What Causes Hearts to Get Damaged?

The heart is a powerful muscle that pumps oxygen-rich blood and other nutrients throughout your body. There are many parts of the heart that can get damaged. Because of the advances in medicine, heart damage can be determined and measured. Sometimes damage that occurs is out of our control. Trauma and side effects from drugs can damage the heart. Age and having a family history of heart disease are things you have no control over. There are, however, some things that cause heart damage that can be controlled by you. In fact, in many cases, you can prevent heart damage

Definition

Heart damage is damage in the heart's lining, valves, muscle, arteries, or electrical system. More than one part of the heart can be damaged at the same time. Also damage can cause heart cell death. Scar tissue formation after cell death can also occur. This causes the heart to beat less effectively and heart beats can become irregular. Damage to the heart valves results in the valves not closing properly. The damage may also cause the valve openings to become narrow which also results in improper functioning.

Detection

In order to determine if persons have heart damage, they should be tested. By the time they may notice a problem, the damage may be severe. An electrocardiogram is often done if heart damage is suspected. Other methods for detecting heart damage are an echocardiogram, cardiac catheterization, coronary angiography, or a CT or PET scan. Blood tests can be done to determine heart damage as well

Heart Attacks

A major cause of heart damage is a heart attack. A heart attack is death of heart muscle as a result of not enough oxygen getting to the heart. The oxygen does not get to the heart because there is a block in blood flow to the heart. The block could be caused by a blood clot. A clot is precipitated by the build up of plaque in the blood vessels supplying blood to the heart .

Uncontrolled High Blood Pressure

Uncontrolled high blood pressure can damage your heart in several ways. First, if the arteries leading to your heart are narrowed already, high blood pressure can further interrupt blood flow to your heart. High blood pressure makes your heart work harder, eventually causing the left part of your heart to get larger than normal or to get stiff. The strain on your heart from high blood pressure can cause your heart to weaken and eventually fail.

Smoking

Smoking causes your heart to beat faster than it should. It also increases the carbon monoxide in your blood which robs the body of oxygen getting to your heart. The chemicals in tobacco cause your blood vessels to stiffen which can trigger a clot to be formed. In addition, smoking quickens the breakdown of bad cholesterol. This can also cause blood clot formation. Smoking also lowers good cholesterol which protects the heart.

Excessive Alcohol Consumption

Excessive alcohol consumption is defined as more than one drink per day for a woman and more than two drinks per day for a man. Drinking too much alcohol over a long period of time weakens the heart so that it can not pump blood effectively. Usually, there are no symptoms until the damage is quite severe. At that point, the symptoms that occur are the symptoms of heart failure.

Prevention

Besides not smoking and controlling your blood pressure, there are several other things you can do to never get heart damage. First, you can eat a healthy diet. Many think the Mediterranean diet is a good diet to follow. This diet suggests eating plenty of fruits, vegetables and whole grains. It also recommends eating a lot of fish. The diet advises having healthy fats like canola oil and olive oil. In addition eating nuts, drinking red wine, in moderation, is suggested. It advises that you eat very little red meat.
Another way to prevent heart damage is to get plenty of exercise.