“The medical literature tells us that the most effective ways to reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and many more problems are through healthy diet and exercise. Our bodies have evolved to move, yet we now use the energy in oil instead of muscles to do our work.”

David Suzuki (born March 24, 1936) is a Japanese Canadian academic, science broadcaster and environmental activist.

2 – Arteriosclerosis or Atherosclerosis both = CAD (Coronary Artery Disease).  This is a common disorder, typically affecting men over age 50 and women as well but possibly earlier. People are at higher risk if they have a personal or family history of coronary artery disease (heart disease) or cerebrovascular disease (stroke), diabetes, smoking, hypertension (high blood pressure), or kidney disease involving hemodialysis.   Than live healthy if you want to live longer and not get these risks or even if you do have them already than be compliant in reaching your optimal level of health with the disease. If no history and not diagnosed yet with any of these but want to prevent it live healthy, if you’re not. Arteriosclerosis is hardening of the arteries, which occurs with aging (wear and tear from also practicing bad habits that takes over years allowing this to form not just due to age; that’s why most books state it happens later in life. As opposed to adults not too many with cardiac disease young). Atherosclerosis is a form of arteriosclerosis but this is the lipid related arterial lesion, is the major disease responsible for the principle clinical complications = BLOCKAGE in the arteries. Definitely affected if already with high cholesterol and fats in the diet and of course smoking from tar build up in the vessel. Over time CAD can weaken the heart muscle also causing the heart to go into decompensation causing symptoms of chest pain=angina to even a heart attack. This may lead to heart failure, a serious condition where the heart can’t pump blood the way that it should. Even an irregular heartbeat, or arrhythmia, can also develop that if it gets worse could lead into cardiac arrest. The CDC states under CHF (congestive heart failure) “Diseases that damage your heart—including coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes—are common causes of heart failure. Smoking; being overweight; eating foods high in fat, cholesterol, and sodium; and physical inactivity also increase your risk of developing heart failure.” Let’s wake up America with health and practicing good habits to decrease your risk of developing these diseases.

High Cholesterol levels — High cholesterol is one of the leading causes of heart attacks. Cholesterol is transported through your blood in two ways: the low density lipoprotein (LDL), which transports cholesterol to the cells that need it, and the high density lipoprotein (HDL), which is the healthy cholesterol that reduces your risk for heart attack. Having high LDL levels raises your risk of having heart disease by 20%. Losing 11-20 pounds can help you significantly reduce your cholesterol level so you prevent blockage from occurring preventing heart attack and atherosclerosis.  

A sedentary lifestyle and lifetime lack of exercise seems to be major contributing factors for getting arteriosclerosis and heart-disease onset; see how they all interrelate with one causing another people.

Starting to get it? That based on how healthy you live in many cases is the determining factor of how you turn out regarding disease, but there are non-modifiable risk factors to disease (not controllable) = 1.) Age 2.) Sex (Ex. A higher amount of cases with HTN are males vs. females).        3. Race (Ex. African American have a higher count in HTN than Caucasian)  4. Heredity.

Modifiable Risk Factors (things you can change that effect diseases) = 1- weight 2- smoking           3 – living conditions 4 – diet 5 – The health & unhealthy habits you practice.

How to prevent these cardiac conditions all listed above, don’t live the type of life that’s unhealthy, at least on a regular basis (if at all occasionally live unhealthy – Ex. eating fast foods) to decrease the chances of developing these cardiac conditions that are high in America now and have been for several years. Need help and guidance in how to go about this; then you are on the right website. The answer to prevention or treatment of cardiac disease is in changing or modifying your diet, if it’s unhealthy 100% or just partially. The answer includes exercise (from just walking fast or if you like working out, even better) and if needed medication your doctor will decide that, particularly cardiac – the specialist for this area. All these changes can modify your blood lipid profile = cholesterol control, which helps increasing your heart to a better tolerance with activity, stress and simply functioning. Recommended is going to a cardiologist for people diagnosed with heart conditions or your general practitioner with any illness/disease before making changes to help guide you towards the right choices. Your doctor can help you in determining which prevention or treatment plan is best for you.

