Heart disease is officially the number one cause of death in the world, accounting for 31 percent of all deaths. In the United States, heart disease is the number one cause of death for both men and women, accounting for one in every four deaths. It’s the most common cause of premature death, and countless years of productive and fulfilling life are lost due to heart disease every day.
Heart disease is often a stealthy killer. According to government statistics, about half of sudden cardiac deaths happen outside of a hospital. Because heart disease can be silent for years, and symptoms can be different in different people, many don’t recognize they even have heart disease until it’s too late.
But what is heart disease, how does it happen, and what are the risk factors? First let’s learn why the heart is such an important organ.
Your heart is the constantly running engine of your circulation, pumping oxygen-heavy red blood cells to all of your organs and pulling used-up blood full of carbon dioxide away from them. The blood never stops moving, flowing in an endless continuous loop.
If we had to choose a starting place, we could start where bright red oxygen-heavy blood from the lungs is pumped out of the left side of your heart and into your arteries. Your arteries pulse, contracting in time with your heart, pushing blood and oxygen all over your body. As the oxygen is used up, the old bluish blood is pulled through your veins back to the right side of your heart, which pushes that old blood through your lungs. When you breathe in, you refresh all those blood cells with oxygen, the bluish blood turns bright red, and the cycle starts again.