The Expert Guide to Beating Heart Disease
What You Absolutely Must Know
Chapter OneUnderstanding Heart Disease
The human heart is an astonishing organ. A muscle only about the
size of your fist, it sits just to the left of the center of your chest
contracting and relaxing to pump blood -- roughly five liters of it a
minute -- throughout your body. It is an involuntary muscle. Unlike,
for example, the muscles in your arm that you flex voluntarily
when you lift something, your heart needs no instruction. It operates
independently and continuously, day and night, week in, week
out, year after year. When it stops, life stops.
What Is Heart Disease?
The heart is tough, but it's not invulnerable and it can be afflicted
by a variety of diseases. But what's commonly called heart disease
(though, more accurately known as "coronary artery disease") is, interestingly
enough, not a disease of the heart at all. At least not directly.
It's a disease of the large arteries outside the heart that
supply the smaller vessels that feed the heart muscle with blood
rich in nutrients and oxygen that the heart needs to keep working.
Other vessels carry away the waste products produced by the heart
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