Wonderfully Made

Could I Have A Heart Attack?

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Shelley Quinn (Host), James Marcum

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Series Code: WM

Program Code: WM000358


00:01 The following program presents principles designed to promote
00:03 good health and is not intended to take the place of
00:06 personalized professional care.
00:07 The opinions and ideas expressed are those of the speaker.
00:12 Viewers are encouraged to draw their own conclusions
00:14 about the information presented.
00:27 WONDERFULLY MADE
00:35 Psalm 139/14.It's a promise you just wanna smile about.
00:41 It says: "I will praise him"
00:43 "for I am fearfully and wonderfully made."
00:45 I wanna thank you this morning for watching Wonderfully Made
00:50 and taking your time this day to spend with us
00:53 as we talk about this important topic of myocardial infarction.
00:57 My name is dr. James Marcum and I'm a cardiologist
01:01 with the Chattanooga Heart Institute.
01:03 Now for those of you who might not be familiar
01:06 with medical jargon, a cardiologist is a doctor
01:09 who specializes in internal medicine and specifically
01:12 focuses on treatment and prevention
01:15 of diseases of the heart and blood vessels.
01:17 This morning I have chosen the topic of myocardial infarction
01:21 to talk about, because it's so prevalent in our society.
01:25 In fact,42% of all heart attacks and cardiovascular disease
01:28 are the source of death in America.
01:32 In talking about this important topic
01:34 we have Shelley Quinn joining us this morning.
01:37 And I'm so happy that she's with us to help us
01:39 talk about this topic that I think everyone is involved
01:43 with either loved ones or they know someone
01:46 that's had a heart attack.
01:47 So Shelley, I wanna thank you for joining us this morning.
01:50 Thank you. I'm just so excited to be here.
01:52 And you know, every one of us has a heart.
01:55 So we all know someone or we have experienced
01:58 problems of ourselves or we want to avoid
02:01 experiencing these problems. That's right.
02:03 So, I say that again...
02:07 A myocardial infarction or a heart attack.
02:10 That's what it means, it's a heart attack.
02:12 That's what we're talking about. So that's what
02:13 we're gonna be talking about.
02:14 In fact I've gathered questions from allover the world
02:18 pertaining to hearts. And we're gonna talk about
02:21 myocardial people's own questions.
02:23 These are people that write in with serious concerns, they want
02:26 their questions answered. And in the course
02:28 of the conversation today, I'm hoping we can learn
02:31 a lot of good things that are practical about heart attacks.
02:34 I'm looking forward to it.
02:35 And because this is such an important topic,
02:37 Jim, why don't we pray before we begin.
02:40 Ok,would you like to. Yes.
02:42 Father in heaven we'd like to invite Your Holy Spirit
02:45 to lead in this discussion. For those of you at home
02:48 that want to learn more about the heart,
02:50 we pray that the Spirit be with you
02:52 to make changes and to open your eyes to things
02:54 that need to be discovered.
02:56 This is our prayer. Amen. Amen. Amen.
02:59 Well, Jim has a lot of questions here,
03:02 that have come from around the world.
03:05 And he has a ministry called "Heart Wise"
03:08 in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
03:10 So you're out there teaching people
03:12 how to be healthy and to avoid these problems.
03:15 And our first question comes from Carol in Michigan.
03:18 Carol says: I am a 44 year old healthy male.
03:22 A recent physical at work turned out well.
03:25 However, I have a strong family history of heart attack.
03:29 My dad died in his early 50s of a heart attack
03:33 and my older brother recently had a stent placed.
03:36 Could I also have a heart attack?
03:39 First, could you explain to us what a stent is?
03:42 Yeah. A stent is a device.
03:45 When a person has an acute myocardial infarction
03:48 or a heart attack, what that is, we don't have
03:50 enough blood reaching the muscles of the heart.
03:52 When that happens, the muscle dies.
03:55 And when the muscle dies, lots of bad things happen.
03:58 Funny heart beats can develop
04:00 You see the defibrillators that shock people.
04:02 That's cause of these funny heart beats that develop.
04:05 The heart can go into failure and you can't breathe
04:07 because of fluid in the lungs.
04:09 Lots of bad things can happen quickly.
04:11 So in an acute heart attack you need to get care right away.
