The cardiovascular system is composed of thousands of tubes, known as blood vessels that blood travels in. Blood is constantly being pumped to and from the heart through arteries and veins, respectively. Oxygen, nutrients, water, wastes are just some of the substances moving throughout the body via the blood vessels. Because this system is very complex, many issues can occur which inhibit the cardiovascular system from doing its job. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a category of diseases that relate to the heart and blood vessels. The most common form of CVD is coronary heart disease and involves the buildup plaque in the arteries, namely the coronary arteries. This occurs when cholesterol, cellular waste, and other types of …show more content…
Proteins form over the platelets called fibrin that make the blood clot and stick the platelets together. When this process gets repeated it can cause a clot, or thrombus. As a result, this forces the heart to work much harder to pump blood efficiently due to the arteries becoming narrower. Continued buildup of plaque can lead to heart disease and cause a heart attack as well as many other health complications. There are many known risk factors that have been shown to correlate with heart disease. High blood pressure, smoking, diabetes, lack of physical activity, and obesity, are all risk factors that correlation to and increase risk of CVD. Fortunately, all of these risk factors can be managed and controlled through a variety of ways. Although CVD is mostly preventable, cardiovascular disease remains as one of the leading causes of death in the United States (Erhardt, 2009).
Risk Factors There are many risk factors associated with CVD and they are divided into two categories. The first is uncontrollable risk factors, which includes sex, age, family history, and race. These factors cannot be changed or managed. The other category is controllable risk factors that fortunately can be improve through lifestyle changes in order to reduce the risk of CVD. Hypertension (HTN) or high blood pressure (HBP), is a risk factor of CVD that has been well established (Gu, 2008; Qiuping, 2008). When measuring blood
Although the term cardiovascular disease refers to a disorder of the cardiovascular system, it is usually associated with atherosclerosis, also known as arterial disease. It is considered the leading cause of deaths in the world, taking 17.1 million lives a year. There are only a few factors that are non-modifiable, these being the persons age, gender, family history and their race and ethnicity. Although there are non-modifiable risk factors, there are multiple multiple risk factors that are modifiable that anyone can use to prevent getting any type of cardiovascular disease. These people just need to have the motivation to be able to change themselves and their lifestyles in order to better
Much of the burden caused by cardiovascular is preventable. Major modifiable risk factors include tobacco smoking, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, insufficient physical activity, overweight and obesity, diabetes,
Individuals are more likely to develop CVD if they have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, are obese, use tobacco, eat a poor diet, or are not physically active. Most clinical risk factors that contribute to cardiovascular disease can be modified by practicing healthy lifestyle and behavior choices (Yu, Rimm, Lu, Rexrode, Albert, Qi, Willet, Hu, & Manson 2016).
Nonmodifiable risk factors associated with coronary artery disease include age, gender, family history, and ethnic background. Modifiable risk factors include smoking, obesity, elevated serum lipid levels, limited physical activity, stress, and hypertension (Ignatavicius & Workman, 2010). M.C’s family history of CAD, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia are leading
There are multiple factors that lead to the development cardiovascular disease. While some individuals are born with conditions that predispose them to strokes or heart disease, a majority of people participate in a combination of risk factors that lead to the development of cardiovascular disease. A few of those risk factors include a lack of physical activity, smoking, and poor diet. The more frequently individuals expose themselves to these risk factors the higher their chances of developing cardiovascular disease.
The traditional risk factors for coronary artery disease are high LDL cholesterol, low HDL cholesterol, high blood pressure, family history, diabetes, smoking, being post-menopausal for women and being older than 45 for men, according to Fisher. Obesity may also be a risk factor.
Some of the Risk factors include: a high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, smoking, obesity, and diabetes. There have been many breakthroughs in CVD such as genetic testing and although they have been studying the heart for 50 years, they are nowhere near finished. Not until they find a
In addition to high blood cholesterol, high blood pressure and smoking also contribute to CHD. On the average, each of these doubles your chance of developing heart disease. Therefore, a person who has all three risk factors is eight times more likely to develop heart disease than someone who has none. Obesity and physical inactivity are other factors that can lead to CHD. Overweight increases the likelihood of developing high blood cholesterol and high blood pressure, and physical inactivity increases the risk of heart attack. Regular exercise, good nutrition, and smoking cessation are key to controlling the risk factors for CHD.
There are eight major contributors that result in heart disease: heredity, smoking, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol (LDL), physical inactivity, obesity, diabetes, and arterial inflammation. The remaining seven contributors can be controlled, or at least reduced to safer levels that will help prevent or even reverse the disease, prevent a heart attack, and prolong one’s life.
The cardiovascular system consists of the heart, blood, and valves. The cardiovascular system is able to transport things such as oxygen, nutrients, cell wastes, hormones and other substances vital for the maintenance of homeostasis as well as cell life through blood. The hearts function is to pump the blood in and out of the heart to propel it throughout the rest of the body. Deoxygenated blood enters through the pulmonary circuit through the superior and inferior vena cavae and dumps into the right atrium, then travels through the tricuspid valve into the right ventricle through the pulmonary semilunar valve and out of the pulmonary arteries. When the blood exits the pulmonary arteries into the lungs, gas exchange occurs. Oxygenated blood enters the systemic circuit through the right and left pulmonary veins into the left atrium, through the bicuspid or mitral valve into the left ventricle through the aortic valve and out of the aorta to the rest of the body and back again. The valves of the body carry the blood and help to manage blood pressure throughout the
The American Heart Association says that high blood pressure, unhealthy cholesterol levels, smoking, insulin resistance, diabetes, being overweight, and lack of physical exercise are all major contributors to these diseases. Of course, there are those risk factors that can’t be helped or changed; including heredity, old age, ethnic background, and even being male or female. The best thing to do is be physically active, eating a healthy diet, maintaining a healthy weight to decrease the risk of getting the disease.
Diabetes. Patients with diabetes carry an increased risk of coronary artery disease due to the similarity of the high blood pressure.
**Coronary heart disease risk factors: age (45 or older for men, 55 or older for women), family history of premature heart disease, cigarette smoking, high blood pressure, low HDL (less than 35), diabetes. HDL of 60 or more protects against heart disease, effectively subtracting one risk
One of the most frequent causes of heart attack is the major risk factors that we can’t change which are:
Many risk factors can contribute to this process. Some of them like age, gender and genetics are non-modifiable, meaning there is not much that can be done about them. Others, like drug abuse, smoking, stress, diet and exercise are modifiable, meaning an individual has control over them.3