Cardiovascular disease information describing how to treat and prevent is available through doctors offices and the local health department. Understanding a person’s individual risk factors as well as early warning signs will ensure better success toward heart disease prevention. Reading as much as possible will help determine the best route to take with consideration to other health problems and daily conduct. Not everyone should be treated the same way, however some tips will remain universal no matter what the circumstances. Evaluating the risk factors should help motivate a person to become more aware of their environment and lifestyle in order to ensure the best possible situation for avoiding cardiac arrest. Stress is a leading factor toward the onset of cardiac problems in individuals who do not have a family history, obesity, or other health problems leading to this type of threat. Careful evaluation of what types of activities a person participates in as well as the amount of down time they give themselves will help determine risk based solely on stress. Heart disease prevention includes reducing stress in daily life including tips for time management and relationship advice. Both of these issues are important for the management of stress and the overall continuation of everyday life despite health threats.

Understanding what a heart attack looks and feels like will prepare a person to call for help when needed as well as inform a person about whether or not a cardiac attack really happened and how to prevent it in the future. Many people have small attacks not knowing what happened and then eventually a big heart attack disables them. Recognizing the signs before the big one hits may eliminate the threat altogether. Any tightness in the chest or trouble breathing should be considered a medical emergency. Though medical advances are great for cardiac monitoring, it is sometimes difficult to determine whether a person HAD an attack. It is much easier to track one while it is happening. Pain in the neck, back, arms, jaw, or stomach is also a possible sign of cardiac problems. Pay attention to all the feelings during this time and track activity leading up to and following the event. This cardiovascular disease information will dramatically help doctors in determining the cause and level of the arrest. Likewise, even if mild symptoms surface they can turn into severe pain and life-threatening circumstances very quickly. If a cardiac attack is suspected, call for help immediately. If someone else is having these problems, offer an aspirin (as long as they aren’t allergic) and call for help immediately; it is better to be safe than sorry. Do not panic as that can worsen their reaction and offer a blanket if they are cold or massage if a muscle hurts. Listening to their complaints will help a bystander inform the ambulance when they arrive. The more information doctors have the more accurate the diagnosis a person will get. “The heart of him that hath understanding seeketh knowledge: but the mouth of fools feedeth on foolishness.” (Proverbs 15:14)

Speaking with a specialist will help anyone understand the importance of paying attention to one’s body for signs of any type of illness. Heart disease prevention is important for the actual disease as well as the diseases that can occur due to the onset of cardiac problems. Elevated blood pressure, high blood sugar, and abnormal heart rate can all be signs of cardiac related problems. Nevertheless, a person should never seek to experience these symptoms due to the fact that they cause fatigue, memory loss, and appetite loss. Living a healthy life includes feeling well no matter what the circumstances. Obesity is one of the most frequently diagnosed problems in the United States. Obesity leads to many other problems and should be taken very seriously. Cardiovascular disease information includes ways to lose weight as well as maintain a healthy lifestyle creating optimal health. Changing eating habits can help a person lose weight as well as boost the immune system and strengthen all parts of the body if administered correctly. This includes concentration on vitamins, organic fruits and vegetables, and the avoidance of refined sugars and vegetable oil. Diets high in animal fat show the least amount of cardiac disease. This type of cardiovascular disease information is important for most favorable success.

Prevention of the disease is important to people who have a family history strong with cardiac problems. Though stress is a major factor toward the onset of the disease, family disposition should be an eye opener and motivator for living the healthiest life possible. This includes never becoming overweight or letting a lifestyle slip into bad habits that are hard to break. This includes smoking, overeating, drugs, not exercising, and poor food choices. A life lived eating fried foods while watching TV and smoking a cigarette will definitely raise a person’s risk toward cardiac problems and become harder and harder to correct as time goes on. Cardiovascular disease information will address these issues and offer suggestions for healthy alternatives. Eating grilled food instead of fried as well as walking on the treadmill while watching a favorite TV show are just a couple of ways to improve the situation. Understanding what habits need to be changed may need to be determined by a professional if self-analysis is unsuccessful. Carefully evaluating the changes that need to take place in order to ensure heart disease prevention will keep a person always moving in a positive direction. The alternative is a fast downward spiral toward dangerous living where disease and illness will eventually rule over a person’s life.

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General health and heart attack prevention begins with making better lifestyle choices. Although many questionable lifestyle choices and age put a person at greater risk of coronary disease, there is a segment of the population that has little control over cardiovascular disease. However, according to government statistics, most CVDs can be prevented by making changes to diet, physical activity level, and ceasing tobacco use. Also, some health sources suggest that as many as a half of the deaths and disabilities attributed to coronary disease can be prevented by reducing such risk factors as high blood pressure, cholesterol levels, obesity, and smoking. Heart attack prevention should be a concern for both men and women. That’s because CVDs afflict both genders. But reports suggest that more women of all ages die from coronary disease then do men. Both men and women from all geographical regions or socio-economic level are at risk of cardiovascular problems. Approximately 1.25 million people in the United States suffer a heart attack each year.

Many young people probably don’t think about ever having coronary disease, but heart attack prevention must start early in a person’s life. This is because the detrimental effects of a poor diet, sedentary lifestyle, and other unhealthy choices will not always be immediately seen. Poor choices show up as a person ages. In addition to coronary disease, the major cardiovascular diseases include: stroke, hypertension, heart failure, and rheumatic heart disease. The heart is a muscle which ages along with the rest of the body. Therefore, early heart attack prevention is important to help keep the muscle strong and healthy later in life. As the person ages, arteries often narrow and stiffen. At the same time, the walls of the heart are also thickening. These changes cause blood pressure to increase in both men and women.
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With age the risk of heart attack increases. Studies indicate that men over the age of 45 and women over the age of 55 are at the greatest risk. Some heat attack symptoms are typical for both men and women: chest pain, shortness of breath, cold sweat, light-headedness; pain in the arm, back, neck, jaw, or stomach. Other symptoms appear mostly in women: nausea, vomiting, weakness, indigestion, and fatigue. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle and heart attack prevention program is important because symptoms may be insidious. They appear and develop so gradually that a person may not give them the attention they deserve. Although in some people symptoms can appear suddenly and without warning, in others signs of an impending coronary attack may be present six months or more in advance. Cardiovascular diseases are on the rise even in economically developed countries. In fact, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. And there is plenty of scientific evidence to support the conventional theories as to why this is happening. The three most often cited reasons are imbalanced nutrition, reduced physical activity, and tobacco use. These lifestyle factors lead to high blood pressure, higher blood cholesterol levels, and obesity.

But heart attack prevention should be a priority, especially for people who have close relatives that have either died or suffered from cardiovascular disease. Christians should feed and care for their body with the same dedication they nurture their spirit, even at an early age. Youth often brings feelings of invincibility, and good health may be taken for granted until something goes wrong. health is precious, but it is not a passive activity. health must be maintained and not ignored. The following verse from Proverbs is true in so many ways: “The labour of the righteous tendeth to life: the fruit of the wicked to sin. He is in the way of life that keepeth instruction: be he that refuseth reproof erreth.” (Proverbs 10: 16-17) Some translations use the word discipline in this passage. Either way, maintaining good physical and spiritual health takes work, discipline, and instruction. Those who don’t work hard or refuse instruction from those who know put themselves at a greater risk of CVDs. health does not come in a bottle. Aging does cause problems that can’t be prevented. Just don’t help the process along with poor choices early in life.

Pray for spiritual strength and guidance on proper heart attack prevention methods. Then begin making changes to dietary habits. Avoid saturated fats and trans-fatty acids. Instead increase consumption of omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 fatty acids can be derived from fish or plant sources. Eat more fruits and vegetables. And increase consumption of whole grains nuts. Limit salt and refined sugar intake. Increase physical activity to at least 30 minutes per day. Avoid smoking and maintain a healthy body weight. Tobacco smoke contains at least 4,800 chemicals, which can damage the heart. Nicotine also narrows the blood vessels. This makes the muscle work harder. As a result, the heart rate and blood pressure increase. Carbon monoxide found in cigarette smoke replaces oxygen in the blood. As a result, the muscle has to work harder to supply oxygen to the body. But studies indicate that the risk of cardiovascular disease drops dramatically within one year of quitting smoking. Another part of heart attack prevention is physical activity. Not only does regular exercise strengthen the muscle, physical exertion helps control weight. Small weight loss can decrease blood pressure and lower blood cholesterol. And get regular health screenings. Specifically have blood pressure and cholesterol levels checked frequently.

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The most common form of heart disease is coronary artery disease (CAD). In CAD, plaque builds up on the walls of the arteries that carry blood to the heart. Over time, this buildup causes the arteries to narrow and harden. This keeps the heart from getting all the blood it needs. Blood clots may develop. If the clot mostly or completely blocks blood flow to the heart, it causes a heart attack.

