Heart Disease – Know About Symptoms and Heart Care

Your heart, other than your brain, is the center of many body processes especially that it pumps the river of your life, your blood. When not taken care properly, you may contact or acquire a heart disease that could be a threat to your life.

What is heart disease?

Heart disease , also known as cardiovascular disease, is an umbrella term used to describe other ailments that affect the busiest muscle in the body, the heart. Mainly, it affects older people and is hereditary in nature. Heart diseases have become one of the major causes of deaths all over the world. Many of the variants of the disease are considered as “silent killers� because they show no visible symptoms especially those that are affected with high blood pressure.

Heart disease s are closely associated with blood pressure, cholesterol, hardening of the arteries, heart attacks and strokes. The disease occurs when the heart and vessels of the blood are not working properly or are malfunctioning because of other factors like too much cholesterol, fatigue and improper diets.

Other Problems Related to Heart Disease

Many of the problems that go along with heart disease have to do with the arteries. Arteries are not the same with veins. They are muscular blood vessels that carry blood away from the heart. Arteriosclerosis or the hardening of the arteries is one of the complications of heart disease. The arteries become thick and no longer flexible that the blood could not flow smoothly.

Another problem is atherosclerosis. This occurs when there are plaque deposits caused by the buildup of cholesterol and far in the arteries. In turn, the arteries become narrow and the blood can not flow through. When the heart could not get enough blood to pump, a person is suffering from angina and could feel chest pain.

Two of the most deadly complication is heart attack and stroke. These two happens when the heart malfunctions. There is heart attack when a blood clots in the part of the heart. On the other hand, stroke happens when the brain is not able to get enough blood due to the clotting of blood or bursting of blood vessel.

Acquiring Heart Disease

Unlike diseases that are caused by virus or bacteria, heart disease is not contagious. Rather, there are risk factors that increase the chances of a person to acquire heart disease. One of these factors is old age. When people get older, the functioning of the heart could not be as healthy as it uses to be while we are young. The heart also deteriorates especially because of unhealthy lifestyle. As earlier said, heart disease is also hereditary. When you have family members who had the same problems, most likely you could also acquire the same.

However, some risk factors of heart disease are controllable. Among these factors are smoking, having high blood pressure, being overweight, and not exercising. These entire factors, if not monitored can contribute to having a heart disease.

Signs of Heart Disease

Heart disease s do not actually give visible symptoms or signs to people suffering it. Most of the time the disease is detected when the patient is already feeling chest pain or already had a heart attack of stroke.

To determine whether a person has a heart disease, one or a couple of the following procedure is initiated. Electrocardiogram records the electric activity of the heart. Through this test, the heart beating is determined when it is normal or not. Echocardiogram, on the other hand, uses sound waves that bounced off the parts of the heart. These waves create a picture of the heart, which is displayed in the monitor. With the stress test, some cables are connected to the body and to the electrocardiogram machine. The heart activity and how the muscles react while the patient exercise is being monitored. Catheterization locates the narrowed arteries through a long and thin tube that is inserted inside the body. This tube emits a special dye. Last is the carotid artery scan, which also uses sound waves to locate blockage in the carotid artery.