Women’s Heart Disease

Posts Tagged ‘heart disease information’

Heart disease treatment is dependent on your signs and symptoms and just how severe the condition is.   If you or someone you care about has coronary heart disease, or has had a heart attack,  you need to read the following information.

Knowing the heart disease treatments available can literally be life-saving.  Where surgery and prescription drugs were once the only treatments, today there are more options.

Here are the top five treatments for heart disease.  These are listed in order of least to most invasive, but the exact treatment will vary with your symptoms and severity.

In any case, it’s best that you know about all of them, in order to discuss them with your doctor.

• Lifestyle changes, including food and exercise
• Nutritional supplements and aspirin
• Prescription medications
• Medical devices and procedures
• Heart surgery

Lifestyle Changes

When you are first identified with cardiovascular disease, chances are your physician will ask you to make lifestyle changes. Examples include eating a heart-nutritious diet, and becoming more physically active.  In fact, here are some foods that lower cholesterol, to help reduce coronary disease.

If you’re really overweight, you may want to read about obesity and heart disease.

If you smoke, you’ll be urged to stop.  If you drink more than a drink a day, you’ll be told to cut down or even stop, although a small glass of red wine may be heart-healthy.

Healthy habits can slow and even stop heart disease.  Sure, it’s difficult to make changes in the way you eat and how much physical exercise you do (or don’t) get.  However, diet and exercise are potent remedies again the risk of future attacks.

Nutritional Supplements

There are nutritional supplements that can help to stave off more damage to your heart.  For example, it’s well-known that fish oil and niacin are heart-healthy treatments.  In fact, there are even prescription coronary medications that are based on these two supplements!

Other supplements that can help as a treatment for heart disease include Coenzyme Q10, omega-3 fatty acids (including flaxseed oil), red yeast rice and turmeric.

Of course, we can’t forget about aspirin, which slows the clotting of blood.  Check with your doctor before starting a low-dose aspirin regimen, if he or she hasn’t already recommended it.

Prescription Medications

Your doctor may prescribe medications for heart disease treatment. You are probably familiar with at least some of the statin drugs that are often prescribed, as they have been highly advertised both on TV and in magazines.  The statin prescription medications are primarily for issues with cholesterol, which of course contributes to heart disease.  Examples of statin drugs include Lipitor, Crestor, Zocor and Lescol.

Beta blockers, which make your heart beat more slowly and less forcefully, help reduce the strain.  Similarly, calcium channel blockers relax arteries, thereby lowering high blood pressure and reducing the strain on your heart, reducing the chances of further attacks.

You may also get a prescription for drugs that can improve your heart’s pumping ability, such as ACE inhibitors or angiotensin II receptor blockers.

Medical Devices and Procedures for Heart Disease

There are several medical devices and types of interventional procedures that are also part of the treatment for heart disease.

One device that you’re probably familiar with is a heart pacemaker, which helps to maintain a proper heart rhythm.  What you may not know is that there are a few different types of machines that fall under the term pacemaker.  The type received depends on the reason for the heart disease.

Angioplasty is a procedure where a balloon catheter (which is a flattened balloon on the guide wire), is passed through arteries to the designated location.  The balloon is then inflated to some fixed size under high pressure. This device crushes the fatty deposits, opening the circulation system for enhanced flow, and is afterwards withdrawn.  This procedure also helps reduce angina (i.e. “chest pain”).

A stent (also known as a coronary stent) is a tube put into a coronary artery, to help keep the artery open for blood flow.  The medical procedure is called percutaneous coronary intervention (abbreviated PCI).

Coronary Heart Surgery

In some cases, the indicated heart disease treatment is heart surgery.  Coronary artery bypass surgery is the most common, where arteries or veins from somewhere else in your body are grafted. The result of the grafting is that severely narrowed or clogged arteries are bypassed, which improves the blood supply to the heart muscle.

One or more coronary arteries are bypassed, resulting in terms such as double, triple and quadruple bypass.

This is major surgery, as it is usually performed with the heart stopped, which introduces additional risks (along with all the normal surgical complication possibilities).

Heart Disease Treatment

As you can see, there are a lot of different ways that heart disease can be treated.  Obviously, the less invasive the better, so treatment begins with lifestyle changes.  For example, eating a heart-healthy diet and exercising more often can help a great deal.  It will also reduce your risk of having a heart attack or stroke.

Other treatments may be added, depending on the type and severity of the heart disease.  For example, you might want to include a nutritional supplement like niacin if cholesterol buildup is a problem.  And of course your doctor might include other prescription medications.

Your options may change depending on the kind and severity of your coronary disease.  But as there are many types of heart disease treatment, you and your medical professional can customize the treatment to fit your heart’s needs.

By knowing your options, you can save a life – your own.