If you’re young you need to know that heart attacks are becoming increasingly common among young people. And the truth is that at this age we don’t believe it because we’ve bought into the idea that those kinds of things only happen to “older people,” but this is not entirely true.
It Can Happen to Anyone
Roberto learned this in the morning when he suffered a heart attack at the age of 31. He never thought it would happen to him. He enjoyed food and street tacos, he was overweight and smoked, he spent long hours at work, went out partying, and at some point, used cocaine. Additionally, he didn’t exercise because he thought it “wasn’t for him.”
When you hear about heart attacks, you think it will only happen to your grandfather, but when it happens to you, when you are in the prime of life, it is a shock, and if you don’t take the second chance you are given to live, you must really want to die.
The Worst Enemies
What makes young people more prone to suffering a heart attack? Obesity, diabetes, hypertension, drug use, and a sedentary lifestyle, as well as the consumption of energy drinks and poor nutrition.
It is precisely the poor diet, along with smoking and lack of exercise, that has us with a pandemic of coronary atherosclerosis and many more heart attacks in young people, declared the general director of the National Medical Center 20 de Noviembre, ISSSTE, José Alfredo Merino.
The Data
Alfredo Merino clarified that approximately 20 percent of patients treated through the ASISSSTE Infarction program are under 40 years old, when just two decades ago, the percentage was at most 5 percent.
Among the factors that contribute to early cardiovascular deaths or illnesses is drug use, especially cocaine. The director explains that there are 22-year-old patients who inhale cocaine and present coronary disease as if they were 80 years old.
Regarding this drug, Francisco Javier León Hernández, president of the National Association of Cardiologists of Mexico, said:
“One aspect that favors the appearance of myocardial infarction in young people is the use of drugs that have a vascular toxic effect, and undoubtedly, cocaine is one of them. Cocaine has an excitatory effect and the toxicity on the coronary arteries is perfectly demonstrated.”
The energy drinks that we love so much are also harmful because although they do not block arteries, they do stress the heart and can lead to death, added José Alfredo Merino. But beware, it’s not that they alone cause cardiac damage or that they are bad for everyone, but they can trigger an undiagnosed heart disease.
Men and Women
In the female population, it is common for heart attacks to occur more frequently during menopause and postmenopause because the natural protection of estrogens is lost. However, this has changed. Ana Elena Ancona, a cardiologist at the Hospital General de México, said that her youngest patient is 35 years old due to stress-induced heart syndrome, because YES IT HAPPENS. The specialist says stress really breaks the heart.
More Deadly Than in Older People
Experts explained that heart attacks are more lethal than in people over 40 or 50 years old, and the explanation is that with age, a mechanism called collateral circulation is developed, which consists of the formation of “new small arteries” that “jump over the plugs” in the coronary arteries and compensate for heart obstructive disease.
When a heart attack occurs in people under 50 years old, those peripheral arteries have not developed, and then the event could be worse.
You know it now: it’s time to take care of your heart (and not just from your crushes).
Story originally written in Spanish by Janet Sánchez in Cultura Colectiva.