Bad Foods high in cholesterol too avoid = Fast foods, whole fat dairy products = milk/cheese/ butter/mayonnaise/bacon/processed deli meats/salad dressings/shortening.

The key is to living a healthy life overall. This consists of diet, exercise or activity and healthy habits learned and practiced routinely in your life that will help prevent or assist you in treating cardiac disease. The better we treat ourselves regarding health the higher the odds we will live a longer life. It is pretty simple. There is not just one food to eat or one type of exercise to do or one healthy habit to keep you healthy, there are choices. Come onto my website which is no fee, no charge, no hacking, just letting you check us out to look further in understanding how to take a shape for your life with Dr. Anderson and even myself as your personal health coach in helping you learn what healthier habits or changes you want for a healthier way of living. It allows you to make all the decisions in what you want to do regarding what to eat (diet) using the 4 food groups, what to do as exercise/activity, and what healthy habits you want to add in your life, that you may not be doing at this time. We just provide the information and healthy foods in your diet, and you decide if you want it. You make all the choices. Wouldn’t you want less disease/illness for yourself and for others throughout the nation including the future generations? Thank you for taking the time to read my article to how we can help you get healthier and make a healthier USA. Click onto healthyusa.tsfl.com and I hope to hear from you soon.

“I saw many people who had advanced heart disease and I was so frustrated because I knew if they just knew how to do the right thing, simple lifestyle and diet steps, that the entire trajectory of their life and health would have been different.”

Dr. Mehmet Oz (cardiothoracic surgeon & The host of The Dr. Oz Show)

Now knowing the anatomy and physiology of the heart let’s now understand more about cardiac disease in how they develop and in how it effects the engine of the body, being the heart and other areas of the body. If eating unhealthy or living unhealthy habits or even overweight to obese these are the problems that can arise regarding the cardiac system alone:

• High Blood Pressure is the primary cause of death among Americans older than 25. About 75 million people suffer from high B/P or hypertension, which is a major risk factor for heart disease and more. Did you know that from the National Health Survey in 1981 their statistics indicated that hypertension afflicts at least 17 to 22 million American adults during that time, in the book of “Principles of Anatomy and Physiology” by authors Tortora and Anagnostakos? Look at today, yes our population has increased but the debate with that is we now know better and have for awhile. We as responsible people for ourselves, families (children in particular) and as a country should be living healthier but still too many EAT and PRACTICE unhealthy habits based on statistics, if we weren’t disease would be less in percentage throughout America.

AMERICA wake up or else we will just continue increasing high in the following problems we already have at home and make life, especially for many, unbearable.

                                                                                                                                              Uncontrolled high blood pressure is of considerable concern because of what harm it can do to the HEART, BRAIN, and KIDNEYS if it remains uncontrolled.

1- Heart=Angina to Heart Attack (infarction)

2-Brain=Transient Ischemia Attack (TIA) to a stroke

3- Kidneys=Reducing blood suppy to kidneys causing the kidneys to secrete RENIN into the blood. This enzyme breaks down angiotensin from the plasma protein (a powerful blood constrictor in the blood ) making the blood pressure higher.   It stimulates aldosterone release in our blood stream that promotes sodium and water retention in the blood ,= increases your B/P more due to how it works.

