NEW OR RECURRENT HEART ATTACKS STRIKE 1.1 MILLION AMERICANS and kill about 450,000 each year, according to the American Heart Association. In fact, coronary heart disease is the nation's leading single cause of death. To cut this deadly toll, we need to understand all the factors that contribute to causing, preventing and surviving heart disease. Some intriguing, even surprising findings have emerged in the past few months to help guide us in attacking this lethal and disabling disease that afflicts so many people.
Raising the Risk
Increasing evidence points to chronic inflammation, the process by which the body responds to injury, as a warning of coronary heart disease. One sign of inflammation is a low level of white blood cells called lymphocytes. A new study indicates that a low lymphocyte count in people who suffer a heart attack increases their risk of experiencing another heart problem by 21 percent. When researchers examined the medical records of hundreds of heart attack patients, they found that only 48 percent of patients with normal white cell counts sustained a recurrent heart attack, congestive heart failure or sudden cardiac death within a five–year period. By contrast, 65 percent of those with low lymphocyte levels did.
Asthma, a chronic inflammation of the lungs, may increase the risk of fatal heart disease in nonsmokers. Although asthma's association with cardiovascular disease was well known previously, no one had looked at nonsmokers with the disease. When they did–in a long–term health study of nonsmoking HMO members–researchers found that overall, self–reported physician–diagnosed asthma sufferers had a 33 percent greater risk of heart disease than people without the lung ailment. Those receiving treatment for their asthma were 82 percent more likely to develop heart problems. The study strengthens the link between inflammation and heart disease, and indicates that physicians need to work with asthma patients to reduce heart disease risk factors such as hypertension, obesity and high cholesterol.
Exercise, even strenuous work, helps protect the heart by reducing weight, lowering blood pressure and raising levels of "good" (HDL) cholesterol. But stress, it turns out, can nullify the cardiovascular benefits of a physically demanding job. Researchers followed a group of utility company employees for three years and measured the thickness of the carotid arteries in their necks. These arteries develop the same fatty buildups that clog and thicken heart arteries. Workers in the most strenuous jobs reported the most stress and averaged nearly double the artery thickening as those in the least strenuous jobs. |
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