Three common heart ailments are the classic heart attack (myocardial infarction or MI), cardiac arrhythmias and congestive heart failure. What are they and how do they affect your loved one?

Heart Attack
Myocardial Infarction (MI) occurs when one of the three coronary arteries that supply oxygen-rich blood to the heart muscle becomes severely or totally blocked, usually from a blood clot. The severity of the attack depends on how much of the heart is damaged.

Warning Signs
According to the Mayo Clinic, signs and symptoms of a heart attack include:

• Pressure, fullness or a squeezing pain in the center of the chest that lasts for more than a few minutes
• Pain extending beyond the chest to the shoulder, arm, back or even to the teeth and jaw
• Increasing episodes of chest pain
• Prolonged pain in the upper abdomen
• Shortness of breath
• Sweating
• Impending sense of doom
• Fainting
• Nausea and vomiting

For women, signs and symptoms may be different or less noticeable than those in men. In addition to the symptoms above—especially shortness of breath, nausea/vomiting, and back and jaw pain—women may experience:
•    Abdominal pain or heartburn
•    Clammy skin
•    Light-headedness or dizziness
•    Unusual or unexplained fatigue

Not all people who have an MI experience the same symptoms or experience them to the same degree; some people have no symptoms at all. Still, the more signs and symptoms you have, the greater the likelihood that you may be having an attack. The earliest MI predictor may be recurrent chest pain (angina) that's triggered by exertion and relieved by rest. Angina is caused by temporary, insufficient blood flow to the heart, also known as cardiac ischemia.

Risk Factors
According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), certain risk factors make it more likely that someone will develop coronary artery disease (CAD) and have a heart attack. Some risk factors for heart attack can be controlled, while others can’t.

Major controllable factors include:
•    Smoking
•    High blood pressure
•    High blood cholesterol
•    Being overweight, obesity
•    Physical inactivity
•    Diabetes (high blood sugar)

Major uncontrollable risk factors include:
•    Age (risk increases for men older than 45 and post-menopausal women over 55)
•    Family history of early CAD (risk increases if your father or a brother was diagnosed with CAD before age 55, or if your mother or a sister was diagnosed before age 65)
•    Gender (men have greater risk of heart attack than women)
 
Certain CAD risk factors tend to occur together. When they do, it’s called metabolic syndrome. In general, a person with metabolic syndrome is twice as likely to develop heart disease and five times as likely to develop diabetes as someone without metabolic syndrome.


Arrhythmias
Arrhythmias are heartbeat irregularities ranging from relatively insignificant palpitations to life-threatening cardiac collapse. All are caused by a malfunctioning of the heart’s electrical system.

Warning Signs
There may be no noticeable signs or symptoms of arrhythmia, and the appearance of symptoms does not necessarily indicate a serious problem, according to the Mayo Clinic. In fact, a doctor might detect them during a routine exam before the patient is ever aware of a problem. But noticeable signs and symptoms include:
•    A fluttering in the chest
•    A racing heartbeat
•    A slow heartbeat
•    Chest pain
•    Shortness of breath
•    Light-headedness
•    Dizziness
•    Fainting or near fainting

Causes
When anything happens to disturb or interrupt the normal functioning of the heart’s electrical system, problems with cardiac rhythm result. There are a variety of underlying and often interrelated conditions that can cause cardiac-rhythm problems, including:
•    Problems related to the electrical system itself
•    Lack of blood flow to the living tissues of the electrical system such as that produced by CAD
•    Congenital abnormalities
•    The effect of underlying disease states or conditions, such as CAD or valve disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, stress or even the flu
•    The result of self-induced factors, such as excessive intake of caffeine, alcohol, cough/cold medications, diet pills, herbal remedies or smoking.


Congestive Heart Failure
Congestive Heart Failure occurs when the heart can no longer pump enough blood to the lungs and throughout the body. It usually occurs over many years and is caused by an underlying condition such as CAD, heart-valve leakage or various diseases of the heart muscle itself.

Warning Signs
According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), symptoms and signs of congestive heart failure include:
•    Weight gain
•    Swelling of feet and ankles
•    Swelling of the abdomen
•    Pronounced neck veins
•    Loss of appetite, indigestion
•    Nausea and vomiting
•    Shortness of breath with activity, or after lying down for a while
•    Difficulty sleeping
•    Fatigue, weakness, faintness
•    Palpitations
•    Irregular or rapid pulse
•    Decreased alertness or concentration
•    Cough
•    Decreased urine production
•    Need to urinate at night

Some patients with heart failure have no symptoms. In these people, the symptoms may develop only with the onset of:
•    Infections with high fever
•    Anemia
•    Arrhythmias
•    Hyperthyroidism
•    Kidney disease

Risk Factors
 Heart failure becomes more common with advancing age. Risk-increasing factors include obesity, diabetes, smoking, alcohol abuse or cocaine use. According to the Mayo Clinic, a single risk factor may be enough to cause heart failure, but a combination of factors increases risk. Other risk factors include:
•    High blood pressure
•    Coronary Artery Disease (CAD)
•    Heart attack
•    Irregular heartbeats
•    Diabetes and some diabetes medications
•    Sleep apnea
•    Congenital heart defects
•    Viruses
•    Kidney conditions

Article provided by Caring Today magazine and www.caringtoday.com