Heart disease – what can cause a heart attack

How to prevent a heart attack?

Getting older is a natural part of life, and it can get scary when we come to think about the multiple health problems that start to show up as a result of aging. One of the most serious health problems we can have is a heart disease. What is the heart disease? This is a medical term that sums up all the health conditions that have to do with the heart and its muscles, vessels, valves or the internal electric pathways that are responsible for the muscular contractions. Among the most common types of heart disease conditions that one can experience are the coronary artery disease, the heart failure, the cardiomyopathy and the heart valve disease and arrhythmias.

However, whenever we hear about heart attacks, we start to panic even more. Heart attack is serious and in some cases, it can prove to be lethal. A heart attack can occur when a coronary artery is blocked, in general due to a blood clot, and a certain area of the heart tissue starts to lose its blood supply. In this case, the blood reduction damages or kills the heart tissue, and this leads to the necessity of quick treatments or a catheterization suite, which can contribute to the reduction of the loss of the heart tissue. This blockage can lead to developing symptoms such as shortness of breath, chest pains and weakness. In some cases, death may occur as well.

The symptoms of a heart attack are these: dizziness, chest pain, chest discomfort and mild pain, which may also spread to other areas of the body, such as jaw, arms, neck or back, nausea and vomiting, rapid heartbeats or irregular heartbeats, shortness of breath and some people may also experience anxiety feelings, indigestion or heartburn. Other symptoms may be: crushing chest pain, pressure tightness, dyspnea, the face that seems gray, feelings such as – the feeling of terror and frightened that life is coming to an end, a general feeling of awfulness, restlessness, feeling sweaty and clammy.

What causes a heart attack?

A heart attack can be caused by plague and blood clots. The plague can be found in the coronary or other heart arteries, for instance, the carotid arteries. A plague can be either hard or firm on the outside, but soft, mushy or sticky in the inside. In case the hard shell of the plague cracks open, there is a strong possibility that the blood components such as platelets or the small blood clots may form together a larger clot and in this way, blocking the blood flow through the artery. If so, the heart tissue may downstream from the clot and afterwards, suffers because of the lack of block, which leads to its damaging or dying state.

There are other health conditions and factors that can be described as the causes of a heart attack. A few words about each and every one of them in the following lines:

– Age. The risk of developing a heart attack increases with age, and there is a high possibility for a man to experience a heart attack at the age of 45, and for a woman, at the age of 55 and over.

– Angina, which is an illness characterized by the insufficient amount of oxygen that reaches the heart, which causes chest pain that resembles a lot with a heart attack, the difference being that it can be resolved with proper medication. In short terms, the angina only increases the chances of developing a heart attack.

– High blood cholesterol levels means a higher possibility of blood clots formed in the arteries

– Diabetes is a condition that favors the appearance of other illnesses and conditions, among which heart attack is included.

– Wrong diet, for example when a person eats a large amount of saturated fats, can favor the risk of developing a heart attack.

– Genetic inherit favors the heart attack

– Heart surgery on people who have undergone this kind of procedure increases the chances of a heart attack

– Hypertension or high blood pressure

– Obesity and overweight

– Physical inactivity

– Previous heart attacks. It is a common knowledge that if something happened once, there are very high chances of it happening again, heart attacks included.

– Smoking is not only a bad habit for the overall health, but a serious factor that favors the heart attacks

– HIV. People that are infected with this positive virus have a 50% higher chances of developing a heart attack.

– The stress at work. Stressful jobs are bad, we know that, but what we didn’t know is that night shifts of jobs that make people constantly live in stress conditions can increase the risk of developing a heart attack.

As you can see, by the time we grow older and we accumulate a series of other conditions, there are already other factors that can contribute to the development of a heart attack. Heart disease is not something one can play with, this is why we have to take it seriously and protect ourselves as much as possible against it.