Factors for Cardiovascular Disease Essay
The risk facts for cardiovascular disease and cancer according to the mayo clinic are the use of tobacco products, obesity, not having a balanced diet, direct exposure to the sun, not getting vaccinated, not practicing safe sex, and not getting regular medical care. Although the cancer.gov site explains more risk factors these are some important ones. Cancer.gov shows more extensively that age, alcohol, cancer-causing agents, chronic inflammation, hormones, immunosuppression, infective agents, and radiation are all risk factors of cancer. Ahajournal.gov shows that you can prevent cardiovascular disease by not smoking, physical activity, low body mass index, and a healthy diet. Whereas the risk factors for cancer are tobacco, obesity, unhealthy diet, alcohol use, sexually transmitted disease, air pollution and indoor smoke from solid fuels can all cause cancer. Many of the risk factors are similar in comparing the two different illnesses.Factors for Cardiovascular Disease Essay
The modifiable risk facts are risk factors that an individual can change themselves. For example, practicing safe sex, or eating a healthy diet (losing weight), not smoking tobacco products, putting sunscreen on when exposed to the sun, receiving medical care (if you can afford it) and not binge consuming alcohol. These risk factors that our modifiable can help reduce your risk of disease or cancer.
Many of these modifiable risk facts depend on where one lives and their socioeconomic status. If one is born into a low-income neighborhood their chances of abusing drugs and not practicing safe sex increases. Another factor are genetics, if someone is born into a family where cancer is prevalent, their risk of cancer will increase. Getting proper screening and medical care in this situation is important.
Every year, 17.1 million lives are taken away due to tobacco use, an unhealthy diet, and physical inactivity. Factors which lead all lead to cardiovascular diseases, the world’s largest killer. Cardiovascular diseases affect all ages and gender; however, it is more perceptible in low and middle income countries, where more than 80% off cardiovascular related deaths occur. By the year 2030, approximately 23.6 million people will parish due to cardiovascular diseases, which is hypothesized to be mainly heart disease and stroke. There are people who don’t understand that only 30 minutes of physical activity everyday will lower their chances of gaining a heart disease; that by eating a better balanced diet, they can lower their risk of heart attacks and stroke; that maintaining their weight, they can live another day with less risks. Factors for Cardiovascular Disease Essay
Heart diseases and strokes are the leading cardiovascular diseases. They are the result of a blockage that prevents proper blood flow circulating around the heart or brain. Normally, these blockages consist of a buildup of fatty plaques, such as cholesterol, on the arteries’ inner walls that lead to the heart or brain. The process of plaque forming is known as atherosclerosis.
People who have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease, sleep apnea, sickle cell anemia, elevated red blood cell count, migraines/headaches, seizure disorder and/or have had a heart attack or stroke previously are at risk of having a stroke. There are lifestyle factors that contribute to stroke, such as an unbalanced diet, alcohol consumption, not enough exercise, and a family history of stroke. Thus, it is important to watch what you eat, exercise daily, and inform your doctor of you and your family’s medical history. There are some medications that may cause blood clots or brain hemorrhage, which leads to a stroke. It is important to notify your doctor if you have taken or currently taking birth control bills, blood thinners, illegal drugs or any hormones.
Heart disease deals with a range of health conditions in regards to your heart. The body’s inflammatory process is the cause of heart disease. Cholesterol, nicotine, LDL cholesterol, and elevated levels of glucose are the main irritants that can cause inflammation in the heart’s blood vessels. When the vessels are inflamed, they form plaque, which hardens and damages your blood vessels, leading to issues with your blood flow to and from your heart. Some factors that lead to heart disease include old age, a family history of heart disease, smoking, poor nutrition, lack of exercise, high stress, and obesity.Factors for Cardiovascular Disease Essay
Most health-conscious people are familiar with the concept of risk factors for disease. We’re too familiar, in fact. A risk factor is like the guest that nobody invited to the party, a spoiler. Though we might feel fine now, our individual risk for (fill in the blank) tells us that our wellbeing might not last. That vague and remote prospect of a stroke or a tumour has taken on a sharply numerical precision, thanks to screening tests that expose and quantify our risk factors.
The term stems from the Framingham Heart Study, which began in 1948. Ever since, researchers have measured the variables that contribute to cardiovascular disease in multiple generations of residents of the town of Framingham in Massachusetts. The participants did not have cardiovascular disease when they enrolled, but researchers routinely recorded factors suspected in disease onset, including blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and whether or not the person smoked.
Since no single factor was able to predict the heart attacks that occurred in Framingham, the study designers thought to combine half a dozen of them in what became the first numerical risk calculator, called the Framingham Risk Score. The researchers figured the relative importance of each risk factor after examining thousands of health histories. The combined risk score enabled doctors to make predictions that were borne out in future patients as the study proceeded.
Dozens of risk calculators are in service today, covering all medical specialties and organ systems. But since Framingham, risk factors have acquired an unwarranted power. Doctors try to manage them as if they’re the disease itself and, as a result, patients are subjected not only to undue worry but also to the harmful side effects of preventive medications and testing.Factors for Cardiovascular Disease Essay
What’s more, in medicine’s version of mission-creep, the thresholds for many risk factors have been lowered so as to encompass ever larger pools of patients. People who believed they were normal in a particular health category abruptly learn that they are not – and that they probably need treatment. That they lack symptoms is misleading. Today’s patient is declared to be in good health not because she feels well, but because her latest scan or blood work indicates no abnormalities.