                                                                                                                                                                          These 3 organs with conditions are all due to obstruction of blood flow to the organs and due to the effect of High blood pressure climbs, and the heart must work or pump harder=things that happen to our engine:   One, the heart muscle tissue eventually thickens and the heart becomes ENLARGED causing it not to do its job properly causing it to go in time into failure.   Two, is stress to the heart = lack of oxygen = chest pain or myocardial infarction (heart attack). When we stress the heart out=overworked, lack of oxygen to the heart tissue happens = pain as a symptom (we call it Angina that can be reversed) and if it continues it can lead to a heart attack = scarring to the heart = damage done to the heart that’s not reversible. Also with constant HTN which can cause constriction of vessels in the brain this can cause the same stress but with different symptoms, the brain with uncontrolled HTN can cause lack of oxygen to the brain = headache which if not resolved can lead to a TIA (reversible) or stroke (scarring to the brain, not reversible).   All of these responses are made worse by low potassium intake and high sodium intake orally (in a lot of cases these conditions could have been controlled via diet, exercise with balancing it with rest and check up with a doctor (cardiac especially).  Check out Monday Part 3 covering more about areas of the human body that heart disease affects.

“Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. an American author best known for his inspirational book, Life’s Little Instruction Book, which was a New York Times bestseller (1991=1994)

Let us first understand how the heart functions. For starters think of a car, without the engine the car won’t move unless pushed in neutral but the engine is still not working at all. Well, the body can’t work at all if the heart isn’t working=dead. Right? We can’t live without the heart but more importantly you can’t function actively and productively with a one that is diseased not cared for or just severely diseased. We need to take good care of our bodies especially if diseased already, that includes your heart.

Looking at the anatomy and physiology of the heart it will help us understand in how it functions. For starters the heart is like an engine in having chambers (2 on the top called atriums and 2 on the bottom called ventricles), 4 chambers to be exact (sort of like a 4 cylinder car). It also has valves, in allowing our blood to go in and out of the heart. They are located before the entrance of the blood entering the heart on the left and right upper chamber, between the upper and lower chambers (atriums & ventricles), at the beginning of arteries and veins involved in moving blood throughout the heart and to or from the lungs to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood, in allowing the blood to leave the heart with oxygenated blood to now go throughout the body (like oil/gas entering and leaving the engine which allows it to work).

Now getting down in how the heart works. First take our blood, in particular our red blood cells are the cells that carry oxygen and carbon dioxide throughout our body; the body without enough oxygen in the body tissues=cellular starvation. We can’t survive without oxygen sent to our tissues=food to our tissues (Ex. poor circulation to any tissue of the body = pain and if not resolved it will go into necrosis = death of the tissue, like in a diabetic that has poor circulation to the toes/foot that has pain/numbness and unresolved = necrosis to amputation). So your blood, in particular the red blood cells, need to transport oxygen (O2) to and take carbon dioxide (CO2) from our tissues in the body and refill up with more 02 and release C02 (O2 used up by our tissues) that takes place at the lungs. This process is done constantly in the body to feed our tissues O2 (by RBC’s picking up 02 upon inhalation), with tissues releasing CO2 picked up by the RBC’s that take the CO2 to the lungs in release it from our body completely via breathing=exhaling but only done due to the heart beating allowing the blood to circulate and recirculate throughout the body and get more 02 from our lungs (just like the engine how the engine works to allow fuels, oils to circulate throughout the engine and other areas of the car to allow the car overall to function).                                                                                                                                                                        In review, our bodies oxygen is the food to our tissues in keeping them alive through our red blood cells (RBC’s) that carry the O2 to the tissues but there through a working heart and lungs only (one organ cannot live without the other). There has to be a systemic way we allow this to work and this is through the heart, lungs, and RBC’s (3 systems that connect with each other). The heart = right side deals with more C02 blood which is blood returning to the heart to get more 02 going first via the Rt. side of the heart to the Rt. and Lt. pulmonary artery, each of which carries blood to the lungs for 02 and C02 exchange to occur. This is for getting more 02 in our RBC’s with allowing them to release C02 at the lungs and then return them to the left side of the heart to be sent through both Lt. chambers of the heart to our blood stream to utilize the new 02 in our RBC’s to our body tissues. This is a 24hr/7days a week job for our red blood cells, lungs and heart in functioning to keep the human body alive.