04:15 Sometimes when a person is having a heart attack,
04:18 right away we bring him in, we go up into the heart,
04:20 we find out where that blockage is and we open it up.
04:23 We put a metal device that holds that artery open,
04:26 so blood can flow out to that muscle
04:29 so that muscle can work properly.
04:31 And if we can get a heart attack within the first hours,
04:34 there's almost never residual damage done to the heart.
04:37 It's when people sit at home and they don't get help
04:39 "It's heart burn, I'm not worried about it."
04:42 That's when we have a lot of problems with this.
04:45 I don't even wanna ask cause I've done the same.
04:48 So, since he had a good physical but he's got this family history
04:54 Is he at risk for a heart attack?
04:56 Yes, all of us in America are at risk of a heart attack.
04:59 In fact,90% of the heart attacks
05:02 that we have in America are acquired.
05:04 That means we give them to ourselves,
05:06 what lifestyles we have.
05:08 So he has a family history, so is definitely at risk.
05:11 So he could have a heart attack.
05:13 I wanna just throw up a slide here
05:15 and sort of give you the magnitude
05:17 for cardiovascular disease.
05:18 Myocardial infarction in the United States.
05:21 For instance, people don't realize this but it accounts
05:23 deaths annually.
05:26 That's almost 1,000,000 deaths every year.
05:30 That is a lot of people that die.
05:33 One heart attack happens every 34 seconds.
05:37 And every year
05:39 400,000 to 460,000 people never make it to the Emergency Room.
05:43 They collapse, they fall over dead
05:45 before they reach the Emergency Room.
05:48 I think those are staggering statistics.
05:50 And you have to really be aware that a heart attack
05:53 is gonna be the thing that you have to worry about
05:56 whenever you have chest pain or discomfort.
05:58 So Jim, is there a genetic predisposition to this
06:02 as well as our lifestyle?
06:04 Yes, we know that some people have bad genes.
06:08 And if you have bad genetics and you have bad lifestyle habits,
06:13 this accelerates the development of this problem.
06:16 And this problem is usually called arteriosclerosis.
06:19 A big name that says cholesterol gets jumped up inside
06:22 the arteries of our heart.
06:24 Not only in our heart, this is going on in the blood vessels
06:27 to our brain which can cause strokes.
06:29 In the aorta which can weaken it and cause aneurysms.
06:32 In the legs, in the kidneys.
06:34 All the blood vessels can be affected
06:36 by this disease process.
06:37 If you have a family history, this even puts you
06:40 at a higher risk of having a heart attack.
06:42 I have to throw something in here because I remember
06:45 for the longest time when I'd hear the word cholesterol
06:48 and they'd say to avoid cholesterol.
06:50 I think,ok,what's got cholesterol in it?
06:53 What's got cholesterol in it?
06:54 And then when I finally learned I was embarrassed.
06:57 But would you please explain to our audience
07:00 what has cholesterol in it, how do you avoid these things?
07:04 For instance, one egg has about 200 milligrams of cholesterol.
07:09 The recommended daily requirement for cholesterol
07:12 is 300. But most people do not even
07:15 realize the fact that you do not need to eat any cholesterol
07:18 in your diet. Did you know that?
07:20 Your liver makes all the cholesterol your body needs.
07:23 However, in westernized societies through the years
07:26 we've developed this diet that's high in cholesterol.
07:29 We have lots of meat in our diet,
07:31 animal based products which are high in cholesterol.
07:34 Of course, the organ that has the most is the liver.
07:37 And I know some people that love to eat liver.
07:40 But liver is packed, packed with cholesterol.
07:43 So, the animal based diets, the cheese, the eggs,
07:47 all of these are packed with cholesterol.
07:49 This is the enemy when we're dealing
07:52 with cardiovascular disease.
07:53 So, it's smarter to go more towards the plant based diets.
07:58 Yes, that is the ideal goal. A lot of people have problems.
08:02 This is sort of the ideal goal.
08:04 We wanna move people towards that.
08:05 But I found people that sometimes they just
08:07 can't give up everything at once.
08:09 So we try to encourage them, to make changes slowly.
08:11 First try this, maybe substitute this, eat more fresh
08:14 fruits and vegetables, then they're able to get it.
