Cardiologist Jeremy London discusses what most people miss about heart trouble. He covers broken heart syndrome, how stress damages your heart, and why vaping is riskier than people think.
Do you think someone can die from a broken heart?
The short answer is yes.
Really?
And there is an actual syndrome, broken heart syndrome.
Really?
It is a thing. 50% of Americans have high blood pressure.
Really?
And the majority don't even know they have it. Most people, if you ask them, you know, what are you afraid of dying of? They all say cancer, but it's really not the case. It's heart disease. He is a board certified cardiovascular surgeon.
His tips for living well and protecting.
Your one and only heart have racked up nearly 50 million views. I am super excited to introduce you to Dr. Jeremy London.
What is the main cause of us having heart disease, heart attacks, heart conditions?
Nothing happens in a vacuum in our bodies.
It's all connected.
Everything is connected.
How much does vaping affect the heart health for Gen Z?
Have I seen really life threatening situations from vaping? 100%.
What have you seen?
The short story with vaping is I.
Read a stat that said 800 5,000 people have heart attacks each year in the U.S. one heart attack every 40 seconds. Which seems crazy to me that this is such a big issue for us as Americans and it sounds like around the world as well. So I'm curious then, what is the main cause of us having heart disease, heart attacks, heart conditions that affect us living a healthy life or dying?
To zoom out just a little bit further to put the perspective on this, worldwide, it's 20 million deaths a year. So it's the leading cause of death of men and women worldwide. And most people, if you ask them, you know, what are you afraid of dying of or what do you think the biggest killer, they all say cancer, but it's really not the case. It's heart disease worldwide. Now of that group, the most common reason is blockages in the heart arteries and that's what causes heart attacks. We have arteries that are on the surface of our heart that bring nourishment to the heart muscle, which is just a pump. It's just that pump requires energy and in our bodies that's nutrition and oxygen. Well, if you get a blockage in there over time, usually from cholesterol buildup, that then creates basically a roadblock to the heart muscle below. And if that gets tight enough or completely blocks, that's when you have heart attacks. And that's the single biggest bucket in that 20 million. But there are a lot of different reasons why people get heart disease. You can have valve problems within the heart, you can have electrical problems. Those are the three most common buckets. And then there's of Course, congenital heart disease, people are born with abnormalities and they all go in those numbers too. But the majority of it is because people are getting blockages.
How much does stress affect heart health? If someone's just feeling like overwhelmed, burnt out, mentally in their head constantly.
Sure.
Can that affect heart health or hurt you?
So the way I would look at this is nothing happens in a vacuum in our bodies.
It's all connected.
Everything is connected. Our mind, our nervous system, all connected to our blood vessels, our heart, et cetera. Is that a major risk factor? No, it's not necessarily a major risk factor, but it definitely plays a role in heart disease. It influences it 100%.
It influences your body feeling sick and if your body feels sick, it puts stress on the heart. And that could. Yeah. So what would you say then are the three biggest factors of heart disease?
Sure. The first would be obesity.
Really?
Yeah. And along with that, you know, comes poor diet and insulin resistance, high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, sedentary lifestyle. And we cannot leave out smoking. Really, because that is the single worst thing you can do for your body. Again, thinking about it like a vacuum, smoking affects the lungs, it affects all the arteries, and it's the leading risk factor really, for heart disease.
Really?
Oh, yes.
So here's a question that most people are not going to like the answer to. Probably how much does vaping affect the heart health for Gen Z?
Yeah. So the short story with vaping is unlike tobacco use, we don't have the years of data. So it's hard to really say, you know, there's all the data of, oh, it's better than. We don't know what the long term implications are. What we do know is there's a lot of people doing it. They're doing it all the time because unlike cigarettes, you don't have to go.
Outside, you're smoking every second, right? Yeah, yeah.
You constantly see the blue lights all the time. You don't have to go to the room at the airport anymore, that now they've actually taken those out all together. So the issue is we just don't know the long term. But the nicotine content in those vaping formulations is essentially unregulated. So they can have just multitudes higher levels of nicotine than cigarettes. And again, because you can do it all the time, the exposure is all day long. So nicotine in and of itself is a vasoconstruct vasoconstrictor. So it constricts, so it causes, not the valves, the actual blood vessels themselves. To constrict and what does that do.
When it's pumping through the heart?
Right. So if you think about it again as the heart, as a pump, you.
Gotta, you got a little example here.
Absolutely. So the big chambers down here, you have the right and the left chamber. The left chamber here is the main pumping chamber and it's pushing blood out through the aorta. That's why it's red, because it's got lots of oxygen in it to the rest of the body. So if all of these blood vessels are clamping down and this pump is trying to work against that system, what do you think that causes high blood pressure?
Interesting. And that's one of the main causes of.
Exactly. Because high blood pressure over time does two major things. One, you get decreased what we call elasticity of the blood vessels. They become stiff so they.
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