United States: A group of heart problems that affect one in three Americans might be causing more cases of dementia, experts say. The American Heart Association warns that conditions like coronary artery disease, also heart failure, and atrial fibrillation can stop blood from flowing well to the brain. This can lead forward to the death of brain cells and tissues, which is harmful for our thinking and memory.
Since more than 130 million Americans have some type of heart disease, the specialists observed that stopping it before it develops can be crucial for eliminating dementia, which affects more than 7 million people annually.
As reported by MailOnline, Dr Fernando Testai, who is a professor of neurology and the rehabilitation at the University of Illinois who worked on the statement, said: Dementia is widely defined as a disease that cannot be cured and is relentlessly progressive and one that is also cannot be prevented.
Nevertheless, convincing data has emerged suggesting that following recommendations for a heart-healthy diet and lifestyle, and early recognition also the and management of risk factors for vascular disease may slow cognitive decline and lower the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease and other related dementias.
In a paper that appeared Thursday in the journal Stroke, the researchers first pointed to coronary artery disease as a dementia offender.
Atherosclerosis is the most prevalent type of CAD and is the number one cause of death in America, taking one life for every four Americans yearly.
It takes place when the passageways called arteries which transport nutrients and oxygen throughout the body, become blocked by a build-up of a sticky substance, known as plaque, formed by cholesterol and fatty deposits.
This gradually creates a problem for blood flow especially for the heart and may also affect other important organs for instance the brain.
It then impairs small blood vessels in the brain and starves the brain of the nutrients it requires to perform activities.
The specialists claimed that coronary artery diseases increase the incidence of dementia by 27% compared with individuals without the disease.
They also said that heart failure which is a condition that makes one million five hundred thousand Americans hospitalize and occurs when the heart becomes weak to pump blood.
They advocated the view that as many as 70-80 percent of the patients diagnosed with heart failure can develop some sort of dementia that might affect memory, language, ability to think or to plan.
Dr. Testai told CNN that conditions leading to the heart failure such as diabetes and the coronary artery disease that can increase the levels of beta-amyloid in the brain and a protein which is recognized as a key marker of Alzheimer’s disease.’
The third condition the experts and the health experts pointed toward was atrial fibrillation which is also known as A-fib and this the condition suffered by the celebrities like President Joe Biden and Miley Cyrus results in an irregular heartbeat that patients have described as a ‘flutter’ in their chest.
Leave a Reply