keeping yourself as healthy overall as possible, you will not only be protecting yourself from heart disease but as well from various other heart and health conditions.

Of course, one of the more difficult aspects of living with heart disease is forgoing the fatty food and desserts. The most common type of sleep apnea is obstructive sleep apnea, and during sleep what happens is that not enough air flow can get to your lungs through your mouth and nose even though you try to breathe, and when that happens the amount of oxygen in your blood may drop, and normal breaths then start again, typically with a loud snort or choking sound. These drugs perform separate functions that can target both congestive heart failure and disease. The physical form of stress is that which places measurable and reproducible demands on the heart, and it is this physical stress which is generally acknowledged as being good and in fact, the lack of physical stress is what constitutes as being a major risk factor for coronary artery disease. Congestive heart failure that results from disease and defects can be treated and although some people may require lots of rest and even a heart transplant, others can have reasonably normal lives with a relatively small amount of medical supervision. However a lot of the time heart murmurs actually do not mean that there is anything wrong with your child, and these heart murmurs are known as being innocent or functional.