Tune in to Your Heart

This year World Heart Day is on September 26.  Heart disease has become rampant in young Indians. Experts believe in the last 15 years heart disease has increased by 200 percent in the young people What’s scaring experts that heart attack can cut brilliant lives short by as much as 5 to 10 years for Indians, as compared to the Caucasians. Dr. Kushagra Katariya, Gurgaon based cardio-thoracic surgeon reveals, “The youngest patient I saw was a young man only of 31 from Tamilnadu. He had a major heart attack, despite being thin, consistent with exercise, non-smoker, non-diabetic, with only mildly elevated cholesterol levels.”

Indians are at four times increased risk of getting a heart attack as compared to Caucasians. Whereas in the West the average age of getting a heart attack is 55 in India it is almost ten years less. What has caused such high rise in numbers?

Such rise in numbers is attributed to the kind of lives we are living these days—stressed, sedentary and smoke-filled. Then there is the threat of diabetes, a metabolic disorder that corrodes your heart, damages your kidneys and eyesight. “This endocrinal disorder is afflicting Indians in large numbers. Diabetes makes you two to four times more vulnerable to heart attack, than the people who do not have it. Again if you have diabetes your probability of dying with a sudden heart attack is as much as someone who has had a heart attack. Believe it or not diabetes can slash eight years of your life”, elucidates Dr. Shahi. “And God forbid if you smoke with diabetes. You are sawing life away with every puff”, adds he.

Licensed to kill

Inhaling tobacco smoke causes several immediate responses within the heart and its blood vessels. Within one minute of starting to smoke, the heart rate begins to rise. Carbon monoxide in tobacco smoke exerts a negative effect on the heart by reducing the blood’s ability to carry oxygen.

Quitting is not that simple. It needs repeated efforts. May be few sessions with pins and needles could help you kick the butt for good. Dr O P Chhabra, consultant acupuncture with Vimhans Hospital says, “Ear acupuncture can be a useful ally in your fight against tobacco. Around 10 to 20 sessions will yield result. Acupuncture releases biochemicals, which reduce the urge for smoking and help you tide over the withdrawal symptoms better.”

Are you a worry warrior?

The kind of person you are—relaxed or worried will have ramifications on the way your heart beats. No doubts, we can’t dispense stress but staying stressed all the time is like boiling inside. Just like you have learned to flare up under stress, there are ways to unlearn your responses and Sanjiv Sharma learned that hard way. All of 42, one morning he suffered from immense pain in his right arm and shoulders. Vice President with a multi-national bank his job involved immense stress, dining with clients and smoking. Without delay he got himself admitted to Artemis and an angioplasty later he woke up as a reformed man. He traded cigarettes for golf clubs. Not only golf provides him with exercise, but is perfect to bond with his male friends, something that a session of cigarette serves. Moreover, he took up yoga, which helped him release stress.

The experience has shaken up Sanjiv. “One moment you are normal and the other you are battling for your life. Post angioplasty to keep my cholesterol under control, I have to take few medicines life long”, says he.

Going back to roots

Yoga has an important role in the prevention of cardiovascular diseases “ A corpse pose can relax your knotted muscles and frayed nerves. The pose helps lower blood pressure in people suffering from hypertension. Something as simple as clapping can help you lower your cholesterol. Our palms have all the points of internal energy system and by clapping when the pressure is mounted on these points all the internal organs get the energy from it and starts functioning well and the body becomes healthy and disease free,” says well-known yoga guru Suneel Singh. Something as simple as heart massage can help strengthen your heart. Make a cup with your right hand and gently tap your left chest in the proximity of your heart for 50 times while sitting erect with your legs folded and tucked beneath your hips. He is quick to warn, “ Begin yoga under guidance of an expert teacher, otherwise you might risk more harm than good.”

What you eat

Cholesterol is a soft, white, fat like substance that is made in our liver and found in body cells. Though cholesterol is touted the devil for the rise in incidences of heart diseases, it doesn’t work alone. When smoking, high blood pressure and diabetes couple with high cholesterol they form a deadly cocktail, which brews the recipe for heart attacks. You can lower cholesterol by having more of fruits and vegetables and cooking with little oil. Exercise helps in a big way too.

What makes heart disease scary is the fact that the disease rarely betrays a symptom until it is too late. Hence, we see a healthy man dying of heart attack. Hardly, we know that he had a time bomb ticking inside. “The ethnic Indian male stands to be at the highest risk of Coronary Artery Disease anywhere in the world, and the most vulnerable age group is between 45 -55 years”, informs Dr. Anil Dhall, senior consultant cardiology Max Heart and Vascular Institute, Gurgaon.

Symptoms

o Squeezing
o Pressure in the chest
o Tightness or pain radiating from the chest to the neck, jaw or either arm unremittingly for more than 30 minutes.
o Feeling of extreme fatigue, so much so that a simple chore becomes difficult.

People belonging to high-risk group—hypertensives, diabetics should have an aspirin and rush to the hospital, on experiencing any of these symptoms.

Your heart will thank you if you—
1. Keep your weight in check.
2. Eat salt sensibly, which means no junk food.
3. Get your blood pressure checked regularly.
4. Quit cigarettes.
5. Laugh often.

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