08:17 As they feel better and more alive and more healthy
08:21 They're gonna say: "I don't think I can eat this anymore,"
08:23 "cause I feel so much better."
08:24 I will attest to that. I was one that made
08:26 the changes slowly and continue to make the changes.
08:29 Here is a question from Anne in Canada.
08:32 And Anne writes: "Is it more likely for a woman"
08:36 "to develop cardiovascular disease or breast cancer?"
08:39 Anne, that is a wonderful question because cancer
08:43 gets so much publicity in the United States.
08:46 Women are more scared of cancer
08:49 than they are of cardiovascular disease.
08:51 But the chances of having a cardiovascular disease
08:55 is much higher than you would expect.
08:57 The next slide will attest to.
09:00 The prevalence of myocardial infarction in women
09:03 is a lot higher than most people think.
09:06 For instance, one in every 2.5 women die
09:09 of cardiovascular disease. I think that's staggering.
09:12 That's unbelievable.
09:13 One in 30 only, die of breast cancer.
09:16 25% of women who actually die of cardiovascular disease
09:21 are unaware of it.
09:23 That's unbelievable.
09:24 There's two things that come to my mind right away.
09:27 Number 1: For breast cancer, once you're
09:31 over the age of 50.Like I get my mammogram annually.
09:34 Between that and self examination
09:39 that's the way that I can know I'm cancer free.
09:42 But you don't really hear a lot about women and heart attacks.
09:46 I mean you don't hear doctors talking to you much about it.
09:50 So, what should I do to be
09:53 tested or to make sure that I'm not developing?
09:56 The first thing to do is to be aware that it's such
10:00 a high prevalence. Look for symptoms.
10:02 When you go and get your routine exam
10:04 bring this up to your doctor.
10:05 "Listen, I think that I might have to be screened"
10:09 "for cardiovascular disease."
10:11 There's things like blood work that can do
10:12 to make sure that your cholesterol is good
10:14 to lower your risk.
10:15 Check your blood pressure. Sometimes if you have some
10:18 symptoms you're not sure about, they can screen you
10:20 with a stress test or they walk you to see if you have symptoms.
10:23 There are tests that can measure your blood flow
10:26 and also look at risks that you might develop.
10:28 Those figures, I thought were amazing.
10:31 One in 2.5 vs. one in 30. That's very high.
10:35 To answer to Anne's question, Anne it's much more likely,
10:40 almost 10 times more likely that
10:42 you're gonna have a cardiovascular disease
10:44 than you are gonna have breast cancer.
10:45 And we hear so much more about breast cancer
10:49 than of cardiovascular disease.
10:50 Our third question comes from Raymond in Australia.
10:56 Raymond writes: "My friend Charlie"
10:59 "has chest pain daily. We work as guides in Australia."
11:03 "He says these episodes are heart attacks."
11:06 "Is there a difference between chest pain"
11:09 "and a heart attack?"
11:10 Yes.
11:11 That's the core of sort of diagnosing.
11:14 Lots of things can cause chest pain.
11:16 For instance, chest pain when you touch,
11:19 that can be a muscle.
11:20 Chest pain when you breathe, that could be related to your
11:23 lungs. Some of the hall-marks of chest pain coming from the heart
11:25 is pain when you do something.
11:27 Like you run up a hill, you do some exercise.
11:30 That's when the heart works.
11:31 And if the arteries are blocked up, you're gonna have
11:34 a symptom when the heart has to work hard.
11:36 And when you stop, it usually goes away.
11:38 We call that symptom "angina".
11:40 We also have the other symptoms.
11:42 We have pain that doesn't go away, or discomfort
11:44 that doesn't go away. We call that a "heart attack".
11:48 Let me show you the next slide here.
11:50 We're talking a little bit about heart attack.
11:52 Now there's different types of heart attacks that can happen.
11:54 Remember, heart attack is when the heart muscle
11:57 does not get enough blood and it starts to malfunction.
12:00 One way that can happen is the gradual occlusion of a vessel.
12:04 The cholesterol gradually piles up.
12:06 60%,70%,80%.This could take years to develop.
12:10 That's one. And then it gradually gets clogged up.
12:13 Usually these patients have symptoms of chest pain
12:16 before they have the heart attack.
12:17 The second one is a spasm.
12:20 That's when the artery, for a certain reason
12:23 spasms down and closes.
