Deadly Heart Aches
Imagine yourself with a queasy feeling taking over your body. The feeling is indescribable, but then you ignore the feeling, figuring that it must be the anxiety and tension of the moment. Then the pains begins, the feeling of pressure on your chest and pain running down your left arm. It continues for several minutes and subsided. Again you ignore the feeling, suggesting that it was indigestion. The thought of angina or heart attack is nowhere near your mind. The chest pain begins. It intensifies with the queasy feeling all over as you continue with your daily task. Something must be wrong. The pain continues this way on and off with the intensity and the length of each episode increasing. Little did you know that you were really experiencing a heart attack.
A Heart attack also referred to as Myocardial infarction (MI), is defined as an occlusion of a major coronary artery or one of its branches with necrosis of the myocardium caused by atherosclerosis or an embolus (Christensen, Kockrow, 308). MI takes place when a blood clot (embolus) blocks the flow of blood through a coronary artery, a blood vessel that feeds blood to a part of the heart muscle, causing interrupted blood flow to the heart. This results in damage and can destroy parts of the heart muscle. In Northern America, MI is one of the most common causes of death, with a mortality rate of approximately 25%, with more than 50% of sudden deaths within 1 hour of the onset symptoms (Sommers, Johnson, 686).
There are many causes and risk factors of MI, which can be categorized as modified or non- modified. The most common cause of MI is when the blood supply to the heart is cut off or reduced, either by an embolus or narrowing of the coronary artery and buildup of fatty deposits on the lining of the artery wall (Sommers, Johnson, 686). The lack of blood supply causes reduced supply of oxygen to the heart, resulting in potential damage to the heart muscle. A diet high saturated...