Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease For Dummies. James M. Rippe
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СКАЧАТЬ can read more about how coronary heart disease develops in Chapter 2.)

      

The lifestyle strategies this book details will typically help you prevent heart disease and manage and even reverse any risk factors for heart disease that you have. However, many people will require not only significant lifestyle modifications but also the appropriate medications to lower their risks. That’s why you should always work with your doctor to have regular checkups. Then, if you are diagnosed with risks for heart disease or with heart disease itself, you and your doctor can work as partners to plan the best therapeutic program for you. Research is bringing new insights all the time, and your cardiologist will be your best source of up-to-date strategies. Head to Part IV for information about medications, surgical options, and complementary therapies used for heart disease.

       Taking Charge of Your Heart Health

      Without question, heart disease is a serious enemy. In fact, it’s the biggest enemy. But you can take charge of your heart health, whatever its present state.

      

As I often like to say: Ipsa scientia potestas est, or knowledge is power. For that reason, the remainder of this book is full of information that can empower you to understand the basics about heart health and heart disease and partner with your physician in putting the power of simple lifestyle practices and medical technology to work for you. Taking control of your heart health offers other wonderful upsides for living well that include the following:

      ✔ Improving your overall health: Many of the steps that benefit your heart health also improve your total health and fitness, to say nothing of your good looks.

      ✔ Increasing functionality: Use it or lose it, goes the old saying. The healthier your heart, the greater the probability that you can stay active, mobile, and engaged in pursuits that interest you for a long, long time.

      ✔ Increasing economic benefits: The healthier you are, the lower your healthcare costs, and the more money in your pocket for fun things.

      ✔ Increasing longevity: Keeping your heart healthy is not an iron-clad guarantee that you’ll live longer, but considering the mortality rates of people with heart disease (reviewed earlier in this chapter), even card-carrying “Dummies” can figure out that keeping your heart as healthy as possible can keep the Grim Reaper away longer.

      ✔ Having more fun: Nothing slows you down or scares the family like a heart attack. Angina pain, angioplasty, coronary artery bypass surgery, and other common outcomes of heart disease aren’t picnics in the park, either. Working for heart health and controlling heart disease can help you avoid these problems.

Chapter 2

      Understanding the Onset and Outcomes of Heart Disease

       In This Chapter

      ▶ Understanding what causes atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease

      ▶ Determining the causes and effects of angina

      ▶ Exploring what causes heart attacks

      ▶ Learning about arrhythmias, heart failure, and other forms of heart disease

      Your heart works harder than any other muscle in your body. Your life depends on this small but mighty pump never stopping. It’s about the size of your clenched fist and weighs less than a pound. Depending on your age and physical condition, a normal heart beats 60 to 90 times per minute when you are sitting and may get up to 150 to 200+ times per minute when you are maxing out aerobic physical activity. A healthy heart is equipped to sustain at this pace for 70 to 90 years and beyond. The key word here is healthy.

      From the moment you are born (and even before), multiple factors related to your biology, behavior, and environment have an impact, for good or ill, on your heart and cardiovascular system. Heart disease is progressive: It starts stealthily in the coronary (and other) arteries and progresses silently for years before any detectable signs of disease emerge. Research over the last 25 years provided new insights into how heart disease begins, starting at the cellular and molecular levels. These new insights are helping to prevent heart disease in the first place and to halt or, in some aspects, even reverse its progress.

      In this chapter, I first present a brief overview of the heart and cardiovascular system. Then, I discuss the silent precursors and early stages of heart disease. Next, I look at angina and unstable angina, two types of chest pain that are often the first signs of heart disease for many people. Finally, I discuss how disease progression may result in heart attacks, arrhythmia (heart rhythm problems), heart failure, and other acute problems.

       Touring the Heart and Cardiovascular System

      Understanding how your heart and cardiovascular system work provides a foundation for understanding heart disease and its many manifestations. Even if you begin snoozing at the mere idea of technical stuff, don’t forget that knowledge is power. These basics can help you do a better job of keeping your heart healthy.

       Pumping for life: The heart’s anatomy and function

      

The heart is located in the center of the chest cavity, just to the left of the midline of the body. Figure 2-1 illustrates the exterior of a healthy heart and Figure 2-2 illustrates the interior. You need to understand the following important parts:

      ✔ The heart muscle: Called the myocardium (myo = muscle and cardium = heart; pronounced my-o-car-dee-um), this muscle contracts and relaxes to pump blood throughout the cardiovascular system.

      ✔ The coronary arteries: Three large coronary arteries and their many branches deliver a continuous supply of oxygenated blood to the heart. Narrowing of these arteries causes chest pain; blockage causes heart attack.

      ✔ The pumping chambers: The heart’s job is to pump blood to the lungs to get oxygen and to pump the oxygenated blood to the rest of the body. To fulfill these tasks, the heart has a left and a right side (shown in Figure 2-2), each with one main pumping chamber called a ventricle located in the lower part of it. Sitting above the left and right ventricles are two small booster pumps called atria (or atrium, when you’re talking about just one).

      The right ventricle pumps deoxygenated blood from the body to the lungs to receive a new supply of oxygen and back to the heart, through the left atrium to the left ventricle. The left ventricle pumps oxygenated blood through the arterial system to the rest of the body where it feeds every single living cell. Various disease conditions can damage each of these structures.

      ✔ The valves: Four valves regulate the flow of blood in and out of the heart and from chamber to chamber. They act a bit like cardiac traffic cops by directing the way blood flows, how much of it flows, and when to stop it from flowing. Disease and injury can cause heart valves to leak, narrow, or otherwise malfunction, disrupting the heart’s ability to pump blood efficiently.

      ✔ The electrical system: This electrical system is controlled by a group of specialized cells that spontaneously discharge, sending electrical СКАЧАТЬ