Heart disease

Heart disease

ABSTRACT

Heart diseases are one of the leading causes of death in the world today. There has been extensive research on the causes, treatment, and prevention mechanisms for the disorders over the years. With the emergent of new information, cholesterol, lipid deposition in the blood vessels, and the saturation of fats have been studied to be among the key contributors to cardiovascular and coronary artery diseases prompting many to take evasive action to try and avoid too much consumption of fats and cholesterol. More new information is that even as people may try to reduce the intake of fatty acids into their bodies, the diet may not necessarily lead to these complications. A person’s genetics play a massive part in contributing to heart disease. Physical exercise is also another critical tool to be used in preventing these diseases. With the availability of sufficient information today, people should be recommended for nutritional intervention to reduce cardiovascular diseases. It is a collective output from the governments to medical organizations and the other units in the food industry.

Keywords: heart, doctors, exercise, treatment.

INTRODUCTION

During the 20^th century, the world underwent technological and socio-economic changes, which altered people’s way of living, therefore helping men use science to prolong and enhance life. With lifestyle changes, people started poor eating habits, reduced manual work, which led to a sharp rise in lifestyle diseases, mainly heart-related diseases. Our paper is going to cover heart disease epidemic, causes, signs, and symptoms, treatment, and prevention mechanisms for a better living.

GENERAL  INFORMATION.

The heart disease pandemic

Heart-related infections are a crucial contributor to death and disease burden in modern society. Studies made previously had indicated that coronary heart disease would likely be the leading cause of burden with other chronic infections like cancer by the year 2020. Lower and middle-income countries have more deaths due to their high populations and imperfect nutrition habits. The cardiovascular disease affects all the sections of the society, the rich, and the poor. Studies have shown that between 1990 and 2020, middle-income countries have a continued high death toll from nutrition-related infections, which affect the heart.

Observational cohort studies have given an evaluation of the long-term effects of exposures of diet and the impact of changes in diet among individuals in the long-run. Also, clinical trials provide a sufficient framework for the study of interventions to the research of the disease, but they are relatively short-term and are introduced late. With the currently available technology, genetics are the most favored alternative to clinical trials by taking into account the difference in the genotype of metabolism in multiple food ingredients, which may result in variation in the exposure to the food components or the risk factors. It is done through “Mendelian randomization”. There are very many factors that can affect a healthy development, but in recent years cardiovascular diseases have topped the charts.

Cardiovascular disease is an ailment that affects the heart and also other blood vessels. One of the disorders in this group is Atherosclerosis caused by the deposition of plaque in the arteries, which can lead to partial or complete clogging of the arteries, which leads to a heart attack. (What is Cardiovascular disease? 2013). Other examples of heart diseases are coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, and a typical heart attack. The most common aspect of Coronary infections is angina, which is an aching, burning feeling in the chest. Other symptoms are irregular heartbeats, nausea, a faster heartbeat, and sweating. A heart attack is characterized by symptoms like discomfort or chest pains, rapid and irregular heartbeats, indigestion, sweating, weakness, etcetera. Heart failure symptoms often include; shortness of breath, dizziness, fatigue, irregular heartbeats, swelling in ankles, rapid weight gain, chest pains, white sputum in coughs, among others.

Saturated fats and cholesterol have been considered the key contributors to heart disease, which prompts recommendations by nutritionists to make people reduce foods in their diet (Siri- Tarino, Sun, Hu, & Krauss, 2010). However, strictly limiting the consumption of fatty acids in the diet is not healthy as the body still needs these nutrients lipids are fatty biological substances that are insoluble in water. They include fatty acids as well as cholesterol. Fatty acids are classified into two: saturated and unsaturated fatty acids. Those unsaturated are further broken down into polyunsaturated and monounsaturated. Those who are saturated have a hydrogen atom for each carbon atom in the molecule. Polyunsaturated have one double carbon bond, whereas monounsaturated have two or more double bonds (Lawrence, 2010). Each of these groups has a specific function in the human body. Omega-6 and Omega-3 are mostly found in plants and cold-water fish, respectively, and are examples of polyunsaturated fatty acids. These distinctions are crucial in understanding how dietary fats affect heart disease.

Cholesterol is only found in animals, and its intake should be limited since the human body makes its cholesterol (Allen, 2009). Cholesterol is divided into high density and low-density Lipoproteins, which are measured by the doctors. The general process of limiting dietary cholesterol can be a difficult one due to individual nutritional demands. Nutritionists often advise someone to keep the intake of saturated fatty acids as low as possible and replace their intake with consumption of either polyunsaturated or monounsaturated (Hoenselaar, 2012) those persons with a high risk of heart disease are advised to keep saturated fatty acid consumption to below 7%. (Smith et al., 2011; DeBakey, 2012) Coronary heart disease can often be managed with changes in lifestyle, medicine, and also surgery. Smokers who have a high risk of a heart attack or had one can reduce the risk of another heart attack by avoiding smoking. Regular exercises, healthy eating are also lifestyle changes that can improve heart functioning. For the medicines, anti-blood-clotting drugs(Blood-thinning medications) like ticagrelor, prasugrel are given to patients to prevent blood from clotting. Those with high cholesterol statins like atorvastatin, pravastatin, rosuvastatin can be administered to lower the cholesterol level. Beta-blockers like atenolol, bisoprolol, metoprolol, are given to prevent angina and high blood pressure, by slowing down the heartbeat to improve blood flow.

Other treatments are Nitrates (Vasodilators), which help in widening the blood vessels. These are administered in the form of skin patches like glyceryl trinitrate and also isosorbide mononitrate. After treatment, regular checkups should be done to establish the progressiveness or the damage done by the drugs or the treatment mechanisms. Some of those tests include the cholesterol test. The statin drugs are supposed to lower the cholesterol level to below 200 milligrams per deciliter. The high sensitivity C-reactive protein test also shows that the cholesterol statin drugs are achieving the desired effect. Atherosclerosis drugs also should help in the reduction of the ceramides, which help in the buildup of plaque in the blood vessels. A plasma ceramide test should be done to determine the ceramide level in the blood.  On the prevention perspective, tobacco use should be avoided (smoking), daily activity for a minimum of 30 minutes, taking a healthy diet, maintaining a body-friendly weight, sleep well, better stress management, and visit the clinic regularly for checkups.

CONCLUSION

Finally, due to a person’s genetics, the diet may not be a very crucial factor in avoiding heart diseases. Fatty acid consumption should be limited but not completely avoided because the body needs those nutrients. Exercise is a very vital part of preventing heart disease. Heart disease is a complex subject that still needs to be studied more with emerging challenges in diets and lifestyle changes.

References

Allen, S. (2009). Cholesterol: what camp are you in? Original Internist, 16(3), 159+. Retrieved

April 17, 2014, from the GALE database.

DeBakey, M. E., & Gotto, A. M. (2012).The living heart in the 21st century. Amherst, N.Y.:

Prometheus Books.

Hoenselaar, R. (2012). Saturated fat and cardiovascular disease: The discrepancy between the

scientific literature and dietary advice. Nutrition, 28(2), 118-123. Retrieved February 21,

2014, from http://www.nutritionjrnl.com/article/S0899-9007(11)00314-5/fulltext.

Lawrence, G. D. (2010). The fats of life essential fatty acids in health and disease. New

Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

Siri-Tarino, P. W., Sun, Q., Hu, F. B., & Krauss, R. M. (2010). A meta-analysis of prospective

cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease.

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 91(3), 535-546. Retrieved March 20, 2014, from

http://dx.doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.2009.27725