O Whāinga Ako ^🔗

Explain what happens in a heart attack and how heart diseases can be treated and prevented.

Arteries and Plaques ^🔗

• Arteries carry blood away from the heart
• Throughout our life we build up plaques in our arteries
• A plaque is a fatty/waxy substance that restricts blood flow

Risk Factors ^🔗

There are certain things that will increase your risk of developing more plaque over your lifetime. Some things we can control, others we cannot.

• age
• height and weight
• blood pressure
  • Affected by a high fat/salt diet
• cholesterol
  • This is a type of fat we get from animal-based products
• personal medical history
• family medical history
• smoking status

Heart Attacks ^🔗

• Over time these plaques grow larger, and sometimes a piece of plaque can break off!
• This is a problem because a blood clot forms
  • A blood clot is where liquid blood goes semi-solid. It does this to reducing/stop bleeding.
• This clot will stop blood flow in the artery
• This is dangerous because blood carries oxygen which our cells need for respiration!

^🔗

• If this occurs in a coronal artery (an artery that supplies the heart), then a section of the heart will not receive blood
• If no blood is flowing, then the muscle supplied by that artery will not receive oxygen and will die
• This is called myocardial infarction (MI) or a heart attack
  • myo - muscle
  • cardial - heart
  • infarction - death

Treatment ^🔗

• Blood thinning medication, so that clots are less common
• Blood pressure medication, so that your arteries relax and widen
• Cholesterol reducing medication (statins), to reduce formation of future plaques
• Surgery to put in a stent, to hold your artery open

Prevention ^🔗

• Quit smoking
• Eat less cholesterol overall
  • LDL cholesterol is bad because it gets built up into plaques!
  • HDL cholesterol is okay because your cells can use it more easily
• Eat less salt to reduce blood pressure
• Eat less fat because plaques are partly made of fat
• Limit alcohol