Robert Aronowitz, a historian of medicine and medical doctor at the University of Pennsylvania, points out that when drug companies are able to treat people who might become sick, as opposed to patients with symptoms, the market is a lot larger. Once put into the at-risk category, they might be taking medication for the rest of their lives. Aronowitz gives hypertension (high blood pressure) as an example: a risk factor for heart disease and stroke, it makes the arteries more prone to blockage and rupture. The first drugs developed for hypertension were used to treat people showing obvious signs of spiking pressure, such as shortness of breath and nosebleeds. Next, the medications were extended to people without symptoms who nonetheless had hypertension upon measurement – a systolic pressure (when the heart is pumping) of above 140, and a diastolic pressure (when the heart is at rest) of above 90. These patients, a much larger population, numbering in the tens of millions, had to be screened to be identified.
The threshold of what constituted a safe level of blood pressure ‘was gradually lowered’, writes Aronowitz. ‘And finally a new disorder, hypertension, was defined and promoted, such that another segment of the population could be screened, labelled, and treated.’ ‘Hypertension’ represents a systolic pressure of between 120 and 140, and a diastolic pressure of 80 to 90. Those ranges used to be considered normal, but not anymore.Factors for Cardiovascular Disease Essay
Recently, the American Heart Association (AHA) recognized that things had gone too far. Since studies had shown that blood-pressure medication was of no benefit to those with hypertension, the AHA raised the level at which people aged 60 and over should start taking drugs. Now the recommended trigger is a systolic pressure of 150 or higher. With the change, some 7 million Americans, more than half of whom were taking medication, were moved out of the at-risk column. It’s unlikely that 3‑4 million people will drop their medications, however. Once launched, a medical regimen of that magnitude is hard to turn around.
There’s a more fundamental issue. Risk factors and risk calculators are reminders that medical science does not completely understand the mechanisms of disease. Risk factors are associations; they don’t represent cause-and-effect relationships unless the connection to the disease is especially strong, like the link between cigarettes and lung cancer. Risk factors are based on averages taken from large groups, and consequently the individual patient can’t know his or her true probability of contracting the condition. For any population, the calculator could accurately forecast the number of, say, heart attacks over a 10-year period, but the algorithm can’t identify who will succumb and who will be spared.
Thus the AHA, in releasing its latest risk calculator for heart attack and stroke, admitted that ‘no one has 10 per cent or 20 per cent of a heart attack during a 10-year period. Individuals with the same estimated risk will either have or not have the event of interest, and only those patients who are destined to have an event can have their event prevented by therapy.’ Which is to say that the majority of patients are going to dodge a bullet whether or not they use preventive therapy. The doctors, for their part, plead that they are only being conservative. Unsure of the basic biology of the disease, they over treat the many in order to help the few.Factors for Cardiovascular Disease Essay
Cardiovascular diseases include a wide range of heart abnormalities, as well as diseases of other parts of the circulatory system, such as the coronary arteries, there cerebrovascular system, the aorta and pulmonary vessels, and the peripheral arteries and veins. Abnormalities of these structures may be either congenital or acquired over time.
It has been said that cardiovascular disease kills about 954,000 people annually, including more than 156,000 people under the age of sixty-five years. “Between 1980 and 1993 the death rate for cardiovascular disease declined steadily because of improved medical treatments and healthier lifestyles.” (1999 Multimedia Encyclopedia). Unfortunately, cardiovascular disease remains a increase, gout this increase is mainly related to death from congestive heart failure and may reflect the aging of the American population. It also may reflect the fact that modern medicine allows some patients to survive otherwise fatal cardiovascular diseases only to die later of other related problems.Factors for Cardiovascular Disease Essay
There is one form of cardiovascular diseases, coronary heart disease, this form of CVD, is also known as coronary artery disease. This results from a buildup of cholesterol and other substances within the arteries that supply the blood to the heart. This buildup is known as plaque, or atherosclerotic material. So in time the arteries become narrowed until blood can no longer flow normally. The decrease in flow is known as ischemia, and it causes angina pectoralis, or chest pain. If the blood flow becomes totally blocked due to a blood clot, the affected portion of the heart muscle will die. This is called a heart attack, or myocardial infarction. The symptom is a severe, crushing chest pain that may radiate to the arms, neck, or jaw. A mild attack the symptoms may resemble indigestion or heartburn.Factors for Cardiovascular Disease Essay
Both coronary artery disease and cardiovascular disorders can lead to congestive heart failure. This is where the heart is unable to pump all of the blood and the blood backs up and collects in various tissues, including the lungs. Even though the heart continues to work, it is severely impaired. This condition can usually be treated with drugs or surgery. If this treatment fails a heart transplant is sometimes an option.
There are many ways to prevent cardiovascular disease, researchers say a number of risk factors that contribute to the disease. These include increasing age, male gender, a family history, high blood pressure, and high blood cholesterol levels. Changes one can make in the lifestyle they lead is diet, cigarette smoking, and lack of exercise. Some other factors include diabetes, obesity, and stress. T hers factors can be altered by behavioral changes. Cigarette smoking contributes to twenty percent of cardiovascular deaths, stopping smoking is extremely important in preventing the disease. Also regular physical activity and a low-fat diet can reduce the risk.Factors for Cardiovascular Disease Essay