Heart Disease

What is it, and what can be done to prevent it?

By: Crystal Russo, Copy Editor; Photo by Jack Rummel

We’ve all heard songs and stories about hearts breaking, aching, or bursting with love, but what does it really mean to have heart disease? Heart disease is the leading killer across most racial and ethnic minority communities in the United States. In 2007, one in every nine adult natural causes of death was due to heart disease. African Americans and the Hispanic community have greater statistical likelihood of death from heart disease than other groups due to connections to high obesity rates and high blood pressure in these communities.

The most common form of heart disease, coronary heart disease, is a disorder of the blood vessels of the heart.  When an artery becomes blocked, preventing oxygen and nutrients from getting to the heart, a heart attack occurs. Heart disease is a term referring to several cardiovascular diseases, which are diseases of the heart and blood vessel system. Other cardiovascular diseases include stroke, high blood pressure, angina (chest pain), and rheumatic heart disease.

Can’t a Doctor Just Fix It?

While pharmaceutical treatments and surgeries have been developed to allow greater recovery and survival rates following heart attacks and other cardiac episodes, heart disease is a lifelong condition—once you get it, you'll always have it.

Procedures such as bypass surgery and angioplasty exist to help blood and oxygen flow to the heart more easily, but the arteries remain damaged, which is why heart attacks can reoccur.  If changes in lifestyle are not made to allow the arteries to recover, the condition of the blood vessels will steadily worsen, and the risks of another cardiac episode remain high. Many people die of complications from heart disease, or can become permanently disabled.

Am I At Risk?

The conditions or factors related to heart disease have been extensively studied. Some factors linked to heart disease include family history and age, but there are a number of things that people can control.  High blood pressures, high blood cholesterol, diabetes, smoking, being overweight, or being physically inactive are all indicators that are connected to heart disease. 

It is easy to turn things around for yourself, just by making some small changes to your lifestyle.  By making sure that you are getting some physical activity or light exercise, lowering saturated fat and sodium in your diet, or even getting support towards maintaining a healthy weight, you can lower your risk for cardiac episodes, even if your family has a medical history of this disease.   

Screening and Cardiac Risk Assessment

While keeping active and eating well, it is important to have your doctor test you and give you all your “numbers”, such as weight, BMI, cholesterol, and blood pressure. A cardiac risk assessment is a group of tests and health factors that indicate your chance of having a coronary event. They have been refined to indicate the degree of risk: slight, moderate, or high, based on your cholesterol, blood pressure, lifestyle, and family history.  This is a proven way of checking how your situation stands, but remember, it is never too late to change your lifestyle, lower your risk, and help your arteries! 

More information on heart disease is available through the American Heart Association, at www.heart.org, and you should ask your doctor what steps you should take to prevent heart disease!