WHY ARE FITNESS ENTHUSIASTS, YOUNG ADULTS GETTING HEART ATTACKS?

A poor heart condition was a signature of old age decades back. Old age tagged along with it a series of health issues which meant the body's biological functioning has worsened beyond the normal wear and tear.

However, in the recent few years the onset of the diseases have migrated towards young age. Not just this, people who seem fit, individuals who take care of their fitness, diet and workout and those who are in the best years of life are dying suddenly due to heart attack.

Recently, the death of actor Vikas Sethi, who was popular for playing Robbie in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, due to cardiac arrest has raised several questions. Few days ago, a 19 year old bodybuilder in Brazil died of a heart attack. Matheus Pavlak was popular over social media after his massive transformation from an obese teen to a fitness icon. He regularly participated in regional bodybuilding contests.

READ ALSO: World's 'most monstrous bodybuilder', nicknamed 'The Mutant', dies at 36

This alarming migration of life threatening diseases towards the younger population has been a debatable topic for several years now.

What's causing youngsters' hearts to stop functioning suddenly? What are the triggers and risk factors that are hiding from our sight? Is living a healthy lifestyle difficult? What’s pushing young adults towards death?

READ ALSO: How is cardiac arrest different from heart attack?

"In the last couple of decades, the trends have significantly changed. We are coming across more and more young individuals with heart attacks. Earlier heart attacks and blockages in heart arteries was a disease of elderly. According to study, the first onset of heart diseases in the Indian population occurs a decade earlier then the western population. In our practice we see many patients in their 30's and 40’ s with heart attacks," says Dr. Rahul Chhabria, MBBS, DNB - General Medicine, DNB - Cardiology- Jaslok Hospital & Research Centre, Mumbai.

"Lack of exercise, poor dietary habits, eating less salads, fruits, and green leafy vegetables, bad habits like tobacco chewing, smoking, etc., stress, inadequate medical check-ups, denial of disease, higher risk factors like diabetes, high cholesterol, hypertension and excessive screen time like use of mobile phones, computers, tabs, etc. contribute to the early onset of heart diseases," Dr Chhabria says and warns that "unfortunately, most of these risk factors are silent killers and do not cause any major symptoms. So, until people do regular check-ups, it's difficult to diagnose diseases like high cholesterol, high sugars, high blood pressure, etc."

Four C's to manage cholesterol problem and reduce the onset of heart disease

According to Dr. Maulik Parekh, Head – TAVR and Structural Heart Programme, Section coordinator - Cardiac Sciences, Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital, Mumbai, it is important to make sure that one does not fall prey to the high cholesterol and the problems like heart attacks or strokes that come with it.

Dr. Parekh shares four C's to prevent heart diseases- Check, consult, care, and cure.

“Regular CHECKS are very important. Once you check, I see so many patients who do a blood package, so-called package, which includes all the tests, a 20-page report every year from the nearby laboratory. But then they don't go and consult anybody. So that is of no use. So once you check your reports, you should CONSULT a doctor, a cardiologist preferably, about what is the action needed and what else is going to be needed. Next comes CARE. If you have a higher cholesterol, you need to care about your lifestyle. That care is exercise. That means at least 40 to 50 minutes of some amount of cardio exercise every day, achieving the ideal body weight, maintaining a healthy diet with less of fried oily food, stress of basically avoiding high carbohydrate and high fat diet and definitely avoiding smoking. And fourth is CURE. Cure is the medication. Despite lifestyle management and despite all the other things, sometimes you will have to take medications for your cholesterol control and you need to consult a doctor, take appropriate medications and obviously do a follow-up after a couple of months of medication after repeating the blood report to see where you stand and whether you need to continue the medication or whether you can stop it or whether you can change the doses,” explains Dr. Chhabria.

Start health checkup from the age of 20

The experts recommend having regular health checkups as early as 20 years of age.

"Cholesterol is not associated with age. Even young people can have very, very high cholesterol. In fact, many young people have high cholesterol," says Dr Parekh.

"Please don’t ignore any warning signs on the body like chest pain, unusual burning in the chest, unexplained left shoulder or left arm pain, unexplained sweating," says Dr. Chhabria and adds, "try to start some exercise daily, if too busy in day-to-day life then try to walk more and try to walk 7500 steps daily which can reduce the risk of one getting heart attack by 50%."