Describe the effect of Atherosclerosis on the Heart?

what happens to the heart

Atherosclerosis is a build up of plaque in the arteries in the heart. This plaque starts building up as we get older and eventually there is enough of a blockage to stop the flow of blood to the heart muscle. The blood carries the oxygen and nutrients the muscles need to survive. Without oxygen the heart muscles begin to die. As this progresses you eventually wind up having a heart attack.

The heart pumps blood to rest of the body right? Well something has to feed blood to the heart. So when you shoot blood out the aorta some flows back and into the coronary circulation, which is composed of small and very small blood vessels, and supplies blood to the heart muscle.
Athero=yellow fatty plaque + Sclerosis=hardening, so the fat and cholesterol you eat gets caught in there and hardens, especially if it is saturated fat (Crisco, lard, animal fat) because it stays solid at room temperature and stays solid inside of you too. Well it sticks there and blocks blood flow and that means no oxygen to the heart tissue and then death of the tissue. That is called a heart attack or myocardial infarction (MI).

Atherosclerosis . It's the name of the process in which deposits of fatty substances, cholesterol, cellular waste products, calcium and other substances build up in the inner lining of an artery. This buildup is called plaque. It usually affects large and medium-sized arteries. Some hardening of arteries often occurs when people grow older.

Plaques can grow large enough to significantly reduce the blood's flow through an artery. But most of the damage occurs when they become fragile and rupture. Plaques that rupture cause blood clots to form that can block blood flow or break off and travel to another part of the body. If either happens and blocks a blood vessel that feeds the heart, it causes a heart attack. It also causes the heart to work much harder to squeeze blood through the veins than it is meant to . If the plaque pieces block a blood vessel that feeds the brain, it causes a stroke.

good descriptions of clogging of the arteries. byw, it is now possible to stop this clogging and even reverse it. It used to be only starvation could do it. But now two new meds are successfully stopping and even reversing the disease process. Those would be the statins which block cholesterol production by the liver, and Zetia which blocks the re-uptake of cholesterol from the intestinal tract. Glory be. Who would have thought that 2 little pills a day could reverse this scourge of lethal cholesterol damage to our arteries. Fully 1/2 of all Americans have been dying from cholesterol clogging nastiness. Heart attacks, strokes, aortic aneurysms, etc. .

Atherosclerosis is disease of coronary arteries, the arteries become stiff and thicken and blocked with plaque and reduce blood supply to heart muscle increasing workload on the heart.Overworking the heart decreases the physical capacity of the patient.