12:25 When it spasms down, downstream doesn't get enough blood.
12:28 Frequent causes of that would be drug abuse,
12:30 we see people that have cocaine, they have spasms.
12:34 People that smoke sometimes get spasms.
12:35 People that go in high altitudes can have spasms.
12:38 That don't get enough oxygen can have spasms,
12:41 it could be very devastating.
12:43 A third type of heart attack is actually the most common.
12:47 That's when we have a little plaque inside that blows open,
12:50 it ruptures suddenly.
12:52 Nothing predicts it, that plaque ruptures and then
12:55 the body sees that it's damaged. Whenever you've had a cut
12:58 on your hand, you know what happens when you get cut.
13:00 When there's damage, the body clogs it all.
13:02 So suddenly you clog off that artery and downstream
13:06 from that it doesn't have any blood
13:08 and you have a myocardial infarction.
13:10 The last one on the slide is a very uncommon one.
13:13 That was an emboli or some clot in your body
13:16 floating against the arteries.
13:17 That's very uncommon, we usually see that in people with
13:19 heart valves or clots in the heart.
13:21 We don't see that as often.
13:23 But as far as getting back to Raymond here,
13:26 his episodes are probably not heart attacks
13:30 if they're happening daily.
13:32 But if they're happening when he does something,
13:34 that could be a warning that the heart
13:35 is not getting enough blood, that could be angina.
13:38 But also could be a lot of other things.
13:40 In fact, I see people every day that most of the time,
13:44 they have chest pain that it's not the heart,
13:46 but you can't afford to miss it if it is the heart.
13:48 Jim, that's the problem because...
13:51 Recently my husband's best friend had an episode
13:57 of chest pain and he had his wife take him
14:00 to the emergency room and it turned out he had a 90% blockage
14:04 and had he waited any longer, he would have been dead.
14:08 It's what they told him. He said it wasn't that severe
14:11 but if I'm one of these people, I just nearly have to be
14:15 lying on my death bed to go to a doctor.
14:18 Do you just say ok, I'm gonna bite the bullet
14:22 and go and check this out cause it's not worth the risk?
14:25 I would just look at prevalences here,
14:28 I mean cardiovascular disease is so common.
14:31 If I had chest pain in my chest and I didn't know what it was,
14:35 for sure I would get it checked out because look at
14:38 the consequences if you don't. Look at the consequences.
14:42 Jim, I had microvalve prolapse.
14:45 So you probably had pain quite a bit.
14:47 I had pain all the time, I mean very often.
14:50 And I had a cardiologist once tell me, I said:
14:52 "I feel like I'm having a heart attack."
14:54 He said: "Don't worry, you're not."
14:56 And I said: "When will I know if I am?"
14:58 He said: "If you fall on the floor, you don't get up."
15:01 "That was a heart attack."
15:03 I know. So you kind of weigh
15:04 these things but the older I get the more I'm trying to be
15:08 serious about, if it is something that seems to
15:12 continue. You know Shelley, it might feel different from time
15:16 to time, you know, it might feel different than that time.
15:18 Inherently, usually when the heart's involved,
15:20 you also get short of breath, too.
15:22 That might help you distinguish between the two.
15:26 But microvalve prolapse is very difficult because that's
15:28 sort of an ongoing episode of chest pain.
15:31 And when you have that situation you really have to
15:34 know your body and know what's microvalve prolapse
15:37 and what might be different.
15:38 It's a scary feeling when you have any type
15:41 of pain in your chest.
15:42 Absolutely, but for those of you who are at home,
15:44 don't sit around and wait. Had my husband's best friend
15:48 waited, he would not be with us today.
15:50 Ok,here's a question from John in California.
15:53 Ok. And John writes:
15:55 "My grandmother just fell over dead and the doctors said"
15:58 "she had a heart attack."
15:59 "Is it possible to have a heart attack without symptoms?"
16:02 That is an excellent question and the answer
16:05 to that question is yes.
16:07 The groups that tend to have heart attacks
16:10 that don't have symptoms are the elderly and the diabetics.
16:14 Remember diabetics, their nervous systems
16:17 don't feel quite like everyone else's.
16:19 You've seen diabetics, they don't feel the bottom of their
16:22 feet. Sometimes they don't have sensations in their chest.
