United States: Heart disease hereby is the leading cause of death in America for both men and women, and it really has been here for over 100 years. Doctors know that things like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and smoking can raise the risk of heart disease. But now, experts are looking at other things that could affect heart health too.
Death rates which are exactly from heart attack and stroke have declined in the last half-century as smoking rates reduce and better treatments for cholesterol and blood pressure come to light, said Dr. Sadiya Khan, a preventive cardiologist at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.
As reported by the nytimes.com, but several factors now threaten to arrest — or even reverse — that advance, among them metabolic diseases such as obesity and diabetes as well as rising heart failure incidence.
In light of these changes, in the last year the American Heart Association developed a new risk calculator named PREVENT that incorporate the measurement of metabolic and kidney health and enables the physician not only to estimate the risk of heart attack and stroke but also of heart failure.
“Well I do not believe that fundamental risks for cardiovascular disease have shifted either with that.” Said Dr Michael Nanna interventional cardiologist with Yale School of Medicine. “But I think that there is the increased awareness of a number of risk factors that are considerably more than we as cardiologists would have deemed traditionally.”
The big risk factors remain.
It is always worrying when conditions that cause the formation of fatty, waxy substance known as plaque inside the walls of blood vessels. When plaques form, the arteries become less wide, and these conditions can lead to chest pains or any other signs associated with Microscopicfy.
They can eventually grow large enough to break off and obstruct the arteriole that supplies blood to the heart muscle or to the brain leading to a heart attack or stroke says Dr. Jeremy Sussman of University of Michigan Medical school.
High cholesterol: Cholesterol is one of the most critical ingredients of plaque. While cholesterol is important in the body to support such activities as hormone synthesis and vitamin manufacture, high levels may deposit on the arterial walls and combine with fat, calcium and other elements from the blood to create plaques, said Dr. Khan.