Coronary Heart Disease And Sugar Or Carb Relation

The primary cause of coronary heart disease (which causes a heart attack) is inflammation of the coronary arteries (the arteries which carry oxygenated blood to your heart). Before I move on to explain what is inflammation, let’s see what is atherosclerosis.

• Atherosclerosis is an inflammatory response initiated by damage to the innermost layer (known as the endothelium) of the arteries, which faces the bloodstream.
• Atherosclerosis is a disease which causes narrowing of the walls of the arteries which is characterized by plaque build up. This plaque build up inside the arteries results in blockage of the blood flow or sometimes formation of blood clots. This plaque blood clots can result in partial or complete blockage of blood flow. When all this happens inside the coronary arteries, it is called coronary heart disease which is the main danger as it can lead to a heart attack.
• As we see here that the underlying cause of blockage is the plaque build up. Let us see how this plaque is built up:
• Once damage occurs to the inner layer of the coronary artery, the body’s natural repair mechanism takes over. This mechanism begins with circulating levels of low- density lipoproteins (ldls) into the damaged area. Let me stress that this occurs whether a person has high or low ldl-cholesterol!
• Once ldls move into the damaged area of the endothelium, there is an inflammation response initiated by the body (inflammation response is a protective response of the body). This attracts the immune cells to the damaged site. This, in turn, produces growth factors, which cause muscle cells to multiply and invade the damaged area of the blood vessel. Eventually, the conundrum of ldl, immune cells, muscle cells and debris from the initial damage form “plaque.”

So as we see above, the primary cause of plaque build up is inflammation of arteries, and this plaque formation can happen, whether a person has low or high ldl levels, we are getting closer to the point of understanding that it’s not the cholesterol, but inflammation that is the primary cause of the blockage, which causes heart attack.

Now the question is what causes inflammation in the body?

• Inflammation is not just restricted to the arteries, but every cell of the body, and the prime cause of this is sugar is inflammatory. Imagine spilling sugar syrup on your keyboard and see what happens. Inside the body also, sugar does similar things. People with chronically high sugar levels (type-2 diabetics or even pre-diabetics) are suffering from inflammatory stress in the body. That is why injuries or wounds in diabetics take longer time to heal and surgeries become critical!
• And when I talk about sugar here, it is not only the refined sugar in the diet but also the excess intake of all carbohydrates in the body, which leads to chronically elevated blood sugar and insulin levels in the body.
• So a person (specially a sedentary person) having predominantly excess carbohydrates and sugar in the body, even if taking a diet low in fats, is still at a greater risk of heart disease even though his saturated fat intake is low. That is why a type-2 diabetic is at a greater risk of having a heart attack. This is due to inflammation of arteries. And since this inflammation is not only limited to arteries but every cell of the body, often these people suffer from lethargy and low and energy levels due to inflammation in the intestinal cells, which restricts proper absorption of vital nutrients like vitamins, minerals in the body and the hormones get affected leading to lethargy.
• This inflammation or damage to arterial walls can be caused by a few other factors as well like:
• High intake of omega-6 fats (like vegetable oils, soybean oil etc) high intake of alcohol, smoking, high free radical damageincreased cortisol (ie stress) lack of vitamin c and other anti-oxidants.

Blood tests

• If you really want to know the true health status of your cardio-vascular system that a mere lipid profile will not give you the true picture. A couple of blood tests that need to be added are:
• Hba1c (glycated hemoglobin): hba1c test is an indicator of how well the sugar levels are controlled in the body in the span of 3 months. The excess sugar molecules bind with hemoglobin and the resultant molecule is called glycated haemoglobin. The life span of this molecule is 3 months. The normal value of hba1c is 6. Anything more than that means the sugar levels are chronically elevated beyond normal in the last 3 months.
• C-reactive protein: this test indicates the level of inflammation in the body. This substance is produced by the liver which increases in the presence of inflammation in the body.