16:25 Also the elderly, sometimes they just get fatigued
16:27 or short of breath.
16:29 That could be a manifestation of a heart attack.
16:31 This is a good time, I think, to talk about some of the more
16:35 common symptoms of a heart attack.
16:36 So let's go ahead and look at the next slide here.
16:39 Symptoms of myocardial infarction.
16:42 One is chest discomfort. It might be pain,
16:45 it might be a heavy feeling on the chest.
16:47 It might be radiation of burning up into the jaw, the back
16:51 or the left arm, the shoulders.
16:52 Another symptom of a heart attack could be just
16:55 extreme shortness of breath.
16:56 I can't breathe, I can't get my breath.
16:59 These symptoms are not fleeting symptoms, these symptoms
17:02 are ones that stay with you, they're not going away.
17:04 In elderly sometimes we see the only symptom
17:07 being extreme fatigues.
17:09 So those are some symptoms that...
17:11 Can we see the next slide?
17:12 Another one: palpitations.
17:14 Feeling your heart beat too fast.
17:16 Feeling like you can't move on.
17:18 You can have abnormal sensations.
17:20 I've seen through the years almost anywhere in the body,
17:22 it can be in the jaw, it can be in the shoulders.
17:25 Some people, for instance, think they have heart burn.
17:27 And the heart burn is really a heart attack and vice versa.
17:31 They say: "Oh,I'm just having some heart burn."
17:33 And that is a heart attack.
17:35 So there's many different sensations that you can get
17:38 from a heart attack but you just really have to pay attention
17:41 to those and say
17:42 "Hey,I'm gonna get some help right away!"
17:43 My own grandmother died suddenly of a heart attack.
17:48 Just served the meal and just sat down
17:51 and her face fell into her plate.
17:53 But they said that hers was caused from an upset
17:57 in the electrolytes balance, that she was on a very
18:00 severe or strict diet. That her doctor had restricted
18:05 her to like 7 or 800 calories a day.
18:08 So something that drastic can cause a heart attack, right?
18:16 Yes, it could contribute to a heart attack
18:18 but the cause, I'm not so sure because we know lots of things.
18:22 In the vessels, usually it's blockages that really cause it.
18:26 Things like the plaque rupturing due to stress,
18:28 electrolyte abnormalities like she might have had
18:31 which cause a funny rhythm problem.
18:33 Those are all things that could have contributed
18:35 to the heart attack all of the sudden developing.
18:38 What she had happened is called "sudden death syndrome"?
18:41 Yes, sudden death. And most sudden deaths
18:43 are from not so much a heart attack
18:45 but from a rhythm problem.
18:47 The heart rhythm becomes suddenly abnormal.
18:49 When a heart rhythm becomes abnormal, all of the sudden
18:53 it doesn't pump effectively so you get no blood to the brain.
18:56 When no blood goes to the brain, BOOM! You pass out.
18:59 That's why with people that pass out we're always concerned
19:02 whether they have a funny heart beat, which we call arrhythmia.
19:04 Some rhythm problems are related to blockages while some
19:08 rhythm problems come from other reasons,
19:10 like electrolyte abnormalities, people that get dehydrated
19:13 can have these electrical problems.
19:15 People that have a host of other things outside the arteries
19:18 can also have this and that can cause sudden death
19:21 outside of a myocardial infarction.
19:23 My microvalve prolapse causes arrhythmia too, doesn't it?
19:27 Yes, but usually that one's not a dangerous one.
19:30 That's good news.
19:32 Here is a great question from Lacey in New York.
19:36 And Lacey writes:
19:37 "Is there a test that predicts a heart attack?"
19:41 Unfortunately there's no test that predicts a heart attack.
19:45 Lacey, I wish we did have a test that predicted a heart attack,
19:49 cause if we did, I could say
19:51 you're gonna have one, you're not gonna have one.
19:53 I could tell people so they can play in their lives accordingly.
19:57 However, we have some people that walk on a treadmill,
20:01 they walk 9 or 10 minutes on a treadmill,
20:02 they all feel great, have no symptoms at all and then
20:05 down the road they might have one of these plaque ruptures
20:08 and then they have a heart attack.
20:09 We also have people that we do angiograms.
