How To Prevent Heart Attack

A heart attack occurs when something suddenly blocks blood flow to the heart muscle. This blockage reduces or stops blood flow to part of the heart muscle.

What is a Heart Attack?

The definition of a heart attack comes from the World Health Organization. The main point to understand is that a heart attack links to the blood supply to the heart muscle. To keep a heart-healthy and happy, it is important to ensure that blood flows well to the heart. This way, the heart muscles receive everything they need. 

What causes heart attack?

In today's world, more competition and fewer job opportunities have led to a significant rise in individual mental stress. Job roles in any organization are now more demanding. They require long hours of focus, which cuts into our personal care and well-being. This situation affects both our mind and body. However, the most serious impact is on our cardiovascular system.

• Long-term stress and anxiety raise adrenaline levels. This can narrow the blood flow in the arteries. As a result, it may lead to a heart attack.
• With the rapid growth of click-to-buy systems and a busy lifestyle, the food habits of the population have suffered a paradigm shift.
• Eating junk food that is high in sugar, fats, and cholesterol has replaced healthy diets. This change leads to problems like obesity and rapid ageing.
• Most alarmingly, it causes plaque, or fatty deposits, to form on artery walls. This plaque narrows the arteries and restricts blood flow. The lack of proper exercise makes the problem worse. Many people are at risk of a heart attack.
• As the body ages, the arteries experience normal wear and tear. This can raise the risk of a heart attack.

Now that we have talked about the social, economic, and physical causes of heart attacks, we can discuss how to prevent them.

You can divide the secret to preventing a heart attack into two parts: preventive and curative methods. Preventive methods are crucially important. If some damage has already happened, we can also consider curative methods.

Preventive methods to counter a possible heart attack

Changes in lifestyle, food habits, and work culture are the key ingredients to successful prevention of a heart attack. Many ways exist to achieve this. 

1. Taking a proper diet: Eating a balanced diet full of all the nutrients especially proteins, vitamins and minerals, and lesser amount of fat and cholesterol is of immense importance. In this regard it may be noted that eating home cooked food filled with leafy green products, dairy and white meat devoid of cholesterol can help reduce the risk of heart attack to some extent.
2. Avoid Smoking and Alcohol: Smoking and alcohol has a very bad effect on the cardiovascular system. Nicotine in cigarettes can cause the blood pressure to shoot up and alcohol in very large amounts regularly can lead to formation of plaques or deposits of fats inside the arterial walls. Quitting smoking and drinking can prevent the risk of a heart attack to a large extent.
3. Keep your calm: Anxiety, either social or professional, is one of the inseparable parts of our life today. This leads to hypertension and other serious factors that may cause a heart attack. Trying to manage your anxiety symptoms by means of meditation, yoga and various other forms of mental exercises is a must to deter the possibility of a heart attack. In case anxiety is not manageable a consultation with a psychiatrist is a must for mental well-being and also to prevent any risk of heart attack. 
4. Regular Exercise: Genetically our bodies are built to move around and do some work but modern forms of work does not let us move much. Can you imagine a hungry web developer getting up from his chair with a spear in his hand? He hunts down something, cooks his meal and then comes back to the chair after eating that food. Things do not work like that nowadays rendering our movement restricted to a great extent. Hence to compensate for this sedentary lifestyle we need regular exercise as well as proper body movements. This may also contribute to a reduction in the chance of getting a heart attack by improving our cardiovascular health. 
5. Get more rest: In the age of smartphones and the internet we are more prone to binge watching during the nights rather than sleeping. This is a sheer injustice we do with our brain everyday. The brain has to work throughout the day processing sensory inputs and providing motor outputs and after a prolonged days work our brain needs some deserved rest which if not allowed may cause many other disorders along with cardiovascular diseases. So a healthy working adult must sleep for at least seven to eight hours a day which not only reduces the risk of heart attack but also prevents symptoms like anxiety and fatigue. 

From the curative point of view, at times the above-mentioned preventive measures may fail and a person can develop a blocked artery. In this context, it is important to recognize the warning signs of a blocked artery. Regular visits to the doctor for check-ups and early treatment are essential to prevent heart attacks.