I’ve always heard/been told to be careful while shoveling snow, that you’re more likely to have a heart attack. Why would I be more likely then as opposed to exerting myself during normal temperatures?
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Simply put, a heart attack is caused by a clot in one of the arteries that bring fresh, oxygenated, blood to the heart. It starts as plaque building along the walls of the arteries. That plaque eventually breaks free and becomes a clot. The clot lodges itself in the artery and prevents anything downstream from receiving fresh blood. When tissue stops receiving fresh blood (specifically, oxygen that the blood is carrying), it starts to die. When the tissue dies, it is no longer functioning.
When heart tissue dies, it no longer contracts. Which means it’s no longer helping pump blood to the rest of the body. If the rest of the body isn’t getting enough fresh blood, *those* tissues start to die too. Then everything comes crashing down.
That’s about the easiest way to explain what a heart attack is and why it’s bad.
Now, there are plenty of risk factors for cardiovascular disease (the general term meaning something wrong with your cardiovascular system). The short version of it is that these all make cardiac events more likely to happen by making these plaque build ups more common and make it easier for them to break off and form clots.
The body reacts to exertion (cells needing more oxygen) by increasing the heart rate. That in turn, increases your blood pressure. High blood pressure is one of the first diagnoses in the cardiovascular disease pathway. So if you already have high blood pressure, usually from poor diet and lack of exertion, and then suddenly you exert yourself, causing your HR to increase and thus your BP, you’re now at even greater risk.
All that pressure pushing through your arteries and then it finds one of these plaque deposits. It knocks it loose, turning it into a clot. The clot travels downstream until it gets stuck. It gets stuck and cuts off blood flow. Now the heart has all this increased demand for oxygen (it has to work harder) and parts of the heart are suffocating and thus dying.
It’s a downward spiral that often ends in death. Cardiovascular disease is usually #1 in causes of death in adults, year after year.
ELI5: You know when you’re washing dishes and there’s that real tough, stuck on, piece of food? How do you get that food off? You increase the water pressure coming out of the nozzle.
Shoveling snow, or having sex (maybe not ELI5), or any other physical exertion, in a person who usually does not exert themselves, cause the water pressure to go up.
Eventually the food (the plaque / clot) breaks free and goes down the drain. Except when it goes down the drain, it clogs it. If you don’t clear it quickly, your sink stops working because it’s overflowing.
So you call a plumber (911) to come to your house immediately, and pour some drain cleaner (thrombolytics to dissolve the clot) to clear it, and if that doesn’t work, they snake it (cardiac cath). If *that* doesn’t work, they might have to open up the cabinet and cut out the bad piece and replace it (Coronary Bypass Surgery).
All the while, the sink is running and making a mess. And you as the homeowner? You’re dying.
This is why rapid recognition is vital. The faster you get treatment, the faster that clot is cleared, the less tissue is damaged.
Time is tissue.
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