Coronary Heart Disease Causes

Custom Search

Coronary heart disease definition (CHD)

A common question we receive is ‘what is coronary heart disease’? CHD may be summarised by what happens when your heart’s blood supply is blocked, or interrupted, by a build-up of fatty substances in the coronary arteries. These deposits can cause the walls of your arteries to become coated (or furred up), which is known as  atherosclerosis. If your coronary arteries – the ones which feed the heart – are narrowed, then the blood supply to your heart will be restricted. This can cause pain in the chest, or angina.

If a coronary artery becomes completely blocked, it can cause a heart attack, or to quote the correct medical term – a myocardial infarction.

Coronary heart disease facts

It is important to consider that healthcare professionals are usually only involved when heart disease becomes evident, and sometimes this can be too late. So, overwhelmingly, prevention is better than cure. The following coronary heart disease statistics can be very sobering :-

• Heart disease affects nearly 1 million people in the United Kingdom
• Heart disease kills more than 110,000 people each year in the United Kingdom
• 40 percent of patients who die of a heart attack have no prior warning
• 50 percent of heart attack deaths occur in the first two hours following the attack
• Doctors and heart specialists typically see less than 5 percent of patients who die after a sudden heart attack

A relatively new illness?

Coronary heart disease has only been recognised as a major disease for about a hundred years. In the last few decades we have seen major scientific advances in its diagnosis and treatment through drugs and surgical procedures which has resulted in thousands of lives being saved.

However despite all this progress, worldwide heart disease statistics indicate that heart disease is still increasing dramatically.

Coronary heart disease develops in the arteries over a long period of time. However it is possible to personally influence whether this terrible dread disease will take a hold over your life or not.

Previous generations had much simpler lives

It is very obvious that our ancestors lead very different lives from us. In order to feed themselves, they had to use a lot of physical energy to hunt, or manually farm their food. The type of food they ate largely consisted of vegetables, fruit and nuts with some fish or meat if they had a lucky break on the previous hunting trip.

The way the food was cooked also differed – it would usually have been cooked in a hurry over an open fire, rather than refined and over-cooked, thus losing much nutritional value. But most importantly the pre-historic diet was extremely low in fat. We could refer to this as the perfect ‘anti’ coronary heart disease diet.

Compare that with the modern lifestyle – consumption of high quantities of highly refined processed foods that are also high in saturated fat, salt and sugar. Combined with sedentary or inactive lifestyles with insufficient physical activity and exercise - you have a recipe for illness and disease.

Excessive fat consumption puts a strain on the liver, which is responsible for maintaining the correct level of cholesterol within the body. The excessive fat consumption associated with the modern western diet causes the liver to ‘overflow’ it’s capacity to remove surplus ‘low density molecules’ which are high in ‘bad’ or ‘LDL’ cholesterol lipoproteins.

The human genome project has provided us with some incredible science regarding our genetic make-up. There is good scientific evidence that the human genetic footprint requires a diet and lifestyle that is closer to the pre-historic variety than the modern variety. So it makes sense that if we wish to avoid this disease then we need to return to a lifestyle and diet which is closer to our ancestors.

Symptoms of coronary heart disease

The symptoms of CHD may only begin to manifest themselves after many years or decades of physical neglect. this is why it is known as the silent killer. Most heart disease will remain hidden until it becomes a serious problem. the following symptoms indicate a well established heart problem which requires urgent medical action to prevent a major catastrophe in the sufferer’s life :-

• Chest pain, also called angina
• Shortness of breath when exercising or during another vigorous activity
  A fast heartbeat
• Weakness, dizziness, and feeling sick to your stomach (nausea)
• Increased sweating.

Importance of understanding the risk factors

In order to prevent CHD, we need to fully understand the causes, which involves looking at all the risk factors. There are many different reasons which cumulatively increase the risk of developing a heart condition. The major ones which are listed below are responsible for 90 percent of all first heart attacks :-

• smoking
• high blood pressure
• poor diet
• excess body fat
• insufficient exercise
• excess stress

It is never too late to reduce the chance of developing heart disease

Even after many years of neglecting our heart health, the health of the arteries can be improved by making some simple but major lifestyle changes. The most important of these are to adopt a healthy diet, take healthy exercise, lose excess weight, and quit smoking.