Healthy Lifestyle Radio Storytime

Who is at risk of suffering a heart attack and what are the risk factors that can be treated?

The nutritional pattern is striking is the increase of fat intake, particularly saturated fats (increasing consumption of cakes, pastries and prepared meals), although food remains true to the canons of the Mediterranean diet and the current recommendations.

The presence of more than one risk factor can be very dangerous, because each one of them can greatly increase the effect of another. This phenomenon is called synergism, all of them all, and far more dangerous, than the sum of its parts. The main risk factors are as follows.

Sex

Coronary artery disease is more common in middle-aged men. Women spend on average ten to fifteen years longer than men, without getting heart disease, but as women age catching up to men. In fact, women are more likely to have angina than men. As regards age, survival rates for heart attacks are similar in men and women, but young women are at increased risk of death from stroke than men the same age. The reasons for this are not clear.

Estrogen, which appear to protect the heart, may have something to do, and may be that many young women who suffer heart attacks have lower estrogen levels. For example, in a 2000 study, women who entered early in the natural process of menopause (between 35-40 years) had a higher risk of death from a heart attack than women who entered menopause later .

Many studies have reported that women receive less aggressive treatment than men in all stages of heart disease. More recent studies have suggested, however, is similar for both men and women during the later stages of heart disease. Younger women with heart disease often do not have the same symptoms as their male counterparts and less likely to be diagnosed correctly and aggressively.

In fact, the less likely that the symptoms appear as a typical angina and evidence are often more women than men for detecting gastrointestinal disorders. (An interesting study from 1999 found that while, in fact, women with unstable angina received less aggressive treatment than men, when comparing risk factors, men had worse long-term results).

Snuff

Smokers of between thirty and forty years have a heart attack rate five times higher than non-smokers of the same age group. Cigarette smoking may be directly responsible for at least 20% of all deaths annually, or about 120,000 deaths annually. Cigar smoking can increase the risk of early death from heart disease, although conclusive evidence is much more for cigarettes.