Heart Disease Risks, Research Paper Example

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on the heart failure risks posed to younger generations, such as myself, who come from families with a history in heart failure conditions. The paper will discuss the background of heart failure as an inherited condition among younger generations. It will also elaborate on the particular risks I am exposed to for being a young person from a family with a history in heart failure.

Additionally, the paper will discuss the general consequences of having heart failure as my family’s condition. More importantly though, the paper will identify lifestyle strategies that I have adopted in a bid to reduce the risk of developing the same condition, just because it was inherited from the generations ahead of me.

Heart Disease Conditions and Risks

The term heart disease is used as an umbrella name to denote an assortment of diseases and conditions that affect the normal functioning of the heart. Another term used to refer to the same phenomenon is cardiopathy. Many conditions are thus grouped under the term heart diseases. One of these conditions is called heart failure. This is one of the most prominent conditions among heart patients. Since 2007, heart failure have been ranked as the number cause of deaths in the US, Canada, England and Wales. In the US alone, heart failure kills one person in every 35 seconds (Jeffrey, 2006).

As a medical condition, heart failure refers to the consequence of structural and or functional heart disorder, which impairs a heart’s ability to fill with blood and pump it sufficiently throughout the body. Structural malfunction of the heart usually hinders efficient pumping of the blood such that the body collapses (beginning with the brain) as a result of lacking oxygen.  This condition is also referred to as Congestive Heart Failure (CHF)

The moment the heart stops functioning, that is pumping blood efficiently and sufficiently, the entire body and the heart itself collapses and thus the name heart failure. Blood is the chief circulation medium in the body. Oxygen is transported from the lungs to all body tissues by red blood cells carried by the blood. White blood cells are also carried by the blood, as are nutrients and wastes. The failure to pump blood efficiently and sufficiently thus causes the body to quit and ‘die’. The most common type of heart failure is called Cor Pulmonale, which is the failure of only the right side of a person’s heart.

Anything that can interrupt and or hinder the proper functionality of the heart is thus considered a risk in heart failure prevention. At all times, the heart must always be able to pump blood, pump it with the ideal speed, pump enough volumes of it and pump it in a regular manner. At the onset of a heart failure attack, a patient experiences shortness of breath, coughing, swelling of the legs especially the ankles and inexplicable exercise intolerance. The medical field is yet to come up with a universally agreed definition and or diagnoses of heart failure. This has caused many cases to go undiagnosed until after post-modern results. A definitive diagnosis is usually hard to arrive at because most of the symptoms depicting the onset of heart failure are misleading.

There are many known causes of the heart failure condition. In most cases, the causes of heart failure reflect poor lifestyle choices. Indeed the most common treatment and preventive strategies of heart failure that have been recommended to my parents and grand parents have been a set of lifestyle measures; such include the diet changes, exercises, quitting health-risking habits like smoking and the like. While medications to treat the condition exist, lifestyle becomes the very backbone on which a healthy heart can be maintained, (Jack, 1995).

It is also very important to note that, as I have learnt, heart failure conditions can be hereditary. People born in families where the condition has been noted have a higher risk of developing the same condition. This is threatening since, in most developing countries, more that 2% of all adults have suffered an incidence of heart failure, with the rate going up to 10% for those over the age of 65.

In the US, over 5 million people are living with a progressing or resolved heart failure condition. Over 500,000 new patients are diagnosed every year with the condition. With so many people susceptible to the condition, its being inherited makes it worrisome. This is because the chances of an individual suffering form heart failure if it is in the family are over 50%. My chances of being susceptible to heart failure were always at 50%, long before I was born.

Significance of Having Heart Failure in the Family History

Research into this area has been very chaotic. So many opposing findings have been reported. Nevertheless, of recent, medics and heart disease experts concur that the chances of one developing the heart failure condition increase if such a condition is in the family, (Jack, 1995). Several factors come into play here. For instance, I am very sure that I inherited obesity from my parents. Obesity is a leading risk when it comes to heart diseases. That means that, my chances of developing a complication of the heart were always high since birth. On the other hand, one can be born in a family where the heart is structurally weak. Once that heart is then faced with the demanding task of pumping blood, complications mat develop easily.

The most important thing to note here is that the heart failure condition is not what I inherited. Rather I inherited the causes of heart failure (Obesity). The causes and not the condition are in most cases what are inherited (Thomas, 1999). This means that if I was to eliminate the inherited weaknesses and adopt a lifestyle that promoted general body health, the chances of developing heart failure conditions would decrease significantly.