In simpler terms this is how it works: The blood that needs to be refreshed with more 02 when it enters the right (Rt.) atrium coming from a vessel that brings back mainly carbon dioxide in the blood from the toes and the brain that was mainly used up by the tissues and those RBC’s need to be reoxygenated with higher levels of oxygen for the RBC’s to deliver 02 again to tissues. It first goes to the Rt. atrium & fills up to its max level simultaneously while the left (Lt.) atrium is filling up to its max level. When the Rt. atrium is ready to drop its blood max level into the Rt. ventricle below it the valves open between the chambers simultaneously dropping the blood to the Rt. Ventricle (Lt side does the same thing) but only the Rt. side ends up going to the lungs through a Rt. and Lt. pulmonary artery to get more oxygen to send it to the highly oxygenated side of the heart, being on the left side. The job the Rt. side of the heart does is this, it just goes from the Rt. side of the heart to our lungs and back to the heart on the Lt. side through the 4 pulmonary veins to the L atrium; so the path or distance for the Rt. side of the heart to do its function is a short distance = it gets your used up oxygen in the red blood cells (that are high in carbon dioxide) to get more oxygen by going through the Rt. side of the heart sending them to the lungs where they get more O2 and then they are sent back to the Lt. side of the heart.   This is the Rt. side of the heart’s function.

Now let us look at what the Lt. side of the heart does in function. The RBC’s reoxygenated leave the lungs and sent via the 4 pulmonary veins to the Lt. side of the heart reaching the Lt. atrium thus carries a high 02 level in the RBC’s (this blood just came directly from the lungs where O2 and CO2 exchange for the RBC’s took place). Next the RBC’s go to the Lt. ventricle to our Aorta that sends this high oxygen level of RBC’s out to all our tissues as food to prevent starvation of the tissues).   Again, when the valves open between the chambers and allowing this blood to fill up in the lower chambers called the Rt. and Lt. ventricles it is simultaneously done also including the valves that open and close in the the pulmonary artery and the aorta that is in the Lt. ventricle sending RBC’s out to our circulatory system high in O2 to be utilized by our body tissues.

So the way it works with both sides of the heart is the Rt. side sends blood of highly carbon dioxide blood (RBC’s) to the lungs to get re-oxygenated through 2 vessels from the Rt. side of the heart to the lungs that sends this re-oxygenated RBC’s through 4 vessels to the Lt. side of the heart and it reaches the Lt. side of the heart which sends this highly oxygenated blood throughout the top and bottom of the Lt. side of the heart to the aorta that sends this blood throughout our body tissues. When this oxygen is used all up from dispensing it out to tissues the C02 is taken back from the tissues by RBC’s that replace it with O2, this process starts all over again with these RBC’s that returned to the heart. Ending line the right side of the heart is for higher levels of carbon dioxide in the blood (used up blood) to get more oxygenated whereas the left side of the heart sends higher levels of O2 throughout the body all the way to the toes (a harder job=muscle mass of the left side of the heart works out more than the right making the left side of the heart a bigger muscle vs the right side.

Now knowing the anatomy and physiology of the heart let’s now understand more about cardiac disease in how they develop and in how it effects the engine of the body, being the heart and how it effects other areas of the body in Part 2 this weekend.

Stents help prevent arteries from becoming narrow or blocked again in the months or years after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), sometimes referred to as coronary angioplasty. However, stents aren’t a cure for atherosclerosis or its risk factors.  Making lifestyle changes can help prevent reoccurrence of a blockage.

NIH National Heart, Lung and Blood institute

Risks

Risks include the standard risks of an interventional, catheter-based procedure, which should be specifically discussed with your doctor. Lesions treated with stents can “restenosis” (re- narrow with in weeks to months after the procedure) similar to restenosis associated with angioplasty. This is why patients after having a stent put in they are on a medication for example like Plavix for life to prevent this occurrence from happening. It is a anti platelet medication, meaning it doesn’t allow clotting to happen in the stent so blockage doesn’t reoccur through clotting.

