Analysis of Healthy Heart - Research Paper Example

 Analysis of Healthy Heart ABSTRACT This research paper studies the notion of a healthy heart. It gives the outline of the heart main functions and investigates such diseases as high blood pressure and Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. It doesn’t only gives the description of these ailments but also gives tips how to treat it and prevent. Another problem that is raised in the paper is obesity and its connection with the heart health. The heart is the main pomp of the body, which function is to make blood circulate round an organism. Taking into account that the heart of an average person beats 73 times a minute, it is clear that the work load of this organ is just enormous and in order to provide its durable and continuous operation it is necessary to care about it. A heart has two sides that are called in medicine the rite and the left sides. The left side of the heart is in charge of pumping deoxygenated blood to the lungs. The left part, in its turn, pumps oxygenated blood round the organism. “The lower chambers of the heart are know as the ventricles and are more muscular and stronger than the upper chambers, known as the atria” (Kuczmarski 2008). This is so since large volumes of blood are pumped upwards the atria from the ventricles. A healthy heart decreases the chance of gaining the high blood pressure and high level of cholesterol, leaving aside the heart diseases. The latter one can turn the full life into the limited one with being always ready to take some pills in order to stimulate the heart work. There are several factors that can contribute to the reduction of the heart diseases chance: healthy food, doing physical exercises and avoiding stress. High calorie food contaminates the blood vessels and in this way raises the blood pressure, a person who is not used to constant physical activity will have the high blood pressure even when going upstairs and surely, stress narrows vessels and the result is the same. While performing physical exercises the heart beats faster and needs more oxygen to pump round the body, to supply it to all muscle to make them work. It also raises the general temperature of a body that makes it cool itself by vasodilatation.  The more exercise that’s is done on a regular basis the stronger the heart becomes, resulting in a larger heart and an ability to pump more blood through the body and more importantly “reducing the risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, weight gain, heart disease, type 2 diabetes as well as joint and bone problems” (Kuczmarski 2008 ).   Physical activity helps to eliminate the fat that an organism cannot take away. Being energetic, keeping up the body strength allows us to reduce the level of stress and therefore to facilitate the heart work. Moreover, the measures described above also help to prevent heart strokes, cancer and even osteoporosis. Although, scientists point out that having regular exercises regularly alone will not guarantee having a healthy heart. They add that it must be combined with the healthy diet. Healthy eating implies five or four meals a day, with mandatory fruit and vegetable portion in each of them. Such diet suggests the low fat percentage as well as the low level of salt of your meals. This diet also indicates that fish is to be eaten at least once a week and the amount of sugar must be reduced to minimum. “According to a new research funded by the British Heart Foundation and published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), poor health habits are a key factor to those suffering from stress, which can result in an increased risk of heart disease” (Kumar, 2000).   Stress is not connected directly with heart, but the consequences of it can add to heart acting up. People have several ways to cope with stress: smoking, overeating or fasting, and drinking alcohol - all of these doing harm to heart. The main treatment here is to relieve stress, to avoid stressing situations and learn to relax, then the heart has fewer burdens to cope with and the chance to have such light diseases as angina reduces. Hypertensive heart disease takes the first place in the number of deaths connected with high blood pressure and in fact is the group of ailments that cover: heart failure, left ventricular hypertrophy and ischemic heart disease. Heart failure is the disease that involves less active work of the heart because of non-elastic muscular threads of it. Blood travels around the body not so effectively and the heart is overloaded in order to deliver oxygen to all organs. As a result the heart chambers extend in order to be able to hold more blood for the body needs. Kidneys react on this by retaining liquid in the organism. When water gathers in legs, elbows, hands and lungs the heart failure is called a congestive one. Another disease, called ischemic heart disease can be brought about by high blood pressure. It implies the shortage of blood for heart muscles. “Ischemic heart disease is usually the result of atherosclerosis or hardening of the arteries (coronary artery disease), which impedes the blood flow” (Lissner 1995 ). The symptoms of this disease are the following: chest pain that can be reflected in the limbs. Nausea, temperature, fatigues and dizziness may also be present sometimes even without chest pain. “Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a condition in which the muscular walls of the heart are abnormally thickened” (Lissner 1995 ). Therefore, the heart valves can dysfunction and the blood may be prevented from getting in or out of the heart. This disease as a rule happens irrespective of high blood pressure. The first thing that must be marked in regard to the ways of treatment is that with first symptoms a person has to visit a doctor. A doctor will make several tests such as “echocardiogram, cardiac stress test, chest X-ray, coronary angiogram and others” (Lissner 1995 ). So, to cure any of the above mentioned heart diseases a doctor has first of all to reduce the blood pressure with the help of medicines. Besides taking the prescribed medicines a patient is to follow a tough diet: to reduce the amount of sodium to 200mg a day, to limit the consumption of calories a day and in this way to lose weight, eliminate food rich in saturated fat, sugar and salt. The most important ban for an ill heart is the one for alcohol and cigarettes. Both of these products have a severe impact on heart. Moreover, the regular check-up with doctor is a must. In bad cases there is need to have surgery on your heart, because the stage of disease is quite extended. “Coronary