Can High Blood Pressure Cause Heart Disease?

It is a sad fact that most people whose suffer a heart attack, do not see it coming. We tend to have this idea that it will always be “someone else”.

Did you know that heart disease is the biggest killer in the western world and it is not declining as the number one way in which to die. Far from it, death from heart related disease is on the increase.

Cardiovascular Disease Statistics for the period January – December 2006 suggests that 80,000,000 people in the United States alone have one or more forms of cardiovascular disease (CVD).

The results are broken down as follows:

high blood pressure – 73,600,000 people.
coronary heart disease – 16,800,000 people.
Myocardial infarction (acute heart attack) – 7,900,000 people.
Angina pectoris (chest pain caused by reduced blood supply to the heart muscle) – 9,800,000 people.
Stroke – 6,500,000 people.
Heart Failure — 5,700,000 people.

Cardiovascular diseases claimed 864,480 lives in 2005 alone which is 35.3 percent of all deaths or 1 of every 2.8 deaths.

Well over 500,000 people undergo heart bypass surgery every year in America alone. The world wide figure is quite staggering.

Since this trend is increasing, you can clearly see that action is needed, but what action should – or can – you take?

One of the great problems is that there is a great deal of controversy regarding what constitutes a (heart) healthy life style.

There are those who would have us believe that if we take an over the counter medication that is made up from a mixture of statin drugs and blood thinning drugs, then our risk of heart related health problems will reduce.

To further confuse the issue, there is a large body of health professionals who claim that the use of statin drugs not only puts us at risk from severe side effects from those drugs, but the use of such drugs has no proven statistical relevance in reducing the death rate from coronary related causes.

It has long been claimed that a low fat, low sodium (salt) diet is heart healthy. The question that this then poses is: why should we find that the increase in heart related disease seems to increase in direct proportion to the increase in popularity to this form of diet?

One thing that all of the experts do seem to agree on, is that we should take some form regular exercise every day, and that we should in general eat less than is currently the average.

They also agree that our diet would be better if it included a regular but varied selection of fresh fruit and vegetables.

They all definitely agree that tobacco smoking is a contributing factor to heart disease.

Beyond this, it would appear that the experts just cannot agree, so it falls upon us to do our best to sift through the reports and try to find a sensible path to tread.

If we get it wrong, there is every chance that we will end our days as one of the ever increasing Cardiac Event statistics.