Knowing Your Heart

Everyone, including myself, is uncertain about our own heart condition. Healthy people can die at every young age. Some doctors died in the late forties and early fifty - they should know better about their body, right?. What had cause the heart attacks without warning?

When ever we complaint about chest pains. Doctors prescribe EKG - electrocardiography - and CT scans, So what exactly do they check?

EKG - a transthoracic interpretation of the electrical activity of the heart over time (looking for irregular heart beat? looking for open/closing of heart valves?)

CT scan - looking for calcifications (calcium based) within/around the heart and blood vessels. The blood vessel plaque causes the "narrowing vessel", "harden the blood vessel" reducing blood flow? - The detaching plaque from blood vessel - can causing blood clog in the brain (leading to strokes)?

Here are the standard and two new blood tests,

Cholesterol/Fatty blood test -
HDL, high density lipoprotein (good cholesterol) - low HDL count - actually increased rates for heart diease
LDL, low density lipoprotein (bad cholesterol)
triglycerides, fatty substance found in the blood,

Homocysteine - ($50 blood test -in 2006) - A high level of blood serum homocysteine a often linked to cardiovascular disease according to a doctor. Is it a sure thing? Who knows

Cardio High Sensitivity (CRP) - C-Reactive Protein ($40 blood test - in 2006) - Mildly elevated CRP levels have been consistently been linked to increased risk for various cardiovascular illness - stroke, sudden cardiac death.

Well, EKG - CT are physical, detectable sign of heart problems, where as the blood tests -
CRP, Homocysteine, or cholesterol test are precursor of detectable signs of heart problems.