Heart disease, or cardiovascular disease, is a leading cause of death in the United States. According to the most recent heart disease facts sheet released by the American Heart Association, cardiovascular disease is responsible for 2 out of every 5 deaths.
What are the 5 most common heart problems
There are many types of heart disease. The umbrella term is cardiovascular disease, and it is split into many subcategories.
Where senior adults in particular are concerned, the 5 most common heart problems are:
- Coronary artery disease
- Congestive heart failure
- Atrial fibrillation
- Valvular heart disease
- High blood pressure (hypertension)
- Coronary artery disease: Arteriosclerosis is a broad-category heart condition made up of three diseases. One of these is atherosclerosis. Coronary artery disease, or CAD, is a subdivision of atherosclerosis.
With arteriosclerosis, normally flexible arteries harden gradually over a period of several years because of plaque buildup. Plaque is a waxy substance made of fats, cholesterol, and other debris floating in the bloodstream.
In people with atherosclerosis (one of the 3 subcategories), plaque deposits clog up the largest arteries — the carotid (in the neck), coronary (in the heart), peripherals (connected to the legs, arms, and pelvis), and renal (in the kidneys). This blocks, dams, and slows down the flow of blood through them.
CAD, or coronary artery disease, is plaque buildup in the two coronary tubes that supply blood to the heart. Because it must squeeze through clogged arteries, the quantity of blood supplied to the heart may not be enough, or it may take too long to get through.
Delayed and/or insufficient blood supply causes cells in the heart muscle to begin dying, thus damaging the heart and leading to a heart attack.
- Congestive heart failure: Here’s an experiment: fill a bowl with water, cup your hand, and scoop some water out. You should be able to collect quite a reasonable amount of water.
Now slip a cardboard tube (the sleeve on to-go coffee cups works great) on your hand and again try to scoop water from the bowl. The stiff cardboard sleeve will stop your fingers from curling, your hand won’t cup, and you won’t be able to hold as much, or even any water.
Congestive heart failure, or CHF, is kind of like this. Your heart doesn’t fill up with enough blood because it can’t pump as well as it should. This could be either because the heart muscle is too stiff or because it doesn’t have the strength to contract properly.
When a heart struggles to pump, it may lose its steady rhythm, causing the heartbeat to flail wildly. The beat may catch, speed up, go off track, or suddenly stop. A stopped heartbeat is called cardiac arrest.
Studies have shown that without immediate treatment, the brain dies within 5 minutes of a cardiac arrest, and complete death occurs at 8 minutes.
- Atrial fibrillation: One minute you’re calmly scrolling through your phone, the next you’re gasping for breath, feeling light-headed, and your heart is flip-flopping inside your chest.
This could be because of atrial fibrillation, or arrythmia, otherwise known as irregular heartbeat.
Electrical pulse in the heart
Your heart has 4 chambers: 2 atria above and 2 ventricles on the bottom. Every heartbeat begins with an electrical impulse in the right atrium. The electrical pulse moves across to the left atrium, then down to the bottom chambers.
The speed of this electrical impulse is faster in the top chambers and slower in the bottom. As it moves across the heart, adjusting its speed as needed, it makes the chambers contract or expand their attached valves.
This way, the respective chambers either pull blood in to oxygenate it, or push it on its way through the circulatory system.
Atrial fibrillation happens when the electrical impulses in the upper atria become disorganized and chaotic. This throws the atria out of sync with the ventricles. Think of it as a quartet singing doo-wop harmonies, when suddenly 2 out of the 4 singers break into rap.
Atrial fibrillation is triggered by damage to the heart’s structure. In older people, some reasons for this damage could be because of decades of normal wear-and-tear, years of plaque buildup, sections of dead heart muscle, or scar tissue formed by a previous heart attack
Note: Atrial fibrillation doesn’t always show symptoms. Your heart’s electrical impulses could spark erratically several times an hour and you might not notice it at all.
- Valvular heart disease: Valvular heart disease refers to problems with the heart’s valves.
A valve is a structure that starts, stops, and controls the speed and direction of flowing liquids, in this case, blood.
The human heart has 4 valves: tricuspid, pulmonary, mitral, and aortic. Each valve is attached to one of the four heart chambers.
Function of heart valves
After blood completes its journey around the body, it lands, depleted of oxygen, in the right atrium. From there, it goes through the tricuspid valve into the lower right ventricle. Then, the blood passes through the pulmonary valve into the lungs where it is enriched with oxygen.
The lungs send the oxygenated blood into the left atrium, from where it flows through the mitral valve into the left ventricle. The aortic valve connected to this chamber sends this refreshed blood out to the rest of the body.
Heart valve problems happen when a valve that is supposed to keep blood from flowing backward fails to do so. Or, the valvular tissue grows thick and stiff, affecting blood flow. Or, because of a congenital issue called atresia, a valve or part of it is missing since birth.
Valvular damage in later years usually happens because of high blood pressure, calcification, age-related loss of elasticity, cholesterol, and smoking.
- High blood pressure: Hypertensive heart disease is a heart complication brought on by chronically high blood pressure. It primarily affects the lower left chamber, aka the left ventricle, and to some extent the left atrium.
The left ventricle’s function is to collect oxygen-enriched blood from the left atrium and send it out to the rest of the body through the aortic valve.
Hypertension happens when the force of blood pushing against the arterial walls is consistently high, registering above 120/80 on a sphygmomanometer.
This pressure can damage the aortic valve as it tries to prevent the blood from flowing backwards into the left atrium.
As the left ventricle works harder to contain the pressure of blood, over time it may become hypertrophic, or thickened and enlarged, which affects its ability to function well as part of the heart.
Some interesting facts about heart attacks
- Every 40 seconds, someone in the US has a heart attack. Every 33 seconds, a person dies from some form of heart disease.
- The average age for a first heart attack for men is 65 years. For women, it is 72 years. People who smoke or those with a chronic disease are at higher risk.
- 1 in 5 heart attacks is silent, and the person doesn’t even realize they’ve had a heart attack. Sometimes, you might even mistake it for trapped gas.
- A heart attack is not the same as cardiac arrest, although both may result in heart failure. Cardiac arrest means the electrical activity that makes a heart pump has stopped. A heart attack happens when blood can’t flow to the heart, which causes heart tissue to die.
- Research shows that heart attacks peak at Christmas and New Year’s Day. This could be because cold weather exacerbates respiratory illnesses, spikes in emotional stress, and throwing diet caution to the wind.
Life expectancy after heart attack by age
Human tissue cells regenerate, and according to experts, the entire cell population of the heart is replaced every 4.5 years.
However, if a section of the heart muscle dies because of poor or zero blood supply, it becomes scar tissue. This cannot be replaced with new, natural muscle growth.
A person can have multiple heart attacks, silent or otherwise, and continue to live. But every heart attack kills off some part of the heart muscle. Ultimately, very little living tissue remains, and it must work overtime to circulate blood.
Life expectancy after a heart attack or cardiac arrest varies by your age at the time of a heart incident. The older you are, the more years you lose per incident. If you had a heart attack at the age of 65, you could lose around 10 years.
The good news is that if you are aged 65 years and above, your doctor will be keeping a close eye on your heart health. They will advise you on what lifestyle changes you can make to prevent a heart incident and have more time to live.
Follow your doctor’s guidance, eat healthier, exercise more, quit smoking, and take your medications as instructed, and you might be able to squeeze in up to 20 years of life after a heart scare.