Unfortunately, the answer is YES; the heart grows older as well as we age. Although several people like me always say “Oh I’m never getting old….I’m young at heart and will stay young forever”…which is good and this is how we should live with a positive attitude. With this type of attitude, we can sure increase our life by minimum of 5 years and may be more too. Again, it depends upon our mental outlook and how we live, and not just the age. Science agrees with this, but at the same time, we have now come to know so many different facts about our heart health and we should realize that with increasing age, even with a positive attitude and sound mental acuity, our heart undergoes some changes, and it continues to undergo those changes even when there is no disease, even when the person is healthy and has no known risk condition or a disease. The heart muscles start to weaken and when the heart beats, these heart muscles cannot relax completely between those beats, and when this happens they become stiff; as a result they start to function less efficiently and they don’t do their job of pumping blood very well and finally give up. The loss of good function of these heart muscles gets worse when there is any heart disease.

As the heart grows older, it does not respond effectively to adrenaline and this is the reason that older heart cannot contract or cannot pump blood faster or vigorously when there is a need, especially when we exercise or do any physical activity. So, we should not be surprised if we see our capacity to walk briskly or to work out and exercise has decreased as compared to when we were young. We all know and have experienced that all that was so easy to do when we were 16 or 18 or 20, is extremely difficult as we get older. Our heart just doesn’t function that well any more. This is also the reason for changes in our blood pressure, normally high when the heart muscles are too stiff.

The decrease in the capacity of heart to work efficiently differs from person to person. It all depends on how we live our life, what other conditions have we developed? Do we have any other disease? How and what kind of decisions we made in life when it came to eating right or how much we exercised?

We have to realize the importance of healthy life-style changes as early as possible in our lives. It is never too late. All the risk factors basically affect overall quality of life and of course how long we live. Let us not wait till the last minute when our doctor has to tell us that it is too late. Let us take charge of our own health and wellness and do something about it.

Do you agree with me?

My expertise is in the field of diabetes, heart disease and hormone balance and I wish to share some of the knowledge I have gained in these areas through research and lots of reading. I would love to answer any of your questions or address any curiosities you may have about overall health and wellness. Please feel free to add your thoughts here for our fellow readers and let us all share our experiences to build a healthy community. Let us begin talking about the real wealth- our health and wellness.   Let us start learning from each other.

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Here at Boomer411, we are constantly looking for ways to bring you better, more valuable content. Towards this goal, we are constantly adding new columnists to write on our blog. Today, it is my distinct pleasure to introduce to you our newest guest columnist, Dr.Sanjay Kapur. Dr.Kapur is the scientific director at ZRT Laboratories, an innovative company in the field of medical testing kits. ZRT Laboratory is known for its minimally-invasive hormone testing solutions. Some of you probably recognize his name as Dr.Sanjay is an active Boomer411 Trustee, regularly providing article recommendations on our site Boomer411.com. He goes by the user name SanjayKapurZRT. He has extensive experience in biomedical research and has served in several lead positions directing studies involving development of novel technologies and solutions to common problems. He has regularly published articles in medical journals and other forums and he also authors his own blog here. We are delighted to present Dr.Sanjay Kapur to our blog readers. So without much ado, let me present Dr.Sanjay Kapur’s first article for our readers on the dual topics of ‘Heart disease and diabetes’. Dr.Sanjay looks at this problem in a very fundamental way and suggests where to look to make lasting changes. Please do let us know what you think about this article and also how you see this problem…

Heart Disease- Diabetes- Obesity: What Have we Achieved so Far?

  By Dr.Sanjay Kapur of  ZRT Laboratory

We know that the heart disease and diabetes pose significant threats to our health, especially as we grow older and of course they are major challenges to the medical community as well. Although there have been major advancements in the medical field as far as detection and treatment of these conditions is concerned, but unfortunately these problems continue to result in serious health complications, disability and premature death. The sad part is that the overall incidence of these diseases is still going to increase as more and more people continue to age and also with the rise in obesity rates, especially in US.

Did you know that a few scientific studies came out in 2005 which showed that the life expectancy has declined for the first time in this country!!!

How did this happen?

We thought that we were working hard to create a better world with so much of advancement in all fields including medical sciences. Yes, no doubt we HAVE made a lot of progress in terms of finding cure and treatment for so many different conditions….BUT why still almost a MILLION Americans die of cardiovascular disease every year, which means 1 death every 34 seconds, and out of all those about 50% are above the age of 50 and this is just due to heart disease. What about Diabetes? Did you know that as of today almost 20 million Americans have diabetes and this number has increased by more than 60% since last 10 years, and again more than 50% people who have diabetes are above the age of 50. It is unfortunate that now we have started to see more and more cases of children with diabetes, which we could never imagine earlier, because at one point diabetes was considered as a condition in only the adults.

 Can you IMAGINE how much it costs us every year in terms of dollar figure to fight against both heart disease and diabetes? Collectively, these conditions cause more than 1 million deaths every year and result in more than $620 billion in direct and indirect costs.

 So, what happened? Where did we go wrong? Should we stop and rethink; what did we do differently OR what did we NOT do that we had to see such increase in the prevalence of these conditions?

 I think the problem is that we have the luxury of choosing a bad lifestyle and as we age we start to realize that the choices we made earlier in life were probably not the smartest ones.

What do you think?

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