Why Heart Health Is So Important ? Heart health should be important for obvious reasons, but many people focus so much on cancer prevention, that they forget heart disease is the #1 killer worldwide of both men and women.
In the United States, heart health is considered to be a ‘man’s problem’. While it is true that more than 390,000 men have heart attacks each year, it is also true that more than 271,000 women experience them. Studies have also shown that women have less favorable outcomes than men because they do not always suffer the same dramatic symptoms as a man having a heart attack.
A heart attack is triggered by a severe or complete cutting off of the blood supply to the heart via one of the main coronary arteries. Those with coronary heart disease will often experience a narrowing (stenosis) of the arteries due to cholesterol, which forms what is called plaque. The plaque buildup on the blood vessel walls leads to hardening of the arteries.
The plaque will either cause the vessel
to become so narrow that the tissue of the heart starts to become starved of oxygen, or a part of the plaque will break off to form a clot, which can then get jammed in a narrowed artery and cut off the blood flow completely. If this happens, any heart tissue served by that blocked artery will die, and if enough damage is done, it can lead to severe consequences.
Since time is of the essence when it comes to stopping a heart attack in its track, an untreated heart attack will continue to cause damage to the heart, resulting in tissue death and perhaps even actual death. Statistics show that up to 50% of women who have a heart attack die within the first year. Studies have also shown that by the time she is in her 80s, a woman’s risk of a heart attack becomes equal and then greater than that of a man.
Heart disease kills more men and women each year than the top 10 causes of cancer combined. Even the most lethal of cancers, lung cancer, only kills around 66,000 people per year. We should not minimize these deaths in any way, but we should make heart health our first priority. Fortunately, a lot of what is healthy for the heart will be healthy for the whole body as well, and can therefore lead to effective cancer prevention too.