A good example in this case is myself. I was born in a family with inherited obesity inclinations and my parents have both been diagnosed with heart failure. If I had accepted the obesity and lived with it, I had a 50% chance, if not higher as depicted by some studies, of succumbing to heart failure. However, I initiated exercises, regulated my diet and took up numerous lifestyle measures that eventually took care of my obesity. Consequently, my risks of developing heart failure reduce to less than 10%, as my physician let me know.

This goes on to show that having a family history with a heart failure problem is of great significance, whether or not the heart failure inclination is inherited. Knowing that such a history exists helped me to initiate corrective lifestyle behaviors that reduced the risk of succumbing to the same condition. Living in ignorance while the condition is in the family history, would only have placed me at a greater risk of following in my family history (Thomas, 1999).

Consequences of Having Heart Failure in the Family

When one has a family history of heart failure, especially chronic heart failure it becomes imperatively important to avoid any lifestyle habits that might amplify his or her already prominent heart failure risk. For instance, the following were found to be the predominant heart failure causes in a 19-year long study published in 2006 and conducted by the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The causes were gleaned form individuals who had been diagnosed with the condition, irrespective of the gender, age or environment. They include, cigarette smoking (16%), hypertension (10%), obesity (8%), Diabetes (3%), valvular heart disease (2%) and Ischaemic heart disease (62%). The percentages listed after each refers to the risk factors.

This means that for anybody born in a family with heart failure incidences, such as myself, he or she must be especially cautious not to develop any of the above conditions, and not to practice some of the above noted habits. Obesity must be fought with, diabetes prevented at all costs and other heart conditions kept at bay. I quit high intakes of alcohol, coffee and tobacco smoke. Failure to do that, the family history added to the known causes of heart failure could simply have compounded the risk level. I had to be very cautious since I could not afford to take my diet, exercises, alcohol levels and such lifestyle elements forgranted.

While many inherited conditions leave the patients unable to determine whether they will fall prey to the family history, heart failure risks due to inheritance can be reduced and even eliminated by conscious lifestyle choices, something that accrues from my own experience. I implemented several lifestyle strategies and choices that made up for having been born in a family with heart failure conditions. These choices constitute the next part of our paper.

Personal Strategies to Reduce the Risk of Heart Failure

As already noted, despite being from a family with instances of heart failure, I adopted some lifestyle choices that reduced, and I hope eliminated for good, the risk of contracting a heart failure disease. These factors fall into three distinct groups namely dietary, substance use and physical activity. Dietary requirements involved my elimination of foods that agitate medical conditions. I got rid of concentrated sugars (to avoid diabetes), concentrated fats (to cater for obesity), cholesterol (to solve an overweight condition), dangerous minerals when in excess such as sodium found in table salt (to avoid heart malfunction) etc. When one becomes overweight and cholesterol levels are high, the heart becomes a depositary of solid fats. This constrains its functioning until it can no longer pump blood efficiently and sufficiently (Mathias, 1993).

My diet had to address such concerns and omit foods that could endanger my heath. In their place, healthy, wholesome and balanced foods became the best choice. Secondly, I had to avoid the use of tobacco, alcohol and other substances that could interfere with the working of my heart, given that my family history had cases of heart failure. Finally, I had to initiate physical activity to enable my body remain physically fit. Cardiovascular exercises for three days a week, each session lasting about 30 minutes, have sufficed in maintaining my healthy heart, despite a heart failure family history.

Summary

As elaborated in this paper, heart failure accrues when the heart cannot function correctly. That failure to pump blood becomes the cause of a total body failure. My experience has been a lesson by itself. While the condition is hereditary, what is inherited from family history is not the condition itself but its causes. It is important that when I realized the existence of heart failure conditions in my family, I took up measures to prevent that condition occurring in my life. Lifestyle changes and healthy living will aptly reduce and even eliminate any risks of contracting a heart failure condition, despite having been born in a family with that condition (Mathias, 1993).

References

Mathias, R.M.D. (1993). Eradicating Heart Disease. San Francisco: Health Now.

Jack, G. (1995). The Heart Attack Prevention & Recovery Handbook. New York: Hartley & Marks Publishers.

Jeffrey, D. (ed) et al. (2006). Congestive Heart Failure. Cambridge: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Thomas, J. (1999). Heart Failure : A Critical Inquiry into American Medicine and the Revolution in Heart Care. New York: Dell.