harka

Hi there lulurs,

I am sorry to hear that you've had a heart attack--this must be quite a difficult time for you.

In terms of heart attacks: generally when one thinks about the type of people who is at greatest risk for a heart attack, invariably, one pictures a fat man who eats fatty food, smokes cigarettes and sits around the house all day doing no exercise. To a certain extent this is true. FOUR of the five major risk factors for heart attacks are reversible and they are:

1) Cigarette smoking
2) High cholesterol
3) High blood pressure
4) Diabetes

Things like obesity, sedentery life style etc. etc. are not major risk factors. They can CONTRIBUTE to one's overall heart attack risk, but they aren't as important as the ones above. What those four risk factors have in common is that they all significantly play a part in making the caliber of your coronary arteries (the arteries which get blocked when you have a heart attack) smaller.

1. Smoking results in inflammation which can lead to plaque deposition in the artery walls which lessens the caliber.

2. High cholesterol leads to the deposition of plaque in the coronary wall decreasing the caliber.

3. High blood pressure results in thickening of the walls of the arteries (including the coronary arteries thereby reducing the caliber)

4. Diabetes results in the injury of the insides of the vessels (including the coronary vessels) which results in laying down of inflammatory cells which leads to plaque formation which leads to the reduction of the vessel's caliber.

Are you sensing a theme here?

Anyway, the smaller the caliber of the arteries are, the more likely they'll get blocked. Additionally, if you have a rough plaque in one of the arteries, it can rupture, clot off and cause an acute heart attack. So it's possible that you have some of those risk factors and that is why you were prone to a heart. However, if you do NOT have any of those risk factors, the last risk factor is one you can NOT reverse:

5) A family history of premature coronary artery disease.

Are there any men in your family who had a heart attack before the age of 50 or a woman before the age of 55? If so, it's possible that your family just has the tendency to either have smaller caliber heart vessels, or more of a tendency to deposit plaque in these vessels or a combination of both. Unfortunately, you can't control your genes, so if you have risk factor #5, about all you can to is try to lessen the further amount of plaque in your arteries by taking your medications and by NOT developing any of the risk factors from 1-4.