Heart Disease
Heart disease is any disorder that affects cardiovascular territory. It refers to all sorts of heart-related health conditions, many of them chronic, that impact how well our heart functions. I chose to research heart disease because my family has been affected by it. My husband experienced a heart attack when my younger son was a little over three months old. It was a difficult time for our family and it is a subject of our dinner conversations quite often because heart disease runs in my husband’s family. His father died of a heart attack at the age of 63 because of high cholesterol and diabetes.
There are many common forms of heart diseases: Heart attack, Coronary Artery Disease (CAD), Atrial fibrillation and other Arrhythmias (irregular heartbeat), Heart Valve Disease, Heart Failure, and Stroke. The main causes of heart disease are high blood pressure, smoking, high cholesterol, diabetes, obesity, and family history. The most common symptoms of heart attack are chest pain, shoulders and arm pain, dizziness, pale skin, sweating, difficulty breathing, and nausea. According to Health Central (2020) one in four men and one in five women die from heart disease. Heart Disease is a number one leading cause of death for women and men in the United States. Additionally, there are 18.2M of Americans aged 20 and older with coronary heart disease and 647K Americans die from heart disease each year. Moreover, 20 percent of heart attacks are silent; however, 80 percent of heart diseases and strokes are preventable.
