Keeping a Healthy Heart

By Jake Foster, PA

A couple of years ago I learned one of my brother’s close friends had died suddenly while he was lifting weights. It was tragic that he left behind a young family when he passed at only 44 years old.
It is sadly a story that so many of us are familiar with, someone passing away seemingly before their time from a heart attack. Heart disease is the #1 cause of death in the world. It’s one that tends to sneak up on us too. Often many people are unaware they have it.
We have a pretty decent understanding of what causes a heart attack. Most of the time it is from a plaque that forms over time in an artery of the heart. In the right situation, that plaque will rupture, leading to a calamitous cascade that ultimately blocks that blood vessel and kills or damages any heart muscle downstream from the blockage.
My brother’s friend did not show any signs of heart disease before he had one. It is a disease that sneaks up on people, and some of us are at more of a risk than others.
Take hope though, because we have come to a pretty decent understanding of how those plaques in the arteries form, and this has led to a much better understanding of how to prevent them from forming in the first place, or even stabilizing them to some degree after they formed.
There are several contributors to this plaque formation, but a transport vehicle for cholesterol called LDL has been shown to be a major contributor to the blood vessel damage that eventually leads to inflammation in the blood vessel wall resulting in a plaque. Although cholesterol is essential, and required for healthy life, excess of certain types of blood fats and other important molecules associated with elevated LDL cholesterol have been observed as culprits in blood vessel damage leading to heart disease.
There are two main reasons why LDL cholesterol can be elevated. One reason is completely out of our control, the other is more in our control.
What we can control is how our diet and our exercise habits can affect this important component of cholesterol. A healthy diet which limits processed foods as much as possible and has plenty of good quality fruits and vegetables, good fiber, and good lean protein can help bring this number down. Regular exercise can also be helpful to jumpstart the process of increasing the metabolism of certain fats.
But we cannot control our genetics. Sometimes, no matter what a person does, they could still have elevated LDL. This is just a genetic situation in which a person’s liver simply manufactures more LDL cholesterol than necessary. It really doesn’t matter why the LDL is high, in either case, whether it be lifestyle or genetic, LDL will contribute to blood vessel damage and heart disease.
Vigorous work done by medical researchers in the 1970’s and 1980’s eventually lead to an understanding of how LDL was synthesized in the liver. This understanding lead directly to the discovery of compounds that could be taken orally that would slow this process down, reducing LDL burden, and reducing risk for heart disease. These researchers were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1985 for their life saving research.
We live in a time where we benefit from this research. Since 1985, there have been more than 8 compounds discovered that can lower the LDL dramatically, and more new medications are on the way to help this even more.
Keeping the LDL cholesterol as low as possible for as long as possible is a great way to stave off a heart attack that is a result of cardiovascular disease.
A good piece of advice I would like to give everyone is to find out what your LDL numbers are and what they mean for you. It’s a good idea to get this number checked for the first time as early as in your 20s or sooner. And then after that it’s a good idea to keep an eye on it at least every few years. Knowing where you are on the map will give you a better sense of where you need to be. Keeping this major risk factor under control is a good first step in protecting yourself from a heart attack.
Keeping our heart as healthy as possible for as long as possible is perhaps the best investment we can make in our life. A strong motor will keep us going for longer and for farther and keep us doing the things we love for as long as possible.