Stroke happens when the brain doesn’t get enough blood. Without enough blood, brain cells start to die.

The good news is that you can take steps to lower your chances of having a heart attack or stroke. This section of womenshealth.gov will help you figure out your personal risk factors for heart disease and stroke, as well as steps you can take to lower your risks. You also will learn the specific warning signs of heart attack and stroke. In women, the warning signs often are overlooked. But prompt treatment can help women recover from a heart attack or stroke with few or no disabilities.

Whatever your age, you can commit to heart-healthy living. It is never too late to take steps to lower your risk of heart attack and stroke. Let womenshealth.gov show you how.

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eaving a meeting of the House Democratic Caucus, lawmakers said they had received few details about what would be in the legislation, on which they may be asked to vote in the next week or two.

“Everyone expressed frustration that we do not have comprehensive cost estimates from theCongressional Budget Office,” said Representative Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia.

In addition, lawmakers said, they were not given the text of the latest legislation drafted by House and Senate Democratic leaders and the White House to address widespread concerns about the bill passed by the Senate in December.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House would soon approve the Senate bill and a separate package of changes, using a procedure known as budget reconciliation to avoid the threat of a filibuster against the second bill in the Senate.

Representative Anthony D. Weiner, Democrat of New York, said it was difficult for lawmakers to know how they would vote on a bill they had not seen.

House Democrats said Ms. Pelosi had assured them they would have at least one week to examine the text of the budget bill before voting on it.

Democratic aides said House leaders wanted the vote to occur before a two-week spring break scheduled to start on March 26. Otherwise, they said, wavering lawmakers might buckle to pressure from critics of the bill, who plan to step up their campaign against it during the recess.

President Obama plans to leave Thursday on a trip to Indonesia and Australia. With his health care bill hanging in the balance, he faces intensifying questions about whether he should put off the trip, which was timed to coincide with his daughters’ spring break.

The budget reconciliation bill would reduce the Senate’s tax on high-cost health insuranceplans and increase subsidies to help low-income people buy health insurance, Ms. Pelosi said. To help offset the additional costs, lawmakers would increase the Medicare payroll tax on wages and extend it to unearned income, like dividends and interest, for affluent taxpayers.

Democratic leaders in the two chambers said Thursday that they had reached agreement to use the budget bill as a vehicle to enact another of Mr. Obama’s top domestic priorities, overhauling the student loan program. Under the president’s plan, the government would make loans directly to students, instead of guaranteeing loans by private banks.

But Democrats said they were nowhere near agreement on the explosive question of how to restrict insurance coverage of abortion under the health care bill.

Democratic opponents of abortion, led by Representative Bart Stupak of Michigan, have threatened to vote against the Senate bill, saying its abortion restrictions are not tough enough. Senate rules and precedents suggest that the budget bill could not be used to alter those restrictions because they would not have a substantial effect on federal spending.

House Democratic leaders have had desultory talks with Mr. Stupak, but appeared willing to bypass him if they conclude his vote is not needed. Mr. Stupak said he and at least 11 other House Democrats would vote against the Senate bill unless the abortion language was changed.

But Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois, said she doubted that Mr. Stupak had as may votes as he claimed.

“There is no way in this legislation to satisfy Bart’s demands,” Ms. Schakowsky said. Mr. Stupak wants to bar the use of federal money to pay for any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of elective abortions.

In both chambers, Democrats are preparing for a titanic battle that will involve politics and parliamentary procedure as much as health policy.

House Democrats are so skittish about the Senate bill that they are considering a maneuver that would allow them to pass it without explicitly voting for it. The Senate measure would be “deemed passed” if and when the House adopts rules for debate on the follow-up budget reconciliation bill. If the House approves both bills, the health care measure would be ready for signing by the president. But the budget bill would go to the Senate, where Republicans plan to propose dozens of amendments.

Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said it might eventually be necessary for the presiding officer — perhaps Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. — to limit the number of amendments.

Mr. Durbin said “there is no precedent” that would prevent the presiding officer from taking such action. At some point, Mr. Durbin said, the Senate must decide: “What is dilatory? How many amendments are too many?”

In an updated report, the Congressional Budget Office said Thursday that the Senate-passed bill would spend $875 billion to provide coverage for 31 million uninsured people over the next 10 years. The cost, it said, would be more than offset by new taxes and fees and by cutbacks in Medicare, so the bill would reduce budget deficits by a total of $118 billion over 10 years.

