Is Your Heart Ageing With You?

Everybody aspires for a healthy beating heart, don’t they? The heart is the most important organ in our system that beats around 1, 00,000 times a day flushing out deoxygenated blood. It relentlessly takes care of the blood requirements of our body adjusting to our actions. As we age, our heart ages too with time. However our unhealthy lifestyle, ill eating food habits etc. put our heart to jeopardy.

We should be mindful towards our heart health, if certain considerable changes are not looked into and treated well, we will be risking our heart. Our lifestyle habits and changes come with trade-offs, leaving our heart fragile and vulnerable.

Heart disease has become a prime cause of death. As we age, in order to compensate for the clogged arteries, our heart works harder. The build-up of fat around the arteries puts pressure on our heart hampering its function.

Changes with Ageing Heart

Our heartbeat is controlled by the functioning of our heart. Our nerves that connect our heart with the brain may develop fibrous tissue and fat deposits around it with our unhealthy lifestyle. This leads to a lower heart rate.

1. Aging Arteries:

The function of the artery is to take the oxygenated blood from the heart to other body parts. The flexibility of arteries is greatly affected with age which leads to increased blood pressure. As a result, the heart pumps faster to combat these changing, risking its shelf life. A careful and close watch on our cholesterol and blood pressure levels can relief the heart of this burden.

2. Left Ventricle Thickens:

With age, the walls of the left ventricle of the heart become thicker. As the walls become thick the amount of the blood the chamber can hold becomes less, therefore the heart fills slowly. As a result, the heart pumps faster.

3. Valve Closes Slowly:

The mitral valve in our heart closes slowly with age as the rate at which the blood flows from the left ventricle slows down. As the mitral valve starts growing with age, it hardens and becomes stiff and thereby relaxes more slowly.

4. Blood Thickens:

Age brings with it various changes, one of it being the reduction in total body water. The blood volume decreases due to the presence of less fluid. This also leads to a reduction in the speed of red blood cells production. As a result, there is a slower response to blood loss.

5. Enlargement of Heart:

With age, certain heart cells die as a result the remaining cells stretch in order to stay connected. This leads to their growth and thus the heart also appears larger in size.
Take Your Health to Heart

To maintain a healthy heart, we ought to maintain healthy arteries. It is our duty to help our circulatory system and not worsen it further. Some of the heart risk factors on which we have control are smoking, obesity, diabetes etc. a proper and careful check on these is a must. Visit PSRI to know about heart-smart treats that we can incorporate in our diets. Our team of highly qualified and experienced cardiac surgeons in best Cardiac hospital in Delhi provide a range of services from preventive care to complex surgeries. Take care of your aging heart with US!