How to Understand Heart Disease

Transcript Hi, I’m Dr. Dennis Finkielstein. I’m the deputy chief of cardiology at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, New York. I’m a full-time faculty member at Beth Israel, and I’ve been there about 10 years now. I’m an expert in a number of different cardiac conditions, but my main area of focus is noninvasive …

Transcript So how can fast food promote heart disease? In general, fast food makes all the wrong choices. Fast foods are high in saturated fasts, low in antioxidants, and have very little of the nutrients and minerals we need to have a healthy life. Fast foods are what we call empty calories. They really don’t …

Transcript So how can someone prevent heart disease with the Mediterranean Diet? There’s been a lot in the news lately about how we can treat heart disease with diet. Over the years there have been many different diets and many different things advocated to treat heart disease. It looks like it’s all coming back to …

Transcript So, how do you treat heart failure? Well, there are many different ways to treat heart failure and it depends on the cause. One of the most common causes of heart failure would be atherosclerosis, or a buildup of cholesterol plaque in the arteries which limit the blood flow and can lead to heart …

Transcript So, how can we live with heart failure? Once your doctor diagnoses you with having heart failure, he or she will often go after the main cause. Once your doctor diagnoses you with heart failure, the first thing will be to try to reverse the causes. Some of those causes would be blocked arteries, …

Transcript So how can someone know if they have heart failure? Well heart failure is really any condition in which the heart is not able to keep up with the demands of the body. Most of the time, we’re talking about a weakened heart muscle, and this can have a variety of different signs or …

Transcript So what is heart failure? Also known as congestive heart failure. Well at its very core, it is any condition in which the heart muscle function is not enough to keep up with the demand. What we really mean, however, when we talk about heart failure is a weakened heart muscle. And this can …

Transcript So what is an arrhythmia of the heart? Well, first of all, arrhythmia means no heart rhythm or arrhythmia, so I think usually we are talking about dysrhythmia or abnormal heart rhythm. The heart has a normal rhythm, with helps to control the heartbeat in a normally, synchronized fashion. And when that normal, synchronized …

Transcript So regards to heart disease there can be some basic difference between men and women. First of all, like a lot of times in life the classic symptoms are in common. In men we classically describe he symptoms of heart disease as squeezing or burning substernal or below the chest pain. Women may have …

Transcript How can someone know if they’re having a heart attack? Well, that can be tricky. Firstly, a heart attack can classically present as chest discomfort or pain or pressure in the chest. It’s usually squeezing and dull in nature and may be associated with sweatiness. The symptoms may stay in the chest wall, or …

Transcript So what causes angina, or angina? Well, angina is the word we use to reference chest pain or pressure in the heart or chest area. Unfortunately, the body may not be very good at telling exactly what’s causing the pain from our internal organs. When we get hurt externally, we can localize and know …

Transcript So, what causes atherosclerosis? Atherosclerosis is the buildup of cholesterol plaque within the arteries of the body. That can lead to things like stroke or heart attack. What causes it is complicated. On one side, there are genetic factors. Those are factors you’re born with and you inherit from your parents. On the other …

Transcript So, there’s a real link between diabetes and heart disease. Unfortunately, diabetes is very common in the United States. Almost one-third of Americans are either diabetic, or pre-diabetic. And having diabetes, leads to a change in the metabolism of the body. This changes the way the body handles foods, sugars and fats and that …

Transcript Does sugar increase the risk of heart disease? Well, it sure can. For the most part, when people eat a diet high in sugar, they’re eating an unhealthy diet. It’s usually high in processed foods and high in sugary or fatty foods. That can lead to the development of diabetes, obesity, and high blood …

Transcript So, how does obesity increase your risk of heart disease? Well, the first thing to say is that obesity is a major risk factor for heart disease. Obesity increases the risk for heart disease in two main ways. One is obviously you’re not getting the benefits of regular exercise. Those benefits are a reduction …

Transcript So, if we talk about how inactivity can increase your chance of heart disease, inactivity leads to de-conditioning, and in general what that means is that the heart no longer functions effectively. The heart is a muscle and like any other muscle, needs to be conditioned and trained and get regular exercise to work …

Transcript So, how does high blood pressure lead to heart disease? Well, high blood pressure or hypertension is a condition in the body where the pressure inside the arteries is high. The link between hypertension and heart disease is one of the most well established links in the medical literature. Finding out if you have …

Transcript How does smoking increase the risk of heart disease? Smoking has been one of the risk factors that’s most well-established for the development of heart disease and the buildup of atherosclerotic or cholesterol plaques in the arteries of the heart. The link between smoking and heart attack and stroke has been very strongly established …

Transcript So are African Americans at a greater risk for heart disease? Well that’s a great question. African Americans can be at a greater risk for heart disease. A lot of the risk may come from the risk factors that the general population also has. These are, lack of exercise, poor dietary choices, and increased …

