Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of death worldwide, claiming the lives of an estimated 17.9 million people each year. CVDs are a group of heart and blood vessel disorders that include coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, rheumatic heart disease, and others. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), heart attacks and strokes account for more than four out of every five CVD deaths, with one-third of these deaths occurring in people under the age of 70.
An unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, tobacco use, and harmful alcohol use are the most important behavioural risk factors for heart disease and stroke. Individuals may experience elevated blood pressure, elevated blood glucose, elevated blood lipids, and overweight or obesity as a result of behavioural risk factors. These “intermediate risk factors” are detectable in primary care settings and indicate an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, heart failure, and other complications.
In an interaction with ABP Live, Dr Mohit Tandon, Consultant Non-Invasive Cardiologist, Fortis Escorts Hospital, Okhla – New-Delhi shared some of the common myths surrounding heart diseases:
Young People Should Not Worry About Heart Disease As It Is A Disease Of Old:
The foundation of future heart-related diseases is generally laid in your adolescence and youth. Your eating habits, your lifestyle, how frequently you exercise, and the quality of your daily sleep, all tend to affect the risk factors related to heart diseases namely obesity, high cholesterol, diabetes, and hypertension. Plaques can start forming as early as adolescence.
High BP Is Always Associated With Symptoms:
Hypertension is called the silent killer, because it may remain totally asymptomatic till it is detected incidentally or the patient suffers some organ damage. So one should not wait for the symptoms to develop, getting your BP tested is quick and easy, the earlier we diagnose hypertension, the more we can better control it and prevent damage to the vital organs.
If Someone Has A Heart Attack He Will Always Have Chest Pain:
Though chest pain, central and crushing type is commonly reported by heart attack patients, it is not infrequent to find patients presenting without chest pain or atypical symptoms like pain in the left arm only, pain in the jaw, or out-of-proportion-fatigue, breathlessness, and tiredness on doing physical activity. These variations are common in females and diabetics. So if you have risk factors and are feeling these types of symptoms, get yourself checked.
Diabetes Will Not Increase The Risk Of Heart Attacks If I Take Regular Diabetes Medications:
Well, strict control of blood sugar and diabetes definitely helps in reducing the risk of future heart attacks, but still compared to a non-diabetic your risk remains high. The reason is the factors that increase the risk of diabetes are also factors involved in causing heart attacks like central obesity, smoking, stress, and a sedentary lifestyle.
One Need Not Check Cholesterol Till He Is Middle-Aged:
As per the recommendations of the American heart association, starting at age 20 you should check your lipid levels every 5 years, the frequency may be shortened as you age, develop multiple risk factors for heart disease if you have deranged cholesterol levels of strong family history of heart disease or high cholesterol. Earlier detection and optimisation of high cholesterol help you live with a healthy heart longer.
I Feel My Heart Beating Too Fast, Am I Having A Heart Attack?
Our heart rate is affected by multiple factors and it operates in a range. Normal heart rate is between 60 to 100/per minute. However, anxiety, stress, pain, change in posture, and exercise all can affect our heart rate making it race faster.
Normally we don’t feel our heart beating, but if you feel that there is a constant thumping sensation in your chest or your heart starts beating faster without any specific reason affecting your quality of life or you feel dizzy or there is sweating associated with a fast heartbeat, you should get yourself checked immediately.
Doctors can use holter monitoring to record and analyze your heartbeat over an extended period to see if you are having a normal but fast rhythm or an abnormal rhythm called arrhythmia.
I Feel Frequent Pain In My Legs, However, It Is Part Of Aging And Weakness:
Frequent burning pain occurring in your legs which comes on walking and goes slowly away with resting, may point towards peripheral arterial disease, as we grow old our arteries also age and become stiffer and may become narrow, among those who smoke are diabetic are obese and have high cholesterol, the risk increases significantly.
Studies have shown that subjects with PAD have a higher risk of having major heart attacks and may have increased complications.
So these are a few myths that we need to bust to make a more conscious decision to check and keep our hearts healthy.