Heart Disease Facts

Number One Cause of Death

• Cause of 1 in every 3 deaths in U.S.
• Cardiovascular Disease kills someone every 40 seconds.
• every year 635,000 Americans have their first heart attack.
• every year 280,000 Americans will have a recurrent heart attack.

Traditional Risk Assesments Are not good enough

• 75% of early myocardial infarction (heart attack at early age) were within the recommended LDL-C cholesterol levels.
• 72% of those experiencing a cardiovascular event for the first time meet the recommended lipid panel guidelines.
• 41% of those that experience recurrent cardiovascular events meet the recommended lipid panel guidelines.

Underlying Issues That Increase Risk Of Heart Disease

Metabolic Syndrome

Metabolic Syndrome is when your have 3 of the following: central obesity, elevated triglycerides, low HDL Cholesterol, Elevated Blood Pressure, Elevated Plasma Glucose

What Is Heart Disease

Heart Disease is commonly known as the excessive buildup of plaque in our arteries.  This plaque either directly cuts off blood flow where the buildup is too severe, or part of the plaque breaks off into the blood stream and moves until it travels into blood vessels too small to let it pass through.  Areas where this is common are the blood vessels that supply the heart (causing heart attack) and the brain (causing stroke).

Heart disease is much more than this.  It is a story, that in most cases, spans decades where inappropriate diet and lifestyle prevents the body from functioning optimally.  The combination of high carbohydrate diets, including bad fats, and a sedentary lifestyle, combine to create inflammation and small LDL cholesterol, two key parts to the heart disease story.

First is inflammation, inflammation underlies any disease, but in this case we are talking about inflammation in the blood vessel walls, which stems from high inflammatory diet and lifestyle choices.

Second are LDL cholesterol molecules.  You may be familiar with your cholesterol panel from your annual blood work, and you may have been educated in LDL cholesterol specifically, but it is a certain smaller size of LDL cholesterol that stems from carbohydrate metabolism that plays the most crucial role.

Small LDL cholesterol and inflammation combine to create plaque formation.  While the overall process has many more pieces to the puzzle, it is the two factors interacting over decades that leads to severe build up of plaque resulting in high risk for heart disease and stroke.

Preventing And Treating Heart Disease

INtegral Health Center Uses SCientifically Custimized Plans To Prevent Or Reverse Heart Disease