Prevention Of Atherosclerosis (Coronary Artery Disease)

Some 7 million Americans suffer from Coronary Heart Disease (CHD), the most common form of heart disease. CHD is the number one killer of both men and women in the U.S. Each year, more than 500,000 Americans die of heart attacks caused by CHD.

Many of these deaths could be prevented because CHD is related to certain aspects of lifestyle. Risk factors for CHD include high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, smoking, obesity, and physical inactivity--all of which can be controlled. Although medical treatments for heart disease have come a long way, controlling risk factors remains the key to preventing illness and death from CHD.

Atherosclerosis (Coronary Artery Disease) is the buildup of cholesterol-containing fatty deposits (plaque) on the interior walls of your arteries. As plaque develops, the interior of your artery narrows and blood flow is reduced. When this happens in your coronary (heart) arteries, it can lead to a type of chest pain (angina pectoris).

Growth of plaque also makes the inside of your artery bumpy and rough. A tear (rupture) in plaque can cause a blood clot to form. A blood clot that blocks blood flow to your heart muscle (myocardium) can lead to a heart attack. When the blood supply is cut off completely, the result is a heart attack. The part of the heart that does not receive oxygen begins to die, and some of the heart muscle may be permanently damaged.

In addition to high blood cholesterol, high blood pressure and smoking also contribute to CHD. On the average, each of these doubles your chance of developing heart disease. Therefore, a person who has all three risk factors is eight times more likely to develop heart disease than someone who has none. Obesity and physical inactivity are other factors that can lead to CHD. Overweight increases the likelihood of developing high blood cholesterol and high blood pressure, and physical inactivity increases the risk of heart attack. Regular exercise, good nutrition, and smoking cessation are key to controlling the risk factors for CHD.

Medications are prescribed according to the nature of the patient's CHD and other problems. The symptoms of angina can generally be controlled by "beta-blocker" drugs that decrease the workload on the heart, by nitroglycerine and other "nitrates" and by "calcium-channel blockers" that relax the arteries, and by other classes of drugs. The tendency to form clots is reduced by aspirin or by other platelet inhibitory and anticoagulant drugs. Beta-blockers are given to decrease the recurrence of heart attack. For those with elevated blood cholesterol that is unresponsive to dietary and weight loss measures, cholesterol-lowering drugs may be prescribed, such as lovastatin, colestipol, cholestyramine, gemfibrozil, and niacin. Impaired pumping function of the heart may be treated with digitalis drugs or ACE inhibitors. If there is high blood pressure or fluid retention, these conditions are also treated.

Several epidemiologic studies have demonstrated that vitamin E protects against CAD, including two large-scale, carefully conducted prospective studies described recently in The New England Journal of Medicine. The populations studied were enormous -- almost 40,000 men and close to 90,000 women -- and study participants were followed for 4 and 8 years, respectively. The benefits of vitamin E were primarily, if not entirely, limited to subjects taking large amounts of vitamin E supplements. Vitamin E from dietary sources, even when supplemented with multivitamins at usual doses, showed little or no protective effect. Vitamin C was not protective, and carotene appeared to help only men (not women) who smoked.

The following nutrients may be helpfull in treating Atherosclerosis - Carnitine, Pantothenic acid, Magnesium, Vitamin E and Vitamin C. A food bar enriched with assorted nutrients makes life easier for individuals who walk with a limp because of calf pain due to peripheral arterial disease, according to a study by Dr. Andrew J. Maxwell, of Cooke Pharma in Belmont, Calif. A cramp-like pain in one or both legs usually occurs when atherosclerosis narrows the arteries. The ingredients of the food bar, including four grams of the nutrient L-arginine, as well as antioxidant vitamins, niacin, and isoflavenoids, enhance the synthesis of nitric oxide, which in turn makes walking easier and less painful.

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