The Major Causes of Heart Death

In this health video you will learn the major causes of heart death.

Lyle Hurd: We have the pleasure today to be talking with Robert Kowalski, author of nine books. He is an expert on heart disease. The heart disease is the number one killer, right. Robert Kowalski: In both men and women. Lyle Hurd: Men and women. Robert Kowalski: Both men and women are "Equal Opportunity Killer". Lyle Hurd: And some 400,000 people a year die of sudden cardiac arrest, which means that they may be dead by the time they hit the floor but absolutely never get to the hospital. Robert Kowalski: Yeah, actually the number might even be a little higher, might even be up to 500,000. Unfortunately, for too many people, the fatal heart attack is their very first symptom that they had anything wrong with them to begin with and indeed statistically speaking, 50%, half of all the first heart attacks are failed. Lyle Hurd: Unbelievable. Robert Kowalski: My father was one of those victims. Lyle Hurd: What are the four major causes of heart death? Robert Kowalski: Oh, once upon a time they used to call it that big three. Cigarette smoking, elevated cholesterol, elevated blood pressure. Today most doctors are including diabetes as the fourth and so it's now the big four risk factors for heart attack and stroke. When we talk about heart disease, it's really cardiovascular, or cerebral vascular disease combined. That it's heart attack and stroke that are essentially the same disease and combined, take out about 50% of the population. Lyle Hurd: I understand that about 60% of the deaths that are actually caused by diabetes are attributed to other diseases. But diabetes is really a major problem, isn't it? Robert Kowalski: Well, diabetes is the underlying problem that then leads on to other kinds of problems that are exacerbated by the diabetes being there, the high sugar levels and interestingly with diabetes, when I first started writing 40 years ago about health and medical matters, the term for it was, type was maturity-onset diabetes. It meant that people typically wouldn't develop this problem until somewhere in their 50s or even their later 50s or late 60s. Today, they've changed the name to Type 2 diabetes. That designates it from Type 1 which is, what you're born with and you have to give yourself the insulin injections on a regular basis. Type 2 is really the result of over weight, and lack of physical activity. It's really mostly, a lifestyle kind of things for 85% or more of all cases and what we are seeing is that younger, and younger, and younger, and younger people are developing diabetes, so that now they call it Type 2 instead of maturity-onset because you can't call it maturity-onset when the patient is in his or her teens, or early twenties. Lyle Hurd: Now, is that also then being reflected in heart disease, are we finding younger and younger people? Robert Kowalski: No question. I have been to several heart meetings just recently where physicians are addressing audiences of other physicians telling them the cutting edge stuff to go back and use with their patients and three different occasions, fellows started off, talking to the doctors, and the audience saying, doctors if you have a patient that presents with diabetes, that is now we found out that patient has diabetes. If that patient presents with diabetes, you have a heart patient. It's just assumed at that point that the person by the time, the diagnosis is made, that he or she has diabetes, that the beginnings of heart disease are already in place and that you have to treat not only the diabetes but actively go after the other risk factors because they are in extreme risk of heart attack and stroke.