Myths & Facts Heart Diseases – Dr. Pawan Poddar

Men are more likely to have heart disease.

This is true to some extent, but not entirely true. Generally, when we look at the gender, women before their menopause are somewhat protected from heart diseases because of their female hormones but after menopause generally, the risk in women also increases and reaches the same level as that of men so before menopause women have certainly some protection against heart diseases but that is not true after menopause. 

Heart disease mostly affects older people 

Age is a risk factor for the development of heart diseases but age is not the only risk factor. young people who might have other risk factors such as diabetes, blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, who live a sedentary lifestyle, and who consume a lot of fat in their diet are also at risk to develop heart diseases. Sometimes we see heart attacks in very young people in their 20s and 30s, in fact in the Indian population many patients that we see are in their 30s and 40s. Perhaps it is not true that heart diseases develop only in the elderly population. Young populations with other risk factors like smoking are also predisposed to develop heart diseases. 

Diabetes and heart diseases are not related

This is a myth because diabetes is a crucial risk factor for the development of heart diseases. Diabetic patients have three times the risk of developing heart attacks compared to non-diabetic patients. Diabetes is strongly related to heart diseases so it is very much important for diabetic patients to take care of their diabetes right from the beginning because if diabetes is uncontrolled it can lead to the development of heart attacks or even brain strokes.

High blood pressure always manifests symptoms

This is a myth. Many of us feel that if we have a headache then only we have high blood pressure in fact if u see the majority of the patients with high blood pressure they will not have any symptoms. Routinely when they go to a doctor and the doctor checks their heart rate and BP, then it is discovered that the patient has high blood pressure. Perhaps it is a myth that high blood pressure always manifests symptoms such as headache. Most of the time there will be no symptoms with high blood pressure and all the patients need to keep the blood pressure under control. It can be done by adopting certain healthy lifestyle measures such as consuming less salt, regular walking, etc. Apart from that, they should take their blood pressure medications regularly because if the blood pressure remains uncontrolled, over a while patient is going to develop other complications like kidney problems, heart problems, and sometimes even brain hemorrhage which are very devastating complications of blood pressure. So we must take care of our blood pressure right from the time it is diagnosed. Never take blood pressure for granted because it can lead to other serious complications if not taken care of. 

The diseased heart can’t handle exercise 

This is also a myth. In fact when we see patients with heart attacks and we do some procedures on them such as implanting a stent or bypass surgery. we advise such patients to take a rest for 1-2 weeks after stenting for a heart attack and after bypass surgery maybe 2-4 weeks. Later when the condition improves we always encourage patients to go for regular physical activity. Doing so reduces their chances of developing another heart attack. So we encourage all patients after a heart attack or a procedure to go for regular physical activity. Do some sort of brisk exercise, walking jogging, treadmill, cycling, swimming for at least 30 minutes and we recommend them to do it most days of the week. 

A fast-beating heart is a sign of a heart attack.

Not necessarily true. Fast heart beating can happen for a lot of reasons like even if we are anxious certain nerves in our body are activated which are called the sympathetic nerves. They tend to increase our heart rate. When we are anxious, frightened, or have a fever our heart rate can go up. There are some other diseases of the heart that can increase heart beating. 

So fast heart beating need not necessarily mean we have any blockages in the artery or we are having a heart attack. Fast heart beating can be a manifestation of many other conditions. 

Chest pain is a sign of a heart attack

Chest pain can happen without a heart attack. Sometimes before a heart attack, if there’s a significant blockage, the patient can have chest pain while walking, which subsides on taking rest. We call it Angina.

There are many other causes of chest pain, sometimes patients with problems unrelated to the heart can have chest pain. Sometimes there may be an injury to the chest wall and such patients can also complain of chest pain. Sometimes patients may have acidity problems and complain of chest pain. So there are a lot of causes of chest pain apart from a heart attack. And heart attack patients need not always manifest chest pain which is also a fact. Sometimes some diabetic patients won’t have chest pain even if they are having a heart attack. They come with severe breathlessness and sweating.

Heart failure means no heartbeat.

It’s a myth. Heart failure is different from a low heart rate. Generally, our heart’s function is to pump blood to the whole body. Normally the capacity of this pump is measured in terms of ejection fraction. A normal person would have an EF of 60-80% which means they will pump 60-80% of blood during each heartbeat. When this capacity comes down below 50% that is what is termed heart failure. The absence of heart beating is when the patient terminally dies and the heart beating stops heart failure and stopping of the heartbeat are not the same they are quite different. 

Fats are bad for the heart. 

Not all fats are bad for the heart. There are some fats such as polyunsaturated fatty acids or monounsaturated fatty acids, which we hear a lot over the advertisements of oils as MUFA and PUFA, and they are good for the heart. Other fats such as saturated fats or trans fats are bad for the heart. 

Low fats reduce heart disease risk. 

A concept which we widely believed, but some new emerging data suggests, our cholesterol is not only dependent on the food that we eat. In the majority of cases, cholesterol is manufactured by the body and is not dependent on the food we take. 

Now, this hypothesis is being challenged after these findings have emerged. 

Earlier we used to believe that if we reduce the fat intake we can reduce the cholesterol and risk of heart diseases, but the recent study says the majority of cholesterol is manufactured by the body. If it may not be there in the diet, the body may convert other types of foods into cholesterol. So the dietary fact may not be as important in causing heart diseases as it was presumed earlier.

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