20:11 We take pictures of the arteries of the heart
20:14 and we can actually see these plaques.
20:16 We can still not predict which of these plaques
20:19 are gonna rupture and cause a heart attack.
20:22 That's why we wanna focus on everything we can
20:25 to lower the risk of having a heart attack.
20:27 On our next show we're really gonna focus on ways that we can
20:31 tell people how to lower the risk to the lowest possible
20:34 risk of having a myocardial infarction.
20:36 So,Lacey,I think that was an excellent question.
20:38 Yes. And too bad that the answer isn't yes.
20:41 Ok,here's a question that I think will
20:43 really help follow up for Lacey because this is talking about
20:48 what can we do to change our chances of having one.
20:53 This comes from Steve in Saudi Arabia.
20:56 He says: "I live overseas"
20:57 "in Saudi Arabia. I have had an increase of stress"
21:01 "in my life since the war in Iraq started."
21:04 "My wife is concerned that this might cause a heart attack."
21:08 "How can I lower my chance of having a heart attack?"
21:11 That is an excellent question, Steve.
21:14 That is a type of question, Shelley, that makes
21:17 a heart attack doctor just smile because we know that
21:20 this is a person that wants to prevent heart attacks.
21:23 We've talked about over the course of this program
21:26 that 90% of this disease can be preventable.
21:29 And here we have Steve in Saudi Arabia
21:32 wanting to lower his risk.
21:34 Unfortunately, Steve can't come over here
21:37 and talk to me right now but if Steve was sitting
21:39 right here with me today like you, I'd say:
21:41 Steve, let's talk about ways you can lower your risk.
21:44 Cause this is the most important thing, probably
21:46 some of the most important health decisions
21:48 he'll make ever in his life to lower his risk,
21:50 since the prevalence of this disease is so high.
21:52 The first thing is exercise.
21:54 Exercise helps in a host of ways.
21:57 We'll talk more about them in the next program.
21:59 Some of the things that it does is that it lowers
22:02 the blood pressure, makes the good cholesterol go up,
22:04 the bad cholesterol goes down,
22:07 it makes hormones called endorphins which block
22:11 stress hormones which can sometimes cause
22:13 these plaques to rupture.
22:15 Also exercise lowers the chance of diabetes
22:18 and a host of other things.
22:19 So exercise! I really tell people that
22:22 if you don't do anything else, you have to exercise.
22:24 The second thing that we want to do is lower blood pressure.
22:28 We know that the higher the blood pressure,
22:30 the more likely to have vascular damage.
22:32 And it only makes sense, Shelley The blood just rushing around
22:35 through you. If you have a plaque,
22:37 it's gonna rupture or break open,
22:38 and all this blood pressure will damage things.
22:41 Sort of like pipes, sometimes they talk about
22:43 heart attacks it's glorified plumbing.
22:45 If it's just rushing through, you can have some damage.
22:49 So pay attention to your blood pressure.
22:51 A lot of people don't even know they have blood pressure
22:53 problems because they never get it checked.
22:56 The third thing that I wanna focus them to
22:58 is know what your cholesterol is.
23:00 We talked about cholesterol being a risk factor.
23:03 We know that the higher the level of cholesterol
23:06 the greater the cardiovascular risk.
23:08 And we divide the cholesterol into bad and good cholesterol.
23:13 The good cholesterol is called HDL.
23:15 We want that to be out the roof.
23:17 The bad cholesterol is called the LDL.
23:20 And in just a normal person, with no health problems at all,
23:23 we want the LDL to be at least below 160.
23:26 If we have risk factors, high blood pressure,
23:30 family history, we want it below 130.
23:33 And if you have a known disease we want it to be well below 100.
23:38 In fact, there's been some recent studies done that say
23:41 if we can push the LDL down low enough,
23:43 we can have disease regression.
23:46 That's disease that once was in the body, leaves the body.
23:50 So it's actually reversing the disease.
23:51 Yes, reversing the disease.
23:53 So cholesterol is very important.
23:54 Also,Steve,if you're in a high risk group,
23:57 mum and dad had heart attacks or heart problems
24:01 at a younger age, we recommend those people
24:04 to take aspirin every day.
24:06 Aspirin every day if you're in a high risk group.
24:10 That's the 81 milligram, the little baby aspirin.
