Heart disease is the second largest killer next to cancer and followed closely behind by diabetes. While there is no virus that causes heart disease, it is a symptom of living a life that creates the base that leads to heart attack and strokes. It is estimated that some 80 million Americans have some of the symptoms that will ultimately lead to debilitating illness and death.
There is no one cause that can lead to a diagnosis of heart disease. Most of them are due to lifestyle and health related factors. Heredity plays a small part. Avoiding heart disease is as simple as making a change in lifestyle. Here are just some of those factors that can lead to heart disease:
* Diet is a major contributor. What we eat will have a major impact on future health. Today's diet consist of high fat, high sugar and highly processed and refined foods. They lack nutrition. Most Americans are woefully deficient in many vitamins and minerals and don't even meet the minimum RDA requirements that our health agencies say we need for optimum health. What wholesome fruits and vegetables we do eat lack essential nutrients as they come from farms whose soil has been depleted of those nutrients due to over-farming. Add to that the chemicals, pesticides, hormones and irradiation treatments and you ingest more chemicals than vitamins. Hardly a scenario for good health. Eating organic food, though more expensive, is far better healthwise than what you pick up from the gorcery shelf.
* Exercise. It bears repeating. Cubicle and home life on the couch is not conducive to health and vitality. Humans are meant to be active. Our bodies are designed to use up energy through physical and productive activity. Hours spent before a computer monitor does not help burn off calories. The consequences of a sedentary lifestyle is weight gain and increasingly clogged arteries. While exercise doe not require running a marathon, simple daily activities such as walking can do your health a world of good. The point of exercise is to get the blood circulating and supplying all parts of the body with much needed oxygen and the nutrients needed to maintain health.
* Stress and Sleep. We're all trying to run the treadmill, paying bills and worrying excessively about our families and jobs. We rush more, make more mistakes and that all adds up to a great deal of stress. Learning to relax is a lost art among many people. They can't sleep and if they do, it is interrupted. The body simply needs some time to recover but it can't do it in a high-stressed environment.
* Our bad habits of smoking, drinking and drugs are adding to the chemical soup that only make us sicker. Few people know what it really feels like to be healthy. Drugs, whether over-the-counter or prescription are largely made of chemicals, some of which are not easily eliminated from the body. Their side effects can be deadly. They are toxins, and toxins will have an adverse effect on health, leading to high blood pressure, cancer and heart disease.
* Our environment is a major contributing factor on health. The pollutants in our air, water supply and in the soil are making it difficult to live a life disease free for many people. Considering the shocking amount of toxins that invade our bodies on a regular basis, it's a wonder that the world's population hasn't yet been decimated as forecast in the book of Revelation.
* Compromised immune system makes it easy to contract a disease of any kind. Today you don't need to be diagnosed with AIDS to suffer the same illnesses they do. A compromised immune system makes it easy for viruses to find a home and proliferate in the body. Many people fall victim to diseases that would never find a home in someone in top physical health.
* Contributing factors play another key role in getting heart disease. If you are diabetic, overweight or obese, have high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels you are headed for complications including a fatal heart attack and stroke.
To avoid heart disease, the best prevention is to make a change in lifestyle. Getting in exercise, watching what you eat, quitting bad habits, getting enough sleep and avoiding environmental toxins will move heart disease down to the level it was a hundred years ago when people were much healthier than they are today.