More People Are Getting Heart Diseases, What Should We Do About It?

Exercise, sleep and getting proper food; these three things are sometimes difficult and for most people were relatively non-negotiable which is why, throughout history, we are witnessing an increase in heart-related mortalities. More people were dying because of heart diseases but some of the campaigns which cater for the general public to remind them regarding heart diseases and its risk factors have been deemed successful and efficient so far.

If those campaigns were successful, how come the mortality rate keeps on increasing? The truth is, even if you were compliance with your medication (in this context, your heart medications), you were more likely to get a subsequent attack unless you make some additional changes especially to those three important aspects of longevity that have been mentioned earlier in this article. Mind you, the next attack is usually associated with a much higher mortality rate.

Unless you were diagnosed with congenital heart diseases when you were a kid, it's highly unlikely for you to experience any symptoms or getting diagnosed with heart diseases before the age of 40 years old, well at least that's how things were. I would like to point out here that I'm using the word highly unlikely and not "impossible" to describe the probability of you getting heart diseases at such a young age. You can get heart diseases as early as 20 years old but it's rare.

When more people were diagnosed with such condition before the age of 40, then something isn't right; it's either with the statistic or with our current younger population. Were most of them live a sedentary life? Were most of them eat fatty food or anything unhealthy for most days of the week? Were most of them were diabetics? Were most of them weren't getting enough sleep? If so, then it's kinda expected but still, shocking.

As we grow older, we are bound to be afflicted with certain conditions if we live sedentarily, our body can't really keep up with us forever. We must then assume our own responsibility to pay attention to a certain thing in life so that things don't eff up especially when we were younger.

In an article which was written in Eurekalert which is basically a page created by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has found that 1 in 5 people who were aged below 40 years old suffer a heart attack. It's kinda alarming especially when the same study pointed out that the number of young adults who have been diagnosed with heart conditions increased by 2% annually for the past 10 years. Did we do something wrong for its to have such a terrible pattern of increment? Well, maybe.

The underlying causes of heart attack for both the elderly and the young adult are the same; they are usually presented with some other comorbidities such as diabetes mellitus, hypertension, previous history of ischaemic heart diseases, smoking habit and positive family history of heart diseases. So why on earth people who were younger are increasingly developed one of the most fatal conditions in the whole wide world? One of the probabilities being discussed was substances abuse.

In this study which involved 2,100 patients comparing between people who were less than 40 years old and people who were in between 41 to 50 years old that experienced heart attack, the former was associated with marijuana and cocaine used, much more frequently than the latter which make it logical but not necessarily tangible as an assumption. Basically, there is a factor which predisposed patient to have a heart attack and the other factor that would predict the likelihood of an individual to experience cardiovascular event sometimes in the future. Well, most likely they predict this in conjunction with patients' blood pressure but people who have experienced cardiovascular event would have a higher risk of getting another one regardless of age.

There is no such thing as cardioprotective when we are talking about ages. A 20 years old male would have an almost similar mortality rate after a cardiovascular event with a 40 or 60 years old male. It's the incidence which differs, not the mortality after a heart event. Aspirin and clopidogrel which usually being prescribed to people who experienced cardiovascular event are usually not prescribed to people who were younger than 40 years old. Do I think it is important for us to prescribe it to them? Well, yes.

It's not something new. Aspirin and clopidogrel, both are anti-platelet agents which would prevent the formation of an aggregated clot that could have stuck in otherwise a partially blocked coronary artery leading to a heart attack. The heart muscle would be deprived of oxygen and this is, essentially, a bad thing since all muscles need oxygen to operate; being one of the most important organs that pump blood to the other part of the body, it is crucial to ensure the blood flow to the heart is intact. If not, then this state of ischaemia (shortage of oxygen) would have caused cardiac muscle necrosis, leading to a much more chronic and devastating condition called heart failure. Both of them are two different things.

In 2016, cardiovascular diseases have been regarded as one of the most fatal ailment that have contributed to a much higher mortality figure in the United State of America (USA) compared to the figure if we were to combine, the total of death from all forms of cancer and chronic lower respiratory diseases. To make it clearer, there are approximately 841,000 deaths attributed to cardiovascular events which account for 1 in every 3 deaths. Any government in any country would surely have spent millions (USD) of dollars to treat patients with heart diseases and this would impact badly on the future financial planning if the figure would keep on rising.

There are a few novel drugs which have been designed to improve the mortality rate of patients suffering from cardiovascular diseases but most of them are still being tested before it can be established as the better alternatives to the current mode of treatment. SAMβA, for example, is one of the compounds which could improve ejection fraction in otherwise a failing heart; this compound can potentially revolutionise how we deal with heart failure. So far, most of the research was conducted on animals but Mochly-Rosen and Ferreira, two professors from the University of Sao Paulo who developed the compound, suspected that this particular treatment could benefit humans too.

Until then, let us wait, eagerly, and see if someone can do something regarding the ever-increasing heart diseases. It's a good idea to start first and let others follow. Adopt a healthy lifestyle and you will surely live longer. Regards.

References: [1], [2], [3], [4].

All images were taken from Pixabay

Images: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5].