Satoshi Akamaru writes:
1) You suffered a mild heart attack
two months ago. It was a very dangerous indication of cardiovascular disease
(CVD), even though you feel fine now. Statistics say that about one-fourth
of heart attack patients like you will have another heart attack within
six years after the first trouble. One out of ten patients will experience
sudden death within the same time.
I think your coronary arteries are under constriction and can not provide
sufficient fresh blood to cardiac muscles when necessary, such as when
you go hiking. Oxygen shortage in cardiac muscles occurs as symptomatic
pain in the chest or upper limb. You have had several acute chest pains
right after dinner meals, haven't you?
It is probably safe to say that narrowing arteries accompany arteriosclerosis.
Arteriosclerosis deprives arteries in the whole body of their ductility
and leads to hypertension. Hypertension accelerates arteriosclerosis. A
vicious circle is formed in this way. Your blood pressure measurements,
165/105mmHg, indicate stage 2 of hypertension and need medical treatment.
Complicated factors concern the progress of arteriosclerosis. It is generally
believed that arteriosclerosis is elevated with high total cholesterol,
high LDL levels and low HDL levels in the blood. With LDL--173 mg/dl, HDL--26
mg/dl, you are classified in the high risk group. High levels of total
cholesterol and LDL are brought by imbalance between energy intake and
output. Your overweight condition indicates overeating and physical inactivity.
In fact, your only exercise is walking across the street from your apartment
to your office and back. Other factors are smoking and stress in life.
Though you cut down your smoking, progress of arteriosclerosis doesn't
stop. Even a minor quantity of nicotine in tobacco promotes arteriosclerosis.
Your stressful life has bad influence on arteriosclerosis too.
Also you have a genetic background of CVD. You lost your brother to CVD.
2) Please prepare sublingual nitroglycerin 0.3 to 0.6mg, which is the most
effective drug for angina pectoris. When you feel acute chest pain, you
can take it under your tongue. Dramatic relief is usually within 1.5 to
3 minutes, and is completed by about 5 minutes.
If initial treatment is incomplete, that is, the pain doesn't disappear,
there is a possibility of myocardial infarction rising.
Call your local emergency telephone number and leave the phone off the
hook so that medical personnel can locate your address if you should become
unconscious. You can ask another person to take you to a hospital by car
in case you are close to the hospital which has an ER.
3) You need medical treatment. First, it is important for you to expand
your narrowed coronary arteries, not to obstruct them. For example, you
can use cutaneous patches containing nitroglycerin in various sizes, which
provide prolonged therapeutic effect. Second, hypertensive drugs will lower
your blood pressure. There are diuretics and sympathetic nerve inhibitors
and so forth. Third, you must solve your hyperlipidemia, lipids excessive
pathosis in the blood and incidents of arteriosclerosis. Fortunately there
are anti-hyperlipidemic drugs, invented in recent years.
You should change some behaviors immediately. You must not do hard exercise
such as hiking, which is a burden on your heart and may cause another heart
attack. You had better throw your habit of smoking away. Smoking spoils
some effects of medical treatments.
4) Good diet and proper physical activity will improve your hypertension
and hyperlipidemia. Please reduce your total calorie intake, especially
from fatty food. I recommend you take 30 kinds of foods a day in order
to avoid diet imbalance. The best and safe way to reform your physical
inactivity is walking. I suggest you have a dog. A lovely partner will
ask you to walk him every morning and evening. I know a case in which walking
a dog lowered his master's blood pressure without drugs.
And maybe you don't notice that your stressful business life is affecting
your heart. Please cut down your overtime work and don't bring your work
home. You should decrease the number of times you do social drinking. You
may be afraid of the effect of not drinking, cutting down overtime, etc.,
on your success in your company. However I don't want to hear the news
of your sudden death with you sitting in your chair in your company!
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