7 legends about the heart

There are many legends and horror stories about the heart, which many of us firmly believe in. Having collected the largest “fruits” of folk myth-making, we asked Doctor of Medical Sciences, cardiologist Andrei Grachev, deputy chief physician of the SM-Clinic Medical Corporation, to evaluate them.

1. Women’s hearts don’t hurt because they are protected by hormones.

– Theoretically, this is true. If a woman has a normal menstrual cycle and is not taking medications that seriously affect her hormonal levels, estrogens protect her cardiovascular system. Before the onset of menopause, then the body loses estrogens, and with them protection, and soon the female sex catches up with the male sex in terms of atherosclerosis. This is how women would live happily before menopause if they led a normal lifestyle. However, stress, smoking, alcohol, and uncontrolled hypertension reduce estrogen protection of blood vessels. Therefore, cardiologists are no longer surprised by patients aged 25–35 years with heart attacks and angina.

2. To strengthen your heart, you need to eat as much potassium as possible.

– The “as much as possible” clause makes this statement unsafe. Potassium is indeed essential for normal heart function. Its main sources are of plant origin, so there is nothing wrong with increasing the amount of cucumbers, potatoes, lettuce, cabbage, bran, dried fruits and other foods rich in potassium in the menu. However, our body in any case will take as much potassium as it needs, and the rest will be excreted in the urine. Therein lies the problem: you need to know the condition of the kidneys. Hyperkalemia is much more dangerous than potassium deficiency in the body - it can cause cardiac arrest. Therefore, it is impossible to use potassium supplements uncontrollably and according to the “as much as possible” principle!

3. Severe fright can cause your heart to burst.

“This cannot happen against the backdrop of complete health.” In a healthy, physically active person, stress will cause your blood pressure to rise slightly and your heart to beat faster, but nothing more serious will happen. But in someone unaccustomed to exercise, the release of adrenaline can provoke a myocardial infarction and even fibrillation, that is, cardiac arrest. Heart rupture can occur if stress is combined with a heart attack or a person's heart muscle is severely damaged due to previous heart attacks. But this, fortunately, is very rare.

4. To prevent heart pain, you should not sleep on your left side.

– Most likely, this myth was invented by those who already have heart pathology. When a person lies down (no matter which side), the volume of blood that needs to be pumped by the heart increases by 25–30 percent. A healthy person won't even notice it. But if the capacity of the heart is reduced, it will experience overload - shortness of breath will increase, and painful sensations may occur.
Intercostal neuralgia is often mistaken for heart pain. If a person has pinched nerve endings or spinal deformity, he may experience pain in the chest when turning on his left side. But the heart has nothing to do with it - it doesn’t care which side its owner sleeps on.

5. A teenager may develop a heart defect due to rapid growth.

– This myth prevents many parents of teenagers from sleeping, but they worry in vain. As a rule, heart defects in children develop in utero. Some of them close after the baby is born, others are corrected surgically, but all this happens in early childhood. However, during a period of rapid growth, the heart still needs support: the fact is that it grows slower than other organs, so the child should avoid excessive physical activity.

6. A snorer's heart may stop in his sleep.

– It all depends on whether snoring is accompanied by pauses in breathing. When a sleeper stops breathing, the rhythm of his heart slows down - until it stops completely. At such moments a person, as a rule, wakes up, but this does not mean that his life and health are not in danger. Each cessation of breathing due to severe tissue nutritional disorders can be accompanied by the development of a stroke, heart attack, or severe arrhythmia. That is, a snoring person can really die in his sleep, and this, unfortunately, happens quite often.

7. Red wine is the only type of alcohol that is good for the heart.

– Perhaps patients ask cardiologists about nothing else as often as the benefits of red wine. WHO limits healthy alcohol consumption to 20 ml of pure alcohol per day. In the case of red wine, this is about a glass. This dose of alcohol has a protective effect on the cardiovascular system. We are talking about any alcohol, red wine stands out from the general list by the fact that it contains antioxidants - substances that prevent the penetration of cholesterol into the vascular bed, thereby protecting blood vessels from the development of atherosclerosis.
Large doses of alcohol have a direct toxic effect on the heart muscle. Their danger is associated not only with alcoholism, but also with the development of a heart disease such as dilated cardiopathy. A person who drinks more than 100 ml of strong alcohol daily for 10 years is at risk of getting it. This disease, unfortunately, can only be effectively treated by a heart transplant.