Many new technologies are being tested to reduce the problem of restenosis. These technologies include coating and coverings for the stent, new materials, and radiation. These new technologies are primarily experimental at this point and will reach soon to the market if not already. Technology allows the medical field to continuously expand and this will be replaced at one point but isn’t yet. Just give it time. At one point we had no CABG (coronary artery bypass) but now the stent in certain cases is replaced by angiograms to further expanding to angioplasties and stents furthering allowing the surgery to take place 1x hopefully if the patient is compliant in diet, exercise, and following the doctors orders with meds, activity and follow up visits (which are so vital).   A lot is up to the patient in caring or themselves to prevent having this take place again.

Follow up Instructions

Your doctor will recommend blood thinning medications following your stent procedure. These agents are usually given for one month post procedure along with aspirin and then continued indefinitely. Your doctor may also prescribe antibiotics for a period of time after the stent procedure, to be taken anytime you have a medical or dental procedure. Preventing infection.

MRI tests should not be done for at least eight weeks without your doctor’s approval. Metal detectors do not present a problem. Stents appear to be safe in the long-term; there are no long-term complications associated with a permanent stent.

Diabetics who suffer a heart attack may be better off receiving a coated or “drug-eluting” stent than a cheaper bare-metal model, according to one study.

AHA

A stent is a wire mesh tube that is used to help hold open an artery. To simple understanding this concept think of a plumber or a mechanic. With a plumber sometimes they have to replace a certain area of a pipe that connects the water or like a mechanic replacing a certain area of piping (like the muffler piping connected infront of the muffler than can either can be replaced or just welded with piece of piping welded just to save money. Well a stent opens the artery that was clogged and its put in that place to reinforce that area of the artery to remain open to allow blood to get to that heart from that coronary artery and it will stay there life to keep the artery permanently patent to prevent the blockage from happening again with the synthetic mesh piece.

Description

Stents are used to hold open diseased coronary arteries (these arteries supply blood to the heart), as well as diseased arteries of the peripheral vascular system (PVS). Peripheral means away from the heart the PVS is the arteries that supply blood to the rest of the body (again away from the heart all the way down to the hands and feet).

There are variety of stents currently available.

For a surgeon to find out if you even need one, first usually a angiogram is performed and this is a catheter simply from the femerol artery or from your arm to the coronary arteries. If the MD sees you show a blockage 80% or more an angioplasty is performed which is a balloon at the end of this catheter that blows up and decompresses to give the effect like punching gloves. The balloon inflates and deflates over and over again till the blockage breaks open free and then a stent is put in that area to help keep it open permanently (patent).

Some stents have been compressed onto the outside of an angioplasty balloon catheter and delivered by inflating the balloon in the desired location. Other stents are “self- expanding” spring-loaded devices, which expand automatically upon deployment.

Stents remain in arteries permanently. The tissue lining the arteries actually grows over the metal mesh to cover the inner lumen of the stent.

Stent procedures have become very common like tonsillectomies were in childhood. Stents are sometimes used as an alternative to coronary artery bypass surgery, if the patient is a candidate. Stents are often used in combination with balloon angioplasty. One leads to the other depending on what the angioplasty displays for the surgeon on the T.V. in when they are doing the procedure and if the come up to a blockage high enough to perform the angioplasty followed with a stent it will be done.

Stents are used in cases of “restenosis”, which refers to the re-closing of arteries after balloon angioplasty. In carefully selected patients, the use of stents can dramatically reduce restenosis following balloon angioplasty or other catheter-based procedures. Stents are used frequently to hold open the arteries that have been damaged, torn, or dissected by balloon angioplasty or other catheter-based procedures. Like plumber or mechanic, get it.

Stents allow angioplasty to be done in patients with severe and long-segment obstruction of coronary arteries. As soon as the I initial part of the block is widened, a stent is place, which holds it open allowing further opening to proceed. Stents have also allowed angioplasty to be performed in patients with blocks of multiple vessels, and in multiple blocks in a single artery.