Heart attack and Cardiac arrest

Michael Jackson Died Of Cardiac Arrest – Not Heart Attack

King of Pop Michael Jackson was declared dead on June 25th 2009, at the age of 50 after suffering cardiac arrest. Jackson was no longer breathing when Los Angeles fire officials responded to a 911 call coming from the star’s home. He was rushed to the hospital by paramedics but was latter pronounced dead.

Heart attack and cardiac arrest are the worst heart disease cheaters. Regardless if you follow a healthy lifestyle, one day you’re kicking like a horse, the next day you could be dead once it hits you. Every person should take precaution to prevent heart attacks and cardiac arrest because they can either kill you or leave you sickly, bedridden, and depressed.

 

Attack or Arrest: Does it Matter?

No one is ever too young or too old for that matter to start fretting about heart diseases. Truth be told, heart problems are all too common with younger men. It is the number one most common killer of men after experiencing accidents.

It is highly recommended for people to start caring for their hearts as early as the tender age of 20’s. It is the time when you could choose how to spend your luxury cash between buckets of beer or on blood pressure monitors and baby aspirins. The odds are about one out of three that you will die of cardiovascular disease. Consider for a moment that not only will you be able to delay this unpleasant episode; you may actually prevent it from happening altogether.

 

Lesser Evils: Heart Attacks vs. Cardiac Arrest

What is the difference between heart attack and cardiac arrest anyway?

Heart attack (a.k.a. myocardial infarction) is basically a plumbing problem. In school, our science teachers taught us that the heart is a big pump that circulates the blood throughout our bodies, and that requires energy supply before it could function properly.

Fats, clotted blood, and other nasty stuff can cause the clogging in the coronary arteries, which is supposed to feed the heart. If added with blood clot altogether clogged in the artery, the fuel is blocked from getting to the heart, starving the cells until it dies, which then stops the pumping.

Cardiac arrest is essentially an electrical problem. Our hearts are triggered to beat with regular electrical impulses. An irregular heartbeat is called arrhythmia causing electrical impulses to become erratic which interfere with the pumping of the heart. Ever wonder what those TV doctors meant when they yell for “Clear!” once the patient hit a flat line? That is a perfect scenario of a cardiac arrest. Those paddles electrically jolt the heart back to its correct rhythm.

While these two are essentially different, a heart attack can sometimes lead into cardiac arrest.

 

Heart Disease Prevention

The key to prevention is to avoid clots and plaques from building up in your arteries. Keeping a smooth blood flow through your body reduces the risk of having heart problems.

While plaque builds up gradually, your arteries may still show some ill effects of all the crappy food you ate in high school and college. The process begins during childhood from the ice creams and burger consumed at that time. Manifestation of acceleration begins between the ages of 50 and 60.

We all know how to prevent plaque from building up. We’re just too stubborn to commit to them.

•Daily exercise for at least half an hour
•Pyramid Meal - more fruits and vegetables being the foundation and less red meat particularly those high in saturated fat
•Maintain within range of your normal body mass index
•Do not smoke
•Reduce emotional stress
Maintaining a healthy lifestyle requires a lot of discipline and commitment. It’s never too late for some changes especially with your lifestyle and eating habits. Regardless that some risk factors are beyond your control - like increasing age, family history and misfortune of being born a man. Even people who have full-fledged heart disease tend to live longer once they started making positive changes in their lifestyle.

Apart from positive lifestyle, medication can also control other medical conditions that increase your risk of clots such as high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol.

 

Treating Heart Diseases 101

Emergency treatment is immediately required for people who’s having a heart attack or cardiac arrest. Below are the lists of symptoms that requires immediate medical attention:

•Any painful discomfort or squeezing in the chest
•Pain that escalates into the arms, shoulders, neck or jaw
•Shortness of breath, sweating, and nausea
•Racing heartbeat and simultaneous dizziness
•Unconsciousness
After emergency treatment is given, you are likely to have more of these coming as well as a stroke. This would warrant an ongoing treatment to prevent further clots in your artery.

Blood thinners is an option or other drugs that reduce your blood’s tendency to clot.

You may also consider surgical treatments such as stents implant (that opens up a clogged artery), bypass (can re-channel blood flow away from the clogged arteries to new ones), pacemakers (keeps a steady heart rhythm), and ICDs (implantable cardiac defibrillators) that shocks an abnormal rhythm back to normal.

 

Additional Facts about Heart Diseases

Leading a healthy lifestyle doesn’t mean you have to live a boring one. You can still have your regular fries and burger but in moderation. As a matter of fact, a few bottles of beer or glasses of wine a night decrease the odds of a heart attack.

Healthy living is imperative not only to have a healthy body but a happy life as well. Being sickly, potbellied, and limp isn’t fun is not exactly the best feats to attract the hot ladies. Regardless if you don’t care about living a long life, go for those changes so that you may have a good one.

Most people have the impression that sudden cardiac arrest is the same thing as a heart attack. A heart attack occurs when blood flow to a part of the heart muscle is blocked, and the heart usually does not stop beating immediately. Sudden cardiac arrest on the other hand is when the heart stop beating unexpectedly. If not treated within minutes, sudden cardiac arrest can be fatal.

The rhythm of our heartbeat is controlled by the heart’s internal electrical system. Problems with the system can cause irregular or abnormal heart rhythm, making the heart beating too slow or too fast, even stop beating. These are called arrhythmia. Sudden cardiac arrest occurs when our heart develop arrhythmia which causes it to stop beating.

Most sudden cardiac arrest happens in people who appear healthy and have no known heart disease. But people with heart disease have a higher chance of having sudden cardiac arrest.

How can we prevent death due to sudden cardiac arrest? Well, it differs depending on whether the person have had it, or has never had it but at high risk, or has never had it and has no known risk factor.

A great resource to learn more about sudden cardiac arrest is InsideCardiacArrest.com. Be informed!