What is Heart Disease and why does it occur?

What it is and why it occurs

Heart disease is the number one killer in United States and is a huge subject for several reasons.  One of these reasons is that there are different schools of thought relating to the reasons why heart disease occurs and more importantly what the proper methods of dealing with it are.

For decades, the American Medical Association insisted that high cholesterol foods were the primary culprit in the development of heart disease. This has been proven to be not necessarily the case. The simple fact is 50% of all fatal heart attacks occur in people who’ve had no previous history of high cholesterol and whose cholesterol was normal at the time of death.

This is not to say that diet does not play a role in the overall health of an individual including cardiovascular health. It has been established that the better the diet and the higher the fruit, legume and vegetable content, the less risk for cardiovascular disease. Nevertheless even vegetarians die from heart attacks although at a much reduced rate.

What exactly is heart disease?

Heart disease occurs when there is a blockage or narrowing in any of the major arteries feeding blood to the heart muscle itself. This results in weakening of the heart and death of heart tissue. When enough of the heart tissue has been damaged, a heart attack can take place creating even further damage due to lack of blood supply to the rest of the heart muscle.

Heart disease affects both men and women but until the age of 50, men have a much greater risk than women.  After the age of menopause though, a woman’s risk of developing heart disease triples. 1

1.       Nelson GJ. Dietary fat, trans fatty acids, and risk of coronary heart disease. Nutr Rev 1998;250–2.