Cardiovascular Disease | Everything You Need To Know

Cardiovascular Disease | What Is It?

Cardiovascular disease, also known as CVD, can be multiple different diseases that affect the heart and blood vessels in your body. CVD can be caused by a layer of fat that is built up inside the arteries or veins, blood clots, or damaged arteries within major organs such as the brain, heart, kidneys or eyes. A few cardiovascular diseases include cerebrovascular disease, peripheral arterial disease, congenital heart disease, rheumatic heart disease, coronary heart disease, deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism. There are a few things you can do for cardiovascular disease prevention, such as eating a healthy diet, keeping your blood pressure low, managing stress and limiting alcohol intake.

A cardiovascular disease, such as heart attacks or even strokes, are caused when arteries or veins are blocked and therefore blood cannot be carried to the heart or brain.

Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors

Although the main cause of cardiovascular diseases hasn’t yet been made certain, there are many risk factors. The more risk factors you have in your daily life, the higher your chance of getting a cardiovascular disease is.

These risk factors include high blood pressure, smoking, high cholesterol, diabetes, minimum to no activity or exercise, obesity, family history of CVD, ethnic background and a few other factors that include your age, gender, amount of alcohol consumption and type of diet that is followed.

Symptoms of Cardiovascular Disease

A majority of the time, there are no symptoms of cardiovascular diseases. The first sign of an underlying blood vessels disease is usually a heart attack or a stroke. A few of the symptoms of a heart attack include pain in the middle of the chest and pain in the left shoulder, elbow, jaw or back, and many have also experienced shortness of breath, vomiting and dizziness. Women have been known to experience breathing difficulties, vomiting and back pain whilst having a heart attack.

Symptoms of a stroke is a sudden weakened feeling of your face, arm or leg, and often usually just occurring on one half of your body. You can also experience confusion with a difficulty speaking, problems with your vision, loss of balance, migraines and fainting. It is important to seek medical attention immediately should you experience these symptoms.

Cardiovascular Diseases Prevention Tips

There are many ways you can change your lifestyle prevent some conditions with cardiovascular diseases. The first is following a healthy diet and cutting out food items with saturated fats, added sugar and iodine. This will also help keep your blood pressure low, as that is also essential for prevention. As hard as it is, you should quit smoking as this is one of the largest causes of heart disease as it damages the heart.

If you are diabetic then you need to manage your diabetes as high blood sugar can damage your blood vessels. Avoid large alcohol consumption, as this raises your blood pressure. Lastly, manage your stress as stress is a huge contributing factor to heart diseases and can trigger a heart attack. We care about women’s health and therefore give these cardiovascular disease prevention tips to ensure we all stay safe.