What Causes Coronary Heart Disease?

Your coronary arteries are your blood's main route to your heart. Just as a traffic jam may cause you to miss a flight, arteries clogged with fat deposits (plaque) impede the blood's ability to reach your heart. If the arterial "traffic jam" is bad enough and not enough oxygen or nutrients get to your heart, you may suffer a heart attack. The precursor to heart attack is a condition known as coronary heart disease. Coronary heart disease (also known as coronary artery disease) refers to widespread arterial damage usually because of plaque accumulation.

Definition

• Coronary artery disease is a chronic illness that develops due to lifelong fat accumulation in your coronary arteries. It's not a disease that simply shows up one day, although many people may not know they suffer from coronary artery disease until they suffer a sudden heart attack. Rather, years of poor eating, inactivity and genetic factors create a snowball effect in the arteries.

  Coronary artery disease is mostly dangerous because it leads to other complications such as heart attack or heart arrhythmia. While many people experience these more serious conditions before they know they have coronary heart disease, other people notice some warning signs as their arteries narrow to dangerous levels. Warning signs include chest pain and shortness of breath.

Diet and Lifestyle

• The most immediate controllable cause of coronary heart disease is poor diet. Diets high in saturated and trans fat often produce elevated cholesterol levels. Progressively, the fatty solids of cholesterol start to bind to your arteries. At first, the narrowing may have no affect on your daily functioning. However, eventually high cholesterol (especially low-density lipoprotein cholesterol or LDL) will leave your heart's blood vessels stuffed with solids.

  Fatty diets also lead to obesity and high blood pressure. Both obesity and high blood pressure force your heart to work harder, which will exacerbate narrowing arteries. Furthermore, poor diet contributes to diabetes. Diabetes in and of itself increases your risk of coronary artery disease. Combined with high cholesterol and obesity, the damage is even more severe.

Age and Other Factors

• No matter how healthy you eat, a certain amount of plaque attaches to your arteries over time. Thus, age is perhaps the most vital factor in coronary artery disease development. According to the American Heart Association, 83 percent of the people who die of coronary heart disease complications are 65 or older. Since it's impossible to stop the aging process and other uncontrollable factors, you must pay close attention to the factors you can control as you get older.

  In addition to age, other uncontrollable coronary heart disease contributors include gender and genetic predisposition. Men generally suffer coronary heart disease at a higher rate than women, especially since women get a certain amount of premenopausal protection from estrogen. Heart disease also runs in the family. If your parent or grandparent had coronary artery disease at a young age, you may be more prone to it as well. Therefore, high-risk people must take extra precaution to stay heart healthy.

The Importance of Exercise

• Exercise is one of the most vital tools that we have to fight coronary artery disease. People who have high activity levels often have lower cholesterol. Daily exercise increases your levels of the protective high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol ("good" cholesterol). As your ratio of HDL to LDL increases, you are less likely to have arterial plaque buildup. Furthermore, exercise will keep your body weight at an ideal level and will increase the blood flow to your heart. Since coronary artery disease is tough to cure once it occurs and often requires surgical procedures such as heart bypasses, it's best to control the factors that may lead to blocked arteries.

Prevention/Solution

• While a healthy diet and exercise are both essential ways to lower your risks of coronary heart disease, some people may develop significant plaque regardless of their lifestyles. As you begin to progress into middle age, talk to your doctor about medicine you can take to decrease your chances of coronary artery disease. A daily dose of aspirin will help thin your blood and may decrease the rate of plaque buildup. If you have a family history of heart disease or suffer from high cholesterol or hypertension, you may benefit from medications that reduce your cholesterol and/or blood pressure levels. Cholesterol medicines include statins such as lipitor, and blood pressure medicines include beta blockers and angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors.