PROTECTING THE HEART AGAINST HEART ATTACK

Heart disease and diabetes are a deadly duo. In fact, if you have diabetes, your risk of having a first heart attack is about as high as the risk of someone without diabetes who's already had a heart attack. In other words, the moment you officially become a diabetes patient, you are automatically at risk for heart disease, even if you've never had any heart problems. During the decades in which you gradually developed diabetes, your blood vessels were suffering the kind of damage that often leads to a heart attack.
Because you can control what goes in your mouth, you have a unique opportunity right now to choose the alternative path to better health. Heart disease and diabetes aren't inevitable, there is plenty you can do to minimize your risk. In addition to getting your blood sugar and blood pressure under control, you also need to look at your blood lipids, the cholesterol and fats in your blood. And instead of relying on the standard pharmaceutical approach of cholesterol lowering drugs to manage high blood lipids

The classic

symptoms of a heart attack

include a crushing sensation in the chest, chest pain (angina), pain radiating into the left arm or up into the chest jaw, and shortness of breath. However, it's important to realize that women and people with diabetes may not experience these symptoms. For them, symptoms are more likely to include nausea and vomiting, tiredness, sweating, and collapse. Doctors call these silent heart attacks. They are actually more dangerous than the more obvious sort, because life-saving, heart-preserving intervention may be delayed or never even administered.
The message: Don't wait until you're facing a crisis. If you have the metabolic syndrome, prediabetes, or diabetes, discuss with your physician a course of action should you experience any of these symptoms.
Heart attacks are not the only problem. Obesity alone can overwork your heart to the point where its ability to pump blood efficiently is severely compromised. This problem, heart failure, can also be caused by hypertension and the leftover scarring caused by a heart attack. Among people with heart failure, 20 to 40 have percent diabetes.

Tweet

Posted in: facts, heart