Heart Diseases

The heart is the one organ that works for us every moment of our lives without a single day off. Whether we are asleep, playing football or sitting in class, it keeps beating and pushing blood through the blood vessels to every part of the body. If the heart stopped working for even a moment, a person would die. This is why we must always stay alert to keep the heart healthy.

When the possible signs of heart disease begin to appear, they should never be ignored. By watching for these signs and acting on them in time, through the food we eat, the way we live and proper medical treatment, we can keep the heart healthy. Every year heart diseases cause a large number of deaths around the world. A person can suffer from many different heart diseases, and two of the most important are high blood pressure and rheumatic fever.

• High blood pressure: a disease seen mostly in adults, often because of unhealthy habits and lifestyle
• Rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease: a disease seen mostly in children, which begins with a throat infection

When the heart pumps, blood flows through the arteries and presses against their walls. This push of blood against the walls of the blood vessels is called blood pressure. When this push becomes greater than it should be, the situation turns dangerous. High blood pressure is a serious health problem of the heart. It usually appears after the age of 40 in people who have unhealthy habits, live under mental stress, smoke, drink alcohol or do not take physical exercise.

A garden hose shows why the pressure rises. Press your thumb over the end of the hose and the opening becomes narrower, so the water shoots out with more force. The same thing happens inside an artery. When fat builds up on the inner walls of the arteries, the tube becomes narrow. The same amount of blood now has to pass through a smaller space, so the pressure inside these vessels rises every time blood is pumped through them. The heart also has to work harder than before to push the blood along.

Blood pressure changes a little with age, but a normal healthy person should have a blood pressure of 120/80 mm of Hg (millimetres of mercury). Blood pressure is written as two numbers because the heart does two different things. First it squeezes to send blood out, and then it relaxes to fill up with blood again. The pressure on the blood vessels is different in these two moments.

So when a reading says 120/80, the first number, 120, is the systolic pressure and the second number, 80, is the diastolic pressure. Blood is pushed out hardest when the heart contracts, so the systolic number is always the bigger one. If a check shows the pressure above these normal ranges, it is a sign of high blood pressure.

High blood pressure rarely has only one cause. Some causes belong to the body itself, some to our habits and some to the way we live. The main causes are these:

• Being very overweight (obesity)
• Worrying a great deal
• A rise in the amount of cholesterol in the blood
• Smoking and drinking alcohol
• Having kidney disease
• Growing older
• Heredity, when the tendency runs in the family
• Doing too little physical work and activity for the amount of rich food eaten
• An inactive and unhealthy lifestyle

These causes are linked to one another. When someone eats a lot but does little physical work, the extra energy is stored in the body as fat and the person keeps putting on weight. The cholesterol in the blood rises too. This same fat settles on the walls of the arteries, the tubes narrow and the pressure goes up. We cannot change our age or what runs in our family, but obesity, worry, smoking, drinking and an inactive lifestyle are all things we can change ourselves.

When blood pressure rises, the heart is under extra strain and the body gives several warning signs. If these signs appear, it is wise to have the blood pressure checked:

• Getting short of breath
• Pain in the chest and headache
• Sudden sweating that leaves the body soaking wet
• Dizziness
• A blood pressure reading higher than normal
• Difficulty in sleeping
• Becoming angry quickly

Most of the causes of high blood pressure come from habits and lifestyle, so changing those habits is the best way to avoid it. The main ways of preventing it are:

• Reduce excess body weight
• Give up habits such as worry, greed and jealousy
• Do not smoke or drink alcohol
• Exercise and do physical workouts regularly
• Do not eat much salty, fatty, hot or spicy food
• Do not eat too much meat and fish
• Keep diabetes and any other illness in the body under control
• Stay alert to the signs of heart disease

Rheumatic fever is caused by a germ called Group A Beta Haemolytic Streptococcus. The illness starts with a sore throat. A few days later, different joints of the body begin to ache. The word rheumatic refers to pain in the joints, and the illness is called rheumatic fever because it brings fever together with aching joints. It is not an ordinary fever. Rheumatic fever is a disease that goes on to cause problems in the heart.

Rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease are not two separate diseases. They are two stages of the same disease. In the first stage the child has fever and aching joints. If this is left untreated, the disease moves on and damages the valves of the heart, which is the second stage. The disease is seen most often in children between 5 and 15 years of age.

When a child has a sore throat and swollen tonsils with fever and does not get proper treatment, the germs of this disease go on to harm the heart. The disease causes trouble in the throat, the tonsils, the tissue that connects the throat, the joints and the heart, along with fever. It is not a disease to live in fear of, though. With treatment, it can be cured.

The causes of rheumatic fever can be understood in three groups:

• Personal causes: tonsillitis caused by Group A Beta Haemolytic Streptococcus bacteria that is not properly treated, age (children of school age), heredity and so on.
• Environmental causes: heavy overcrowding and a poorly organised way of living together.
• Social and economic causes: poor nutrition because of poverty, throat infections spreading because of unhealthy living conditions, and not knowing that an infection needs proper treatment at the right time.

These three groups feed into each other. When many people live crowded into a small room, a throat infection passes easily from one person to the next. A child who does not get enough nourishing food has a body that is weak at fighting infection. And when a sore throat is treated as nothing and left without care, the germs get the chance to reach the heart.

The signs of this disease begin in the throat, spread to the joints and finally reach the heart:

• At first, a sore throat and fever
• Pain and swelling in the joints of the knees, ankles, elbows and wrists
• Swelling of the heart muscle, with the chest aching and feeling heavy
• Red rashes on the skin
• Damage to the heart valves, so the heart cannot work properly
• Loss of appetite
• Nausea, vomiting and being unable to sleep

Because this disease starts with a throat infection, most of the ways to prevent it are about stopping infection and keeping the body strong:

• Take care of personal hygiene
• Take enough exercise
• Protect yourself from the cold
• Eat nutritious food
• Protect small children from throat infections
• Spread awareness about this disease in the community
• Have regular physical check-ups