Know the Facts about Heart Diseases

Healthy people who want to prevent heart attacks also find support at the Y. Motivated, often, by the illness or sudden death of a close friend or relative, they sign up for rigorous stress testing and blood tests to determine the health of their hearts and arteries and the risk of future trouble. Those who pass the tests with flying colors are sent on their way, says Bronz. 'Whatever you're doing, we tell them, keep it up!' Those with a medium to high risk of heart disease - about 10 per cent of the people tested - are invited to join the programme.

Congestive heart failure is a condition where the heart does not pump effectively resulting in an accumulation of fluid in the lungs. Symptoms may include shortness of breath, difficulty breathing when lying flat and leg or ankle swelling. Causes include chronic hypertension, cardiomyopathy (primary heart disease) and myocardial infarction (irreversible injury to heart muscles).

Coronary Artery Disease is one where heart simply stops pumping blood to the arteries. The blockages or difficulty in the blood flow to the main source of oxygen to the heart muscle i.e. coronary arteries is deemed to be the primary factor that results in this disease. Apart from this the thickening of the arteries called arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure and other problems like asthma, diabetes etc. is the causes of CAD. CAD produces a heart attack and so even the death of the concerned individual.

A heart attack it is also known as myocardial infarction, which can also occur when a coronary artery temporarily contracts or goes into spasm, decreasing or cutting the blood flowing to the heart. A heart attack represents on or about half of all coronary heart disease deaths and can be caused by nearly all types of heart illness.

Functional disorders like techycardia, bradicardia or hypertension and arrhythmia (lack of rhythm in the heart beat) and angina pectoris (pain in the chest, behind the sternum) and a sense of impending death.

The heart has four chambers and four valves. The upper two chambers are the right atrium and left atrium - these collect the blood as it enters the heart. The lower two are the right ventricle and left ventricle - these pump blood out of the heart. There are two heart valves on each side. The mitral and aortic valves are on the left side and the tricuspid and pulmonary valves are on the right side. The valves open and close to let the blood flow in only one direction.

Excess of fats and cholesterol in the blood are made up of different fatty acids and glycerol. Cholesterol is a type of fat. Surplus of fats are stored as such in different parts of the body. A high level of cholesterol in the blood, particularly if it is held in combination in the form of LDL globules, leads to deposition in the walls of the blood vessels. Coronary artery disease, blood cholesterol level, and the amount of fat taken in the diet usually go hand in hand.

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