Moreover, the budget office said, in the decade after 2019, the bill would tend to reduce the “federal budgetary commitment to health care,” which reflects the cost of health programs and tax breaks for health care.

David M. Herszenhorn and Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.

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Coronary heart disease (CHD), also called coronary artery disease, affects about 14 million men and women in the United States.

Disease develops when a combination of fatty material, calcium, and scar tissue (plaque) builds up in the arteries that supply the heart with blood. Through these arteries, called the coronary arteries, the heart muscle (myocardium) gets the oxygen and other nutrients it needs to pump blood.

• The plaque often narrows the artery so that the heart does not get enough blood.
• This slowing of blood flow causes chest pain, or angina.
• If plaque completely blocks blood flow, it may cause a heart attack(myocardial infarction) or a fatal rhythm disturbance (sudden cardiac arrest).
• A major cause of death and disability, coronary heart disease claims more lives in the United States than the next 7 leading causes of death combined.

The heart consists of 4 chambers: an atrium and a ventricle on the right, and an atrium and ventricle on the left.

• Blood returning to the heart from veins all over the body flows into the right atrium.
• From there the blood flows into the right ventricle, which pumps it out to the lungs for oxygenation.
• The oxygen-rich blood returns to the left atrium.
• From there the blood flows into the left ventricle, which pumps it at high pressure into the arteries.
• This entire process constitutes one heartbeat.

The pumping, or contraction, of the left ventricle must be very powerful because that is what keeps the blood flowing throughout the body.

• The strength of the heart muscle depends on the oxygen and nutrient supply coming via the coronary arteries.
• These arteries are usually strong, elastic, and quite flexible.

The heart has 3 major coronary arteries.

• Two of these arteries arise from a common stem, called the left main coronary artery.
• The left main coronary artery supplies the left side of the heart.
• Its left anterior descending (LAD) branch supplies the front part of the heart.
• The left circumflex (LCX) branch supplies the left lateral and back side of the heart.
• Finally, the right coronary artery (RCA) is separate and supplies the right and the bottom parts of the heart.

As a child, the inner lining of the coronary arteries is quite smooth, allowing blood to flow easily. As a person ages, the cholesterol and calcium content in the walls of the coronary arteries increases, making them thicker and less elastic.

• Unhealthy habits, such as a diet high in cholesterol and other fats, smoking, and lack of exercise accelerate the deposit of fat and calcium within the inner lining of coronary arteries.
• This process is known as atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries. The deposits, or plaques, eventually obstruct the blood vessel, which begins to restrict blood flow.

Plaque is like a firm shell with a soft inner core containing cholesterol. As blood hits it during each heartbeat, the plaque may crack open and expose its inner cholesterol core, which promotes blood clotting. Clots may further reduce blood flow, causing severe pain (angina), or even block it all together.

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Women who take combined hormone therapy for just a few years around the time of menopause appear to have no decrease in heart disease risk, new research suggests. If anything, their risk may go up slightly.

The analysis of data from the study that first linked hormone therapy to heart disease found that even in the first two years of use, treatment with estrogen plus progestin was associated with a small, but not statistically significant increase in heart risk when started within 10 years of menopause.

The number of menopausal women in the study who had heart attacks and strokes was quite small, however, and experts say the advice to those contemplating hormone therapy for the relief of hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms remains unchanged.

“Our findings are consistent with the current guidelines to use hormone therapy in the smallest doses for the shortest possible time for symptoms only,” lead researcher Sengwee Toh, ScD, of Harvard Medical School tells WebMD. “We found no evidence of a protective benefit in the early years of use.”

Hormone Therapy and the Heart

It is now well known that taking combined hormone therapy for many years is associated with an increased risk for heart attacks and strokes in older women who are well past menopause.

But it has not been clear if this risk extends to women who take hormones for just a few years around the time of menopause.

Some studies even suggest that short-term hormone therapy may actually be protective against heart disease in younger women.

In an effort to better understand the impact of combined hormone treatment on heart disease risk around the time of menopause, Toh and colleagues examined data from the widely publicized hormone therapy intervention trial known as the Women’s health Initiative (WHI).

