What Are The Heart Diseases?
Heart disease basically involves a range of conditions that affect your heart or vascular system. Diseases that come under the heart disease include blood vessel diseases, such as coronary artery disease; heart rhythm problems (arrhythmias); and structural heart defects (congenital heart defects or developed in later life).
The term “heart disease” is often used synonymously with the term “cardiovascular disease.” So Cardiovascular disease generally involves the conditions that include narrowed or blocked blood vessels especially the coronary artery that may lead to a heart attack, arrhythmias, chest pain (angina), cerebrovascular insult, or stroke. Such heart conditions that affect your heart such as heart’s muscle, valves, or rhythm, also are under the heart disease.
Don’t be worry, these heart diseases can be treated or prevented by changing the lifestyle and food habits. Hypertensive people are more at risk of having heart diseases in the future due to high load over the heart. Obese people have a high risk of having a heart attack, atherosclerosis, or coronary artery diseases due to plaque deposition inside the vessels.
Symptoms of Heart Diseases
Heart diseases include a variety of conditions such as blood vessel disease(coronary artery diseases), rhythm problems(arrhythmias), congenital heart diseases, and many more.
Symptoms caused by coronary artery diseases include:
- Chest pain, tightness, and discomfort
- Shortness of breath
- Pain in the neck, jaw, shoulder
- Nausea, vomiting, and sweating
Symptoms caused by rhythm problems include:
- Fluttering in the chest
- Tachycardia or bradycardia
- Chest pain and shortness of breath
- Dizziness and syncope
Symptoms caused by congenital heart diseases include:
- cyanosis
- shortness of breath during feeding
Causes of Heart Disease
Multiple causes are there to cause heart diseases, some are
- High blood pressure
- High cholesterol level
- Obesity
- Diabetes mellitus
- Coronary artery disease
- Atherosclerosis
- Trauma
- Bleeding disorders
- Lung fibrosis
- High pulmonary pressure
- Cystic fibrosis
- Rheumatic fever
- Infections
Risk Factors for Heart Diseases
Risk factors of heart diseases fall into 2 categories, Controllable and uncontrollable
1- Uncontrollable or non-modified
Those which are uncontrollable include genetics
- age
- male gender
- family history
2- Controllable or modifiable
Controllable risk factors of heart diseases include
- diabetes mellitus,
- hypertension,
- obesity,
- hyperlipidemias,
- smoking,
- uncontrolled anger
- stress
- alcohol consumption
- a high level of C reactive protein
How Heart Disease Can Be Treated?
Although we can’t treat the many heart diseases perfectly but make it better by eliminating the risk factors. Some heart diseases are treatable nowadays. We can eliminate or at least subside the Risk factors to make the condition better. Treatment varies from patient to patient depending on the cause, type, and severity of heart diseases.
Atherosclerosis
Researches believed that maintenance of high blood pressure and cholesterol level will dissolve the plaques in the coronary or other arteries. These plaques don’t go away completely, but they can squeeze enough. Regularly monitor your blood pressure and take a cholesterol-free diet.
CAD
In coronary artery disease, we can open the coronary artery to prevent further ischemia or death of the patient.
Valvular Heart Diseases
In valvular heart diseases, we can repair or replace the defective or damaged valve.
Myocarditis
When heart muscles fail to contract or relax, a mechanical assist device can help the heart to pump more strongly. In severe cases, heart transplantation is another option.
These above measures don’t treat the disease at all, but they allow the patients to recover and live long without the long-term sequelae.
Preventive Measures for Heart Diseases
- Maintain your body weight.
- Take less salt, high carbohydrates, high soluble fibers, green vegetables, and less cholesterol-containing fats in your meal.
- Do morning exercise daily.
- Quit smoking or alcohol consumption.
- Maintain your blood pressure, if you are hypertensive then regularly monitored your blood pressure.
- If you are diabetic, control your blood sugar.
HP Thoughts: How would you know if you have a life-threatening heart ailment? Read our post to learn more — Coronary Thrombosis.