artery disease (CAD) is atherosclerosis (plaque in artery walls) of the inner lining of the blood vessels that supply blood to the heart” (Lissner 1995). The term of atherosclerosis can mean both as thickening and thinning of the arteries. CAD is one of the most widely-spread heart diseases and it causes the great number of deaths. It starts with cholesterol remnants that are gathered in a coronary artery. The constant deposit of cholesterol can cause the appearance of thrombus that prevents the blood flow into other organs. CAD is characterized by the following symptoms: -pain in chest (it happens because of the unusual blood flow to heart), - heart attack – it happens because of a coronary artery occlusion, - fatal outcome, because of the blood shortage that a heart experiences. It is necessary to bear in mind that CAD cannot develop within several days – this disease is the result of constant wrong way of life. The coronary arteries are transportation system of the organism and that is why they are so elastic, that makes blood move freely. And when being blocked these arteries simply cannot let go past the proper volume of blood. The blockage itself is made of fat, calcium and inflammatory cells stick together in the place of small formation. As a result the organism may develop a new vessel to provide the heart with the necessary volume of blood. However, the new vessel can be also blockaded because of the wrong way of life. Having considered two major heart diseases (high blood pressure and CAD) it is necessary to focus on one of the main reasons for both of these diseases. Obesity has become an acute problem in the whole world and especially in the USA for several last decades. According to statistic about 25% of children and teenagers suffer from obesity. Among the adults this percentage is even bigger -35%. Nevertheless, it must be mentioned that Americans perceive obesity as a tough problem and put a lot of efforts to fight it. Obesity is very easy to diagnose, though it is more difficult to treat. More than 300,000 deaths a year in the USA is the result of the diseases brought about by obesity. The yearly social losses from obesity equal more than $100 billion. Children that have obesity are likely to turn into adults with even higher obesity indicators. The only way out here is to maintain healthy diet and introduce sports into your life. The main reason of obesity is the wrong metabolic processes that influence the weight of a person as well as all organs of the body in a negative way. Obesity can cause the range of diseases among which the most dangerous are heart diseases. “Although heredity explains 30% to 70% of cases of obesity, environmental contributions to the increasing prevalence of obesity must be sought since the gene pool has remained stable over the same interval” (Alexander 2005). As mentioned above the reasons for this are the high consumption of fatty products and an inactive lifestyle. The calories that a person receives with food are stored in the organism, instead of being spent on physical exercises. Left ventricular hypertrophy is usually diagnosed with patients who suffer from obesity. Nevertheless, slim people can also have the left ventricular hypertrophy, though in 90% of cases it is followed by obesity. The regularity can be deducted easily, when weight increases the same happens to the blood pressure, and when the weight decreases, blood pressure also stabilizes. Negative processes in the right heart can also be present while obesity. “The pathophysiology is related to obstructive sleep apnea and/or the obesity hypoventilation syndrome, which produce pulmonary hypertension and right ventricular hypertrophy, dilatation, progressive dysfunction, and finally failure” (Alexander 2005). With the development of new era in medicine it is possible to treat obesity and the heart diseases that are caused by it. Ventricular function and oxygenation can be refined with those patients who suffer from high level of sodium, and high indicators of the body mass. Some scientists claim that even surgery on weight reduction decreases the cardiovascular mortality. As mentioned above the body mass reduction influences positively such diseases as hypertension and dyslipidemia and it also improves the state of things with non–insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. The normal life style (healthy diet and physical activity) reduces the chance of having heart diseases considerably. These recommendations are obligatory for those above 25 years old and desirable for children and teenagers. It is better to teach a kid from childhood to participate in sports activity and to choose fruit and vegetables rather than fast food, buns and sandwiches. The truth is that it is better to avert a disease than treat it. Low-fat diets will bring about not only weight reduction but also the better psychological state and mood. People having obesity experience lack of activity because it is difficult for them to move such amount of body mass and that is why they stay inactive and always tired because even small movement demands a lot of efforts from them. The only way out in this situation is to apply the power will and reduce the amount of fat consumed. If a person cannot do it by himself, then the aid of nutritionists, psychologists and special clinics is needed. Having physical activity every day is very efficient, though a person can extend even the daily routine activity e.g. using stairs instead of the elevator, giving preference to walking rather than using a car etc. As soon as the weight reduction is noticed it is necessary to extend the exercise volume day by day. In conclusion it is necessary to mention that heart is the engine of the whole organism, and no devices can substitute its work efficiently. In order to keep it healthy it is necessary to have the right lifestyle. It involves giving up smoking, drinking alcohol. Chose the active life and go in for sports. One more thing that influences the state of heart greatly is a low-fat diet. It doesn’t only keep you feet but also prevents the blood vessels from being blockaded. Bibliography 1. Kuczmarski RJ, Flegal KM, Campbell SM, Johnson CL. (2008) Increasing prevalence of overweight among U.S. adults: the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. ;272:205-211 2. Kumar, Abbas, Fausto. ( 2000): Robbins and Cotran Pathologic Basis of Disease, 7th Ed. p. 556 3. Lissner L, Heitmann BL (1995). Dietary fat and obesity: evidence from epidemiology. Eur J Clin Nutr. 233:79-90 4. Alexander JK. (2005) The cardiomyopathy of obesity. Prog Cardiovasc Dis. 27:325-333 Read More