Your heart is a muscle which pumps blood around your body. Like the rest of the muscles of your body the heart needs blood to nourish it. It gets this by tapping off some of the blood it pumps to your body through some blood vessels around itself. High blood levels of cholesterol choke these vessels by depositing in them. A heart attack happens when your heart can no longer get enough blood and the heart muscle suffocates to death. This is called myocardial infarction and can be seen by characteristic electrical changes on EKG.
Heart Attack Risk Factors:
- You are male.
- Smoke.
- Are overweight.
- Have high blood pressure.
- Have high blood cholesterol.
- Your close relatives have suffered heart attacks.
Heart Attack Symptoms:
- Central chest crushing or squeezing pain.
- Sweating
- .Nausea.
- Dizziness.
- Cold, clammy feet and hands.
- Palpitations.
Persons with long standing diabetes may not have any of the symptoms described above. The reason being that high blood sugar over a long period of time destroys nerves. You therefore may not feel the chest pain or have any of the other symptoms. Persons with this type of heart attack will usually be advanced in age and have problems with feeling in their feet and fingers - from nerve destruction. The most common complaint in these persons is loss of appetite, indigestion, and malaise (feeling blah).
Initially you will be on strict bed rest. By day 2 you may be allowed to sit out from bed and by day 5 to walk around and return to work in one to two months.
To prevent heart attacks, a healthy lifestyle with exercise and low salt, sugar and fat diet is the first line of defense. Failing that, blood pressure and cholesterol control with medication can prevent both a heart attack and stroke.