The WHI included more than 16,000 women, half of whom were randomized to receive combined estrogen plus progestin hormone therapy between 1993 and 1998. The other half of the group received placebos. In 2002, the hormone therapy arm of the trial was suspended because of increased rates of heart disease, breastcancer, and blood clots. Toh and colleagues looked more closely at the data to see if outcomes were influenced by the time span between menopause onset and start of hormone therapy.

Compared to women randomized to the placebo arm of the trial, women who commenced combined hormone therapy within 10 years of menopause had a slight increase in heart disease risk during the first two years of use, but this increase in risk did not reach statistical significance and was considered small.

Perhaps the more important finding was that there was clearly no evidence of a protective effect.

“The available evidence suggests that estrogen plus progestin therapy does not reduce the risk for coronary heart disease during the first 3 to 6 years of use in women who initiated therapy close to menopause,” Toh and colleagues write. “Because the typical duration of use of hormone therapy is short, most women contemplating estrogen plus progestin therapy for the relief of menopausal symptoms should not expect protection against heart disease.”

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The researchers said the findings suggest doctors must do better in determining which patients should be subjected to the cost and risks of an angiogram. The test carries a small but real risk — less than 1 percent — of causing a stroke or heart attack, and also entails radiation exposure.

“We can do better. There is no doubt in my mind,” said Dr. Ralph Brindis of the University of California, San Francisco, one of the study’s authors.

Every year in the United States, more than a million people get an angiogram, in which a thin tube is inserted in the arm or groin and threaded up to the heart to check for blocked arteries that could lead to a heart attack. Dye is injected through the tube to make blockages show up on X-rays.

Angiograms are often given to patients who might be having a heart attack or have symptoms that suggest a serious blockage. They are also sometimes done on people who may have some less clear-cut symptoms, like shortness of breath, or no symptoms but some risky traits like high cholesterol and an abnormal result on another heart test. This group accounts for about 20 to 30 percent of angiogram cases.

In the study, nearly two-thirds of the patients in this second group were found to have no serious blockages.

The researchers could not establish why so few proved to have heart disease. But Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a Yale cardiologist and health-outcomes researcher unconnected to the study, said he thinks the problem arises because doctors are afraid of missing something, and also getting sued.

“We fear doing too little,” he said. “I think that we developed a culture where people feel that doing more and knowing more is always the proper course. What that does is sometimes lead us to overuse.”

Cost is also a concern. On average, Medicare pays about $1,400 for an outpatient angiogram and about $3,000 for the procedure in a hospital.

Researchers said more study is needed to sort out how to better select patients for an angiogram. For now, experts suggest patients in the category studied by the researchers question their doctors about the need for the test and the risks and alternatives.

To decide whether someone needs an angiogram, a doctor assesses a patient’s medical status and symptoms, and usually tries a noninvasive test, such as an ultrasound of the heart or having the patient run on a treadmill. It is this gatekeeper process that needs improvement, researchers suggested in Thursday’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

They sifted through records of nearly 2 million angiograms performed at 663 U.S. hospitals between 2004 and April 2008. The data came from a registry kept by the American College of Cardiology, which sponsored the study.

The researchers focused on about 400,000 patients who raised doctors’ suspicions but had no known heart disease and weren’t getting emergency heart treatment.

In those people, the test revealed no significant artery blockages 62 percent of the time. That doesn’t mean all those tests were unnecessary, but the rate is high enough to suggest doctors could do a better job of choosing who really needs the exam, researchers said.

The researchers suggested doctors should be less willing to order an angiogram for symptom-free patients, a group that made up 30 percent of the study sample.

Beyond that, further study might help doctors better gauge heart disease risk from a patient’s symptoms and characteristics like age and history of other diseases, said lead author Dr. Manesh Patel of Duke University.

Doctors could also use more research to help them choose the right noninvasive test, which might reduce the need for angiograms, he said.

Choices now include the treadmill test, injecting a radioactive solution to trace blood flow within the heart, doing an ultrasound to watch the walls of the heart moving, and doing a specialized CT scan that has recently shown promise.

“We still haven’t figured out, in all honesty, the best way of applying these technologies,” Brindis said.

In fact, one of the study’s co-authors — Dr. Pamela Douglas of Duke — just received a $32.5 million federal grant, the largest ever for heart imaging, to compare various heart imaging tests and see which ones do the most to prevent heart attacks, deaths and hospitalization.

Experts praised Patel’s study.

Some previous reports have found similar results, but the new study is so huge “we can now feel comfortable these aren’t isolated findings, this is for real,” said Dr. Michael Lauer, director of the division of cardiovascular sciences at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

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