Heart attack is something that we categorize with people who are old, or weak. We do not at any time consider that people who are physically fit can have a heart attack under any circumstance. I can imagine looking at an athlete like Superman with the hopes that he cannot have a heart attack. Don't tell me you started thinking like that as well because before we can guarantee if truly athletes are immune to heart attack, we need to first understand what a heart attack is, so join me on this heartfelt post on heart attack.
If you can go in from of a screening machine to see your internal organs, you would realize that the heart is located in the thoracic cavity between the lungs. If you remove the pericardial sac which covers the heart, you would see the epicardium which is made up of epicardial fat. Below the epicardium is the myocardium which is what we refer to as the heart muscle. Well, for those of you who do not have access to a screening device to check your internal organs or those who cannot access a cadaver, I just did justice to the location of the heart. You don't have to say thank you, I did it for free.
If you are wondering what the long story about the heart and the myocardium is, then you should understand that a heart attack is known as Myocardial infarction which just means an area of dead tissue in the myocardium as a result of lack of blood flow to that region. For easy understanding, the aorta which takes blood from the heart first branches to supply the heart itself. That artery is known as the right coronary artery which branches to the heart. The right coronary artery supplies the right side of the heart, while the left coronary artery supplies the left side of the heart. Now to explain heart attack, if there is a clogging of the coronary artery preventing the flow of blood, somewhat like the clogging of a kitchen pipe, thereby preventing water from going through, it would lead to the death of the myocardial area of the heart and that is the beginning of myocardial infarction.
I do not mean that this happens overnight, it takes a continuous blockage and death of the myocardium and a high-risk factor will be atherosclerosis. Forget the big jargon, atherosclerosis is basically a plaque in the artery which can be small or big. Small plaques would basically not cause any problem but the big ones will surely occlude the blood vessels of the heart and this could lead to signs of attack. A major sign is Angina pectoris or what people call stable angina. This is chest pain that people start to feel when they do tedious activities, such as running through the stairs of a 20-storey building, please do not try that unless you have been doing it before because it would normally make your heart to race but then, when the person takes a rest, the pain reduces. This pain is completely predictable and this is basically not a heart attack, but it can increase the risk of having a heart attack. When the plaque in the artery ruptures away from the inside lining of the vessel, there would be a clot forming and this would increase the plaque in that area, increasing the heart attack. During a heart attack, the chest pain that would extend to the neck the abdomen, and the back. When this occurs, people can also experience nausea, and they start to sweat profusely.
Let me give you a quick one on what would happen if a person comes to the hospital with a heart attack. The doctors would first give the patient a blood thinner usually aspirin and in some cases, patients would be given nitrates which would dilate the vessels what we refer to as vasodilators which would relax the vessels. Trust me, when I say it is very rare for a person with a heart attack not to visit the cath lab (cardiac catheterization lab) where a catheter is infused into the vessels to identify the occlusion in the artery of the heart. These images are visible with the help of an angiogram and dye is used to show the blood vessel. When the occlusions are seen, the doctor can perform an angioplasty which would help open the artery again.
While prevention is better than cure, it doesn't mean that people who survive heart attacks can do much. Some people have survived a heart attack and still run a marathon, but it is important to even prevent a heart attack at all and to do so, it is important to prevent the plaque as the symptoms wouldn't show up until it is large, so it is important to reduce the risk of having large plaque. One very simple solution is Cardiovascular exercise, diet and proper check-up. Performing cardiovascular exercise would help develop new capillaries in the heart. A lot of us do not take exercise seriously but the heart needs to work at a maximum once in a while with high-intensity exercises, which can be done at intervals. Back to our previous discussion on if an athlete can have a heart attack, the answer is possible, if there are other causes but it would be very rare. So participating in exercises that allow the heart muscle to work, and oxygen to circulate would keep the heart far from a heart attack. Because I want to be far from heart attack, I always ensure to do a 30-minute exercise every morning. It can be very stressful, and painful because it hurts my skeletal muscles but we know that no pain, no gain. I need to pass through the pain so I would not be at the hospital where I will be fighting for my life.
Reference
- https://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/heart-attack/warning-signs-of-a-heart-attack
- https://www.health.harvard.edu/topics/heart-attack/all
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6172294/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6481017/
- https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/01.CIR.0000048890.59383.8D