The main forms of heart problems that people may experience are coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke. These two disturbs have a similar cause: a blockage in an artery resulting from the deposit of atherosclerotic plaque or blood clots along the inside wall of your arteries. The CHD and stroke together cause about three quarter of all death for cardiovascular problems in adults.

Other cardiovascular diseases in adults include hypertension, congestive heart failure and valvular heart disease. Congenital heart disease may also be present, likely a mild problem present since birth.

Coronary heart disease comes in two main forms: heart attack (known also as myocardial infarction) and angina. Angina is a pain in the chest brought on by exercise or emotion. It can be mild or severe and generally lasts less than 10 minutes. A hart attack causes a similar pain but lasts longer and can be fatal. Angina is caused by a narrowing of the blood vessels to the heart muscle. A heart attack results when one of those vessels is entirely blocked.

Stroke occurs when a blood vessel that carries oxygen and nutrients to the brain is either blocked by a clot or bursts. When that happens, part of the brain cannot get the blood (and oxygen) it needs, so it starts to die. Strokes can cause paralysis, affect language and vision, and cause other problems. Clots that block an artery cause ischemic strokes. This is the most common type of stroke, accounting for approximately 88% of all strokes. Ruptured blood vessels cause haemorrhagic or bleeding strokes.

Several conditions are directly linked to the risk of developing a cardiovascular problem in the adult age. The most important are atherosclerosis and the hypertension. The former is the process by which a plaque composed mainly of lipids or fats is deposited along the inner walls of your arteries. The latter is when blood pressure becomes too high and stays that way. Over time it can damage the arteries by causing roughness in the usually glass-smooth lining of their walls. When this happens, it is easier for fats and cholesterol to block them. Hypertension can also damage kidneys, heart, brain, or parts of the eye. Further it makes the heart work harder than usual.

Risk Factors

There are some factors that increase the risk of developing coronary heart disease. Some of them depend on your habits, lifestyle and diet and can be easily managed by yourself. Others, such as family history, age and sex are independent from your wiliness. Here you have a short list of things that you can manage to change:
Smoking - Smokers have more than twice the risk for heart attack as non-smokers. Second-hand smokers have an increased risk too.

Cholesterol levels - The risk for heart disease increases as your total amount of "bad" cholesterol increases. A diet low in cholesterol and saturated fat will lower cholesterol levels and reduce your risk for heart disease.

High blood pressure - When blood pressure remains high, it puts an unnecessary strain on the heart and blood vessels. High blood pressure is a major risk factor in coronary heart disease.

Diabetes - Diabetic people have problems with controlling the sugar level in their blood. If not properly controlled, diabetes can lead to a range of diseases, including coronary heart disease.

Overweight - Being overweight is likely to increase both your blood pressure and cholesterol. By loosing weight, your risk of coronary heart disease will be considerably reduced.

Exercise - Exercise helps you to loose weight, lower your blood pressure, and improve your blood cholesterol levels.

Alcohol intake - It has been shown that people who drink a lot of alcohol have a high coronary heart disease risk. Excessive alcohol intake makes risk factors like high blood pressure and being overweight more likely.

Stress and anger - The effects of stress are the result of the hormone epinephrine (adrenaline), which is released into the blood, speeding up the heart and increasing the blood pressure.

Treatment

The best way you can manage the cardiovascular disease involves reducing your risk factors, taking medications, and possibly undergoing invasive and/or surgical procedures, depending how much serious the problem is.

Reducing the risk factors means quit smoking, follow a balanced diet in order to keep your cholesterol down. Low fat, low sodium, low cholesterol foods are recommended. You should also get more exercise to help maintain a healthy weight, reduce stress and strengthen your heart.

If making lifestyle changes isn't enough to control your heart disease, your doctor may prescribe medications to reduce hypertension and the risk of atherosclerosis. Hypertension medications include diuretics, beta-blockers, calcium channel blockers, angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers, or alpha blockers.

In the case of an heart attack or a stroke other drugs must be given as soon as possible (within one to two hours from the start of your heart attack) to decrease the amount of heart damage. Between them there are aspirin and antiplatelets to prevent blood clotting and thrombolytic therapy ("clot busters") to dissolve any blood clots that are present in the heart's arteries.

Other treatments include procedure such as angioplasty (a catheter with a balloon on the end is used to flatten plaque and open up the artery) and stenting (a small, metal mesh cylinder is placed inside the artery after angioplasty to keep the artery open). These procedures may be combined with thrombolytic therapy (drug treatments) to open up the narrowed arteries, as well as to break up any clots that are blocking them. If necessary, bypass surgery may be performed to restore the heart muscle's supply of blood.

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