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Heart Disease and InsulinGenetics seems to play a role in heart disease. But, as with other inherited tendencies , genetics may lay the foundation, but lifestyle can bring it on. Smoking and excessive drinking, lack of exercise and diet play a big part. The heart is nothing but a large muscle that pumps blood throughout the body. It contracts rhythmically about 72 times a minute throughout life, pumping oxygenated blood through the arteries and returning de-oxygenated blood through the veins. The heart itself requires large amounts of oxygen for its lifetime of work. It is endowed with coronary arteries that wrap around itself. If one of these arteries develops a blood clot, spasm, or plaque build-up and fails to provide a portion of the heart with enough oxygen-rich blood, a heart attack occurs. Traditionally, the diets prescribed by doctors for heart disease are low fat, high complex carbohydrate diets. This may be exactly the wrong thing to do. High carb diets, even complex carbohydrates, require a lot of insulin to process and insulin can play a major role in bring on a heart attack through its part in plaque building. Plaques are formed by the infiltration of LDL cholesterol into the lining of an artery. Insulin plays a role here by increasing the amount of cholesterol circulating in the bloodstream. The cells need cholesterol for a lot of cellular process such a building the cell membrane. What the cell doesn’t make itself, it harvests from LDL cholesterol circulating in the bloodstream. Some of that comes from what we eat, but most of it is manufactured in the liver. Insulin revs up the cells’ cholesterol manufacturing machinery so that it doesn’t need to harvest much from the bloodstream. The result is excess LDL cholesterol traveling through the system causing mischief. Also, insulin acts a a growth hormone on the smooth linings of the cells, thickening them and making the artery stiffer and narrower. A good place for plaque or a clot to form. If you have heart disease, it is important to follow you doctor’s instructions. If you want to prevent it: Quit smoking Tip: Damage of the lining by nicotine hastens the plaque building.
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