The human heart is an incredibly efficient marvel of a pump. It works day in and day out, contracting a hundred thousand
times a day to pump five hundred thousand liters of blood into body's circulation. For this colossal task, it needs fuel for its untiring muscles.
It receives this fuel not from the blood passing through its four chambers, but through two major
arteries - the coronaries. Buried in the tissues of the heart muscle, ramifying it with their many branches, the coronaries provide the heart with the elixir of life - vital oxygen and glucose - through the blood flowing in them.
For the heart to stay in the pink of its health, the
coronary vessels must remain efficient at all times, catering to all its needs. Unless they do so, problems loom.
Yet, for a variety of reasons, fatty deposits begin building up in the inner walls of coronary arteries. By and by, increasing amounts of fat is laid down, making the arteries narrower. The amount of blood that can flow through them is correspondingly reduced.
This flow of blood becomes so poor in many people that the heart is quite incapable of carrying out its normal function. Starved of vital nourishment, the heart finds it’s increasingly difficult to cope with sudden extra workload. Such situations can occur in moments of increased physical and emotional activity.
In this state of affairs that is generally referred to as coronary heart disease. Doctors also call it by the name of ischemic heart disease (IHD), coronary artery disease (CAD0 and myocardial ischemia. To begin with, whenever challenged, the heart transmits its anguish in the form of discomfort and a sense of tightness over the middle of the chest. This is its way of telling, ‘Enough, I can bear no more.’ it often forces the person to stop what he is doing and take rest. This is the well known symptom of Angina pectoris.
At times, the narrowed coronary artery may be completely blocked by a blood clot forming on its inner roughened wall. Or, a fatty plaque or clot detached from an upper, larger artery may travel to a narrowed tributary, suddenly cutting off its blood flow, When this happens and a coronary artery or its branch suffers a shutdown, the portion of the heart muscle it feeds dies. How serious the damage would be depends on the size and position of the plugged vessel. The larger the affected vessel, the less the supply to that area from the other neighboring arteries (which may have sprung up if the process had been gradual), the greater is the damage suffered by the heart.
This is heart attack, or, in the medical lingo, myocardial ischemia.
Modern living with its stress and strains, mounting tension and pressure in everyday life, changes in the structure of the society and family leaving little cushion for an individual’s problems and failures, changing dietary habits, with city-folks often opting for time-saving high-calorie, high-fat, junk food, technological advancements such as easy modes of transport and machines, which leave little room for physical exercise and the increase in smoking and alcohol intake, all contribute to the bane.
Yet actually, not all the rise in the incidence of coronary heart disease is real. Atherosclerosis, or narrowing of arteries by fat deposits, is also part of the normal ageing process. With the increase in average life expectancy, more people live to a ripe, old age. This has caused a natural rise in the absolute number of patients. Also, more people, who would have been seen as having died of an unknown cause, are being diagnosed to have the disease, with greater awareness and better facilities of diagnosis.