24:14 Yes, that's the minimum that you would need.
24:15 Steve, another thing is smoking.
24:18 You might say "I don't smoke at all".
24:20 A lot of people don't realize if you're around smokers
24:23 and if you're in the military, as you might be
24:25 over in Saudi Arabia, you can get half the risk
24:28 from being around second hand smokers.
24:29 So, if someone smokes two packs a day around you
24:32 you get one pack a day and the harmful effects.
24:35 A lot of people don't realize that.
24:37 So stay away from cigarettes!
24:39 And that's why it's been so important in the last few years
24:41 in America that we quit smoking
24:44 in restaurants, in public facilities.
24:45 Think about little children whose parents are smoking
24:49 at home and these children are trying to develop.
24:52 You said that. I had no idea second hand
24:55 smoke was that dangerous.
24:57 It's a major problem, second hand smoke.
24:59 But Steve, there might be something else
25:01 you might wanna look at.
25:02 The last couple ones I think are would getting more and more
25:05 information that these help lower the risk of heart attack.
25:10 One is cutting back on the stress and anxiety in the life.
25:13 We know that people that are into high amounts of stress
25:16 have high levels of epinephrine and these high hormones
25:20 which can cause high blood pressure and plaques to rupture.
25:22 So look at your life and see if there's things that you can
25:25 cut back on the stress. I know if you're in the military
25:27 or if you're in the Saudi Arabia around a lot of things that
25:30 going on in that part of the world,
25:31 it's hard to get away from.
25:33 But look at the stress in your life and see
25:36 what is you can lower that.
25:37 The last thing I think is very important
25:40 in lowering your risk is the proper nutrition.
25:42 You have to eat the right foods.
25:44 We know that people that eat high animal based diets,
25:48 they don't eat a lot of plants, we know that they have
25:52 a higher risk of having a heart attack
25:54 than those who don't.
25:55 And part of it is the cholesterol, the blood pressure
25:58 but also just changes the insides in a bad type of way.
26:01 So those are some things, Steve that you can...that's a start.
26:05 There's a couple of others we didn't mention
26:07 but that would be a good starting point
26:09 if you can get working on those.
26:10 Yes. And I just wanna say
26:12 to you Steve that if you are in the military
26:14 and you can't change your stressful circumstances,
26:17 you can change the way you react to those circumstances.
26:20 I wanna give you the verse Isaiah 26 verse 3 that says
26:24 "If you keep your mind steadfastly fixed on the Lord"
26:27 "He promises to keep you in perfect piece."
26:30 When I find myself in stressful circumstances that cannot
26:34 be changed I just try to put all my focus on the Lord
26:38 and that helps. Amen!
26:41 So you kind of recap for us what we've learned here today?
26:46 Well, myocardial infarction is such a huge topic.
26:50 The couple things we just have to take home with us today,
26:53 that we just must remember if we don't remember anything else.
26:57 So if you're sitting there at home, sort of zoning in,
26:59 you went to the cupboard and got some food
27:02 and you're just now coming back.
27:03 Let me throw up the three things that I think you just have
27:06 to know no matter what.
27:07 Number 1. The most common cause of death
27:11 in society now is myocardial infarction.
27:14 This is a lot bigger than most people even realize.
27:18 and we talked earlier about 43% of deaths.
27:21 People that don't make it in because of the heart attacks.
27:23 So that's the one you have to realize.
27:25 It's more common than breast cancer,
27:26 it's more common than lung disease,
27:28 it's more common than infections,
27:30 it's more common than these Ebola viruses,
27:33 it's more common than having a car accident,
27:35 and yet you just don't hear enough about it.
27:38 And a lot of this is some of the societal norms
27:41 that we're going through.
27:42 The second point is that we cannot ignore the symptoms.
27:45 If you have anything that you think that might be
27:47 related to your heart, you have to get in to the doctor
27:50 and get help right away.
27:51 And the last point is 90% of cardiovascular disease
27:55 if dealt with early could be prevented.
27:58 And getting back to our opening text.
28:01 Psalm 139é14 says: "I will praise Him"
28:04 "for I am fearfully and wonderfully made."
28:06 And what a great chance we have to have our bodies taken care of
28:11 by Lord and Savior that loves us.
28:13 Amen!


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Revised 2014-12-17