Obesity and heart disease

Weight is largely determined by how you balance your intake of calories from food with the energy you use in everyday activities. If you consume more calories than you use, you gain weight. Your body stores calories that you do not need for energy as fat.

Obesity involves having an abnormally high proportion of body fat. Doctors define obesity as having a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher and overweight as having a BMI of 25 or higher.

Fat is important for storing energy and insulating your body, among other functions. The human body can handle carrying some extra fat, but beyond a certain point, body fat can begin to interfere with your health.

Eating too many calories and not getting enough physical activity are the main causes of obesity, especially in combination. But many factors can contribute to obesity.
According to official figures, the adult obesity rate rose from 15 percent in 1980 to 32 percent in 2004. Combine that with the number of Americans who are overweight but not obese, and the figure stands at 64 percent. And the childhood obesity rate more than tripled between 1980 and 2004, from 5 percent to 17 percent.

Being either overweight or obese increases the risk for a variety of serious health problems, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke and some cancers.

Acute Heart Attacks: Your Blood Tells the Story

During the 1960s and 1970s, some heart proteins and enzymes released into the blood of heart attack sufferers were measured to confirm an acute heart attack. The problem was that these substances were also detected id the patients had liver disease or skeletal muscle injury resulting in confusion in the diagnosis.

According to information released by Johns Hopkins Hospital, the widely used method today to detect a heart attack is measuring the level of blood troponin, another protein that is released more quickly by a damaged heart muscle and remains for a longer period compared to other proteins previously used to make the diagnosis. A new definition of an acute heart attack now requires a significant rise in troponin along with either a consistent clinical history or characteristic changes in the ECG.

The rise in troponin must be significant because they small elevations of cardiac troponin had been detected in patients with diabetes, enlarged left ventricle due to hypertension, or reduced kidney function.