Transcript How can you find out if you have heart disease? Well, one way would be to see your doctor. You’ll talk to your doctor about some of the symptoms you may be having, and your doctor may do some basic tests, such as checking your blood pressure and doing some basic blood work which …

Transcript So, what are the top five ways we can prevent heart disease? Well, there’s lot’s of ways to prevent heart disease and that’s the good news.If we want to just hit some of the main ways, we can can talk about five great starting points. One would be to increase the amount of cardiovascular …

Transcript So, before we get into how to treat a leaky heart valve, let’s talk a little bit about what heart valves are and what their jobs are in the heart. Heart valve is a door in the heart that is supposed to open widely and then close shut tightly. It’s supposed to allow blood …

Transcript So, before we talk about what the symptoms are for a leaky heart valve, let’s talk a little bit about what the heart valves are, and what their function is in the heart. The heart valves are doors in the heart that are supposed to open widely and let blood flow in one direction …

Transcript So, what is peripheral vascular disease? Well, first of all, vascular disease refers to any problem with the vasculature of the body. Those would be the arteries and veins. Peripheral is to distinguish it from two other vascular beds in the body. The main three vascular beds in the body would be the cerebral, …

Transcript So what causes heart palpitations? Well, first let’s start talking about what palpitations are. I think for most of us, palpitations can be described as any unusual awareness of our heartbeat. It can be irregular, skipping, fluttering, or fast heart sensation, and it’s pretty common. The first thing to say is that more often …

Transcript So how can we prevent heart disease with diet? Well, I think that’s a great question. You know, we’ve heard a lot about this in the media over the last several years. There have been a lot of fad diets with no fat or high fat or no cholesterol or high cholesterol diets. I …

Transcript What is coronary artery disease? We sometimes shorten that to CAD. Coronary artery disease is any problem with the coronary arteries. Those are the arteries that actually feed the heart muscle blood. We call them “coronary” because they make two basic crowns, or corona, around the heart; one circling the heart at the top …

Transcript So what is congenital heart disease? Well, basically the word congenital means any condition you’re born with. In general, the condition arises from a genetic abnormality. That means one we get from our parent’s genes. The most common manifestation of congenital heart disease would be a structural problem with the heart, that is, the …

Transcript So what should we know about heart disease in women? Unfortunately, like a lot of medical conditions, most things were studied in men. When we look at the last several decades, fortunately, we’ve made a lot of progress about studying how heart disease can affect women, and we now recognize that it’s very prevalent …

Transcript So how do we treat heart disease? You know, that’s a really good question, but it really depends on the exact type of heart disease. If we take ischemic heart disease, which is one of the most common, that’s a build up of cholesterol plaque in the arteries of the heart. The way to …

Transcript So, what is ischemic heart disease? I think the first thing to mention is that ischemic heart disease is very common in the United States. At its very core, it really refers to the buildup of atherosclerotic plaque in the arteries of the heart, the so called “coronary” arteries. The buildup of atherosclerotic plaque …

Transcript So what are the different types of heart disease? Well, if we take a simple analogy like a house, we can say that the heart is like a house. It has plumbing, and there can be a problem with the arteries and veins. It has a structural element, which are the walls, and there …

Transcript So how can we reverse heart disease? That’s a great question. Oftentimes, we can significantly improve heart disease if not reverse it. How we do that of course depends on the cause in the first place. If the cause was atherosclerosis or build up of cholesterol in the arteries, it’s often hard to get …

Transcript So the good news about heart disease is that a lot of it is preventable. There are some basic things we can do in our everyday life to help reduce our risk of heart disease. One would be to increase our cardiovascular exercise. So that means daily exercise, 30 minutes to an hour each …

Transcript So what are some of the symptoms of heart disease that we can look out for? Some of them are pretty basic. They would be chest pressure or pain, shortness of breath, lower extremity edema, or palpitations. If we talk a little bit about each one, chest pain can sometimes be confusing. When doctors …

Transcript So what are the risk factors for heart disease? That’s something we all want to know. Some of the things we can control, or what we call modifiable risk factors, and some we can’t control. Those would be the inherited risk factors. Again, you can’t choose your parents, so you couldn’t use your genes, …

Transcript So one of the main causes of heart disease. I think basically we break them up into two categories. One would be acquired heart disease, which are conditions that you get throughout life as time goes on. Or congenital heart disease; thing you’re born with that usually are inherited from your family or parents. …

Transcript What is heart disease? That’s a great question. In general, it implies any condition where the heart is not normally functioning. So I would say there’s three basic categories of heart disease. One would be ischemic, or atherosclerotic heart disease and I think that ‘s what most people mean when they’re talking about heart …