what causes heart disease?
Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) is not a single disease, but a complex of diseases of varied etiology. Some of the recognized causes of heart disease include damage to the heart muscle or valves due to a congenital defect; or to inflammation and damage associated with various viral, bacterial, fungal, rickettsial or parasitic diseases. Rheumatic fever or syphilis can lead to heart disease, as can genetic or autoimmune disorders in which cellular proteins in the heart muscle are deranged or which disrupt enzymes affecting cardiac function. These factors probably contributed to most cases of heart disease recorded in the early part of the century, when rates of infectious diseases were much higher and antibiotics were not in use. Nevertheless, heart disease was relatively rare in 1900, accounting for approximately 8 percent of all deaths in the US. But by 1950, CHD was the leading cause of mortality in the US, causing more than 30 percent of all deaths, and the figure has been climbing ever
Chapter Six: Free Radicals Doctors are fond of telling you that no one knows what causes heart disease. When MY mother died of heart disease, her doctor told me that “no one knows what causes it!” At the time I was completely ignorant of heart disease data, and accepted the doctor s words as truth. Later I became suspicious, looked for some books on the subject, and found that there were plenty of people who had useful insights into the actual causes of heart disease. This information has been available for decades, but not usually very easy to find. They will tell you of various risk factors, but most of them still don t admit to any specific understanding of how heart disease develops. One thing has been proven true: Heart disease starts young. When the Army ordered autopsies done on soldiers who had died in battle, during the Korean War, they found considerable evidence of heart disease in these young men — many of them 20 years old. Autopsies on otherwise healthy Americans, killed
Medical doctors and scientists have identified risk factors for heart disease. Some of these factors (family history, age, gender, race) are beyond our control. Several risk factors can and should be controlled. This includes adopting a healthy lifestyle but may also require medications. Uncontrollable Risk Factors • Family history. If your mother, father, brother or sister developed heart disease before age 55, your risk for heart disease is high. Your risk increases if your grandparents, aunts or uncles suffered a heart attack or underwent heart surgery. • Age. As you age, your risk increases because your heart doesnt work as well as it once did. • Gender. For many years, doctors didnt think womens risk of heart disease was as great as mens. We now know that once women reach menopause, their risk of heart disease is virtually equal to mens risk. Hormone replacement therapy with estrogen may not be protecting the heart from heart attack. • Race. Heart disease is more common in African
While diet and exercise do play a huge role in the disease, this role may not be nearly as prominent as doctors and scientists over the last 30 years or so have lead us to believe. One of the leading and most dangerous causes is damage to the heart muscle or a congenital defect. Damage can be caused by a viral, bacterial, fungal, rickettsial or parasitic disease. This dangerous disease can cause a serious weakening of the heart muscle which eventually leads to heart disease. Each of these high risk factors for heart disease are caused by situations not related to exercise or diet. That is not to say that diet and exercise are not important to cardiac health, but blaming all causes on those factors alone is grossly incorrect. There are literally dozens of risk factors for heart disease. The most commonly cited ones are high blood cholesterol, smoking, lack of exercise, stress, and being overweight. Of these the strongest link between to a direct cause is smoking. The other causes of hea
