Causes of Heart Disease ? High Blood Pressure (Hypertension). High blood pressure increases your risk of heart disease, heart attack, and stroke. Though other risk factors can lead to high blood pressure, you can have it without having other risk factors. If you are obese, you smoke, or you have high blood cholesterol levels along with high blood pressure, your risk of heart disease or stroke greatly increases. Blood pressure can vary with activity and with age, but a healthy adult who is resting generally has a systolic pressure reading between 120 and 130 and a diastolic pressure reading between 80 and 90 (or below).
High cholesterol One of the major risk factors for heart disease is high blood cholesterol. Cholesterol, a fat-like substance carried in your blood, is found in all of your body's cells. Your liver produces all of the cholesterol your body needs to form cell membranes and to make certain hormones. Extra cholesterol enters your body when you eat foods that come from animals (meats, eggs, and dairy products). Although we often blame the cholesterol found in foods that we eat for raising blood cholesterol, the main culprit is the saturated fat in food.
Be sure to read nutrition labels carefully, because even though a food does not contain cholesterol it may still have large amounts of saturated fat. ) Foods rich in saturated fat include butter fat in milk products, fat from red meat, and tropical oils such as coconut oil. Too much low-density lipoprotein (LDL or "bad cholesterol") in the blood causes plaque to form on artery walls, which starts a disease process called atherosclerosis. When plaque builds up in the coronary arteries that supply blood to the heart, you are at greater risk of having a heart attack. Diabetes.
Heart problems are the leading cause of death among people with iabetes, especially in the case of adult-onset or Type II diabetes (also known as non-insulin-dependent diabetes). Certain racial and ethnic groups (African Americans, Hispanics, Asian and Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans) have a greater risk of developing diabetes. The American Heart Association estimates that 65% of patients with diabetes die of some form of cardiovascular disease. If you know that you have diabetes, you should already be under a doctor's care, because good control of blood sugar levels can reduce your risk. If you think you may have diabetes but are not sure, see your doctor for tests. Obesity and Overweight.
Extra weight is thought to lead to increased total cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, and an increased risk of coronary artery disease. Obesity increases your chances of developing other risk factors for heart disease, especially high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, and diabetes. Many doctors now measure obesity in terms of body mass index (BMI), which is a formula of kilograms divided by height in meters squared (BMI =W [kg]/H [m2]). According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), being overweight is defined as having a BMI over 25. Those with a number over 30 are considered obese
