Books and Articles by James M. Rippe

Even thinking about heart disease is no fun, but preventing it from happening in the first place (or managing heart disease if you do develop it) is often a matter of controlling your risk factors, eating right, exercising, and generally living a heart-healthy life. Lowering your stress levels comes into play as does knowing the warning signs of heart attack — just in case.

A heart attack, known medically as a myocardial infarction (MI), occurs when one of the three coronary arteries that supply oxygen-rich blood to the heart muscle (myocardium) becomes severely or totally blocked, usually by a blood clot. When the heart muscle doesn’t receive enough oxygenated blood, it begins to die.

Atherosclerosis results from the gradual buildup of fatty deposits called plaque, or lesions, in the interior walls of large and medium-sized arteries. The disease process starts with small changes in the artery wall and takes years to develop to a point where the narrowing arteries may produce symptoms or negatively affect your health.

A pump (your heart) is useless without the rest of the plumbing, which in your body is called the cardiovascular system. Here’s a quick look at how it all fits together and functions. The lungs: The lungs are composed of an intricate series of air sacs surrounded by a complex, highly branching network of blood vessels.

When it comes to heart disease and its risk factors, men and women have much in common. But there are also some important differences. If you are a woman, understanding these differences can help you partner with your doctor to do the best you can to prevent or beat heart disease. Women tend to develop CHD later than men On average, women develop heart disease ten years later than men.

Symptoms are feelings or conditions that a patient experiences and then tries to describe to his or her physician. Signs are findings that the physician derives from the physical examination that point toward the proper cardiac diagnosis. Depending on the circumstances and severity, some symptoms (conditions you experience) may represent signs of serious cardiac disease to your physician or may not be worrisome at all.

Because every person is an individual, physical responses to progressive coronary artery disease vary. Not every individual with heart disease has every manifestation and symptom of the condition. Individuals likewise experience specific symptoms in different ways. But these manifestations are typical: Nothing: Many people can have significant coronary atherosclerosis but experience no discomfort or other sign of the disease.

The heart is located in the center of the chest cavity, just to the left of the midline of the body. You need to understand the following important parts: The heart muscle: Called the myocardium (myo = muscle and cardium = heart; pronounced my-o-car-dee-um), this muscle contracts and relaxes to pump blood throughout the cardiovascular system.

Many people mistakenly think that you either have hypertension or you don’t. In fact, blood pressure readings span a continuum ranging all the way from normal to severely elevated. Experiencing one elevated reading does not mean that you have hypertension. Everyone’s blood pressure tends to spike up in situations that produce anger, pain, fear, or high stress.