The Top Health Conditions That Increase Your Risk Of Heart Disease

 We all know how heart disease can be a devastating event in someone’s life, but what you may not know is that it can also increase the risk of other conditions in our bodies. Here are some examples of illnesses that may raise your risk of developing or increasing heart disease.

Heart disease

 Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death for Americans—about 9.3 million people had heart disease in 2017. About a quarter of all deaths are from cardiovascular causes, and about 10 percent of them are from coronary artery disease. As you can see from these statistics, cardiovascular diseases have always been a major concern for American society. Now we need to ask ourselves: How does our lifestyle influence this? Let’s take a closer look at some studies on how lifestyle factors increase your risk of heart disease. But first, let’s take a look at a condition called high blood pressure. This is an important risk factor that you may not know you have. It’s common to find yourself going by “high blood pressure” but not really knowing what it means. High blood pressure is an umbrella term for many types of hypertension that affect the arteries in your body.

RISK FACTORS

High Blood Pressure

When we breathe in, the flow of oxygen and nutrients through our circulatory system helps keep us alive. But when we have too much pressure in our arteries, this doesn’t work as well, leading to high blood pressure. Hypertension occurs when your blood vessels become stiff and swollen. If left untreated, it often leads to damage to the heart muscle and the surrounding artery. This condition puts you at higher risk of stroke and heart attack, which are both major causes of death for most adults.

Diabetes Mellitus

 

Obesity

 

Overeating unhealthy food products and poor dieting habits may be considered a cause of obesity. Excess weight is linked to other chronic conditions like heart disease and cancer.

If your lifestyle includes eating processed foods, sugar-sweetened beverages, fast foods, and highly refined grains, then you need to pay attention to these foods and make sure they don’t contribute to your overall health.

As a result, excessive consumption of alcohol — especially red wine — has been associated with a greater risk of coronary heart disease. Also, certain medications — including corticosteroids — may lead to atherosclerosis, hardening of the arteries, and high blood pressure, which may put you at risk of getting heart disease.

What You Can Do To Help Prevent Problems Related To Weight and Diabetes

Losing weight may prevent many diseases, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, and depression. It also can reduce your chances of developing complications related to these diseases. A great way to get started is by following a healthy diet. When you lose weight, your heart doesn’t work as hard because your kidneys don’t have to work as hard to filter out waste products from your urine. All that extra fluid will help lower your blood pressure and improve your general health.

 Exercise daily and eat plenty of healthy fats for good heart health. Stay away from smoking and drinking alcohol to lower blood pressure. You may also try cutting down on sugary drinks and processed foods. Make sure that everyone around you gets lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, so you can stay physically don’t forget the importance of sleep and rest. Aim for seven hours of shut-eye each night to give your brain time to repair itself.

High Body Mass Index Increase Your Risk of Cardiovascular Diseases

The best way to understand how your lifestyle impacts your overall health is to examine what researchers have found. They discovered that obesity, which has become quite popular over the last two decades, can increase your chances of suffering from a number of health issues including: diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cancer and even Alzheimer’s Disease. Studies show that obesity can alter the chemistry of certain proteins that circulate around your bloodstream where blood vessels are located. These proteins can be made and stored in adipose tissue, especially fat tissue. However, these proteins aren’t necessarily harmful—when they reach levels that exceed what normal healthy amounts would be, your cardiovascular system will begin to react negatively. Not only does obesity affect vascular function, it also causes changes in cellular function and metabolism as well. One study shows that obesity alters the regulation of glucose metabolism in fat cells. This occurs after obese individuals have their fats metabolized through the same metabolic pathway as lean people. Also, the insulin response to food intake, known as insulin resistance, increases for both obese people and those who already suffer from insulin resistance. This could explain why obesity has become so common—especially in the United States where the average age of obesity is now being reached. There may be several reasons for this sudden uptick in obesity including increased consumption of fast foods, sedentary lifestyles and a lack of physical activity.

Sedentary Lifestyle Make You More Likely To Have a Hypertensive Event

Eating Too Much Foods Can Cause Increased Blood Pressure

This isn’t just true because you will end up consuming more calories than you should be. It’s far more dangerous because too much salt and fat can cause constriction of the arterial walls. This type of narrowing can lead to serious problems such as a heart attack or stroke. While other things can trigger this problem, the best thing you can do is make sure you eat smaller portions of high sodium or saturated fat foods. Eating the recommended daily amount of protein is key to keeping your heart healthy. With that in mind, eating enough dairy, poultry, fish and fruit can go a long way toward helping keep your heart healthy. All this said, it’s possible to consume foods that are low in fat, sodium and cholesterol, but it’s easy to consume too much of them. That’s because you may have heard that processed meats, sweets and pastries are bad for you. Unfortunately, processing in food means removing the goodness of the product and putting it in preservatives, which can drastically decrease the nutritional value of the product. This isn’t always an issue for meat products and pastries; however, a lot of processed foods that are often sold at supermarkets have artificial flavors or flavorings that make it difficult to tell whether or not the ingredients are real.

Heart Disease Increases Due To Smoking

 

In addition to being physically inactive, smoking may also contribute to higher rates of heart disease. Most people recognize this, and for good reason—that is, most people should quit smoking but they might not realize that it can make them a stronger chance of getting a heart attack. Even though smoking does increase the risk for heart disease, this only applies if you smoke regularly. For those that smoke often and every day, then it makes more sense to quit, since quitting decreases your rate of adverse cardiovascular events. On the flip side, smoking cigarettes every day is not the only factor that contributes to heart diseases. Another contributing factor to myocardial events can be a family history of either coronary heart disease, non-ST-elevation MI and sudden cardiac death. Children are also at higher risk of becoming severely ill when dealing with myocardial diseases due to the effects of childhood obesity