A heart attack occurs when blood flow to the heart muscle is reduced or blocked.

A heart attack occurs when the blood flow that brings oxygen to the heart is reduced or cut off. If blood flow is reduced or stopped for too long, the heart muscle begins to die. Broadcast Retirement Network’s Jeffrey H. Snyder discusses how to identify and treat the conditions that cause a heart attack with NYU Langone and American Heart Association’s Matthew I Tomey.

Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

This morning on BRN, what is a heart attack? And joining me now to discuss this, Dr. Matthew Tommy. He is the chair of the American Heart Association’s Cardiovascular Intervention Science Committee.

And he’s also an interventional cardiologist at the Mount Sinai Foster Heart Hospital in New York City. Dr. Tommy, great to see you. Thanks for joining us on the program this morning.

Matthew I Tomey, MD, NYU Langone and American Heart Association

Really grateful to be here, thank you.

Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, we’re gonna talk about heart attacks. And I guess my first question is, just as a baseline, what is a heart attack? Because you hear about it in the press, you hear it happened to other people, but I’m not sure exactly what it is.

Matthew I Tomey, MD, NYU Langone and American Heart Association

So I think anybody who hears the term heart attack has a visceral sense that it’s something serious. And in fact, sometimes people even use the phrase as serious as a heart attack. And I think it’s valuable to take the moment as you’re doing here to break down what it actually is.

So when we as physicians talk about a heart attack, what we’re referring to is a sudden change in the balance of blood flow to the heart and demand of the heart for oxygen, such that the heart doesn’t have enough nutrients and oxygen to do what it needs to do. And that creates a state of scarcity for the heart that if left to continue, can actually cause heart muscle to die. And that in turn can be associated with serious complications.

Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

And what I know, if I suffered a heart attack, if Jeff Snyder or someone on the street was suffering a heart attack, would I physically know that something is wrong so that I could raise awareness?

Matthew I Tomey, MD, NYU Langone and American Heart Association

So for many who experience heart attacks, there are symptoms that are of sudden onset. I think we will most often think about the onset of chest pain as the cardinal symptom of heart attack. But it’s critical to recognize that chest pain can be felt in various different ways by different people.

And sometimes it can even be nearly silent. And so having a really inclusive sense of what the chest pain of a heart attack could be, is really important to being able to recognize when one is occurring.

Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

And doctor, are there certain risk groups? Well, I wanna talk about what leads up to a heart attack and we’ll talk about predisposition versus nutrition, et cetera. But are there certain groups of people who are more, not capable, but could have, were predisposed to having this type of condition?

Matthew I Tomey, MD, NYU Langone and American Heart Association

So we do know that there are certain traditional risk factors for having a heart attack or myocardial infarction as we call it. And some of these relate to behavioral risk factors like physical inactivity or smoking. Some of them relate to medical risk factors such as a history of high blood pressure, high cholesterol or diabetes.

And some of them are unfortunately a little less out of our control like aging. And we know that with age, the risk of heart attack increases.

Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

And are there steps that we can take regardless of our age to improve our outcomes, one, to avoid a heart attack, but also to survive a heart attack if we are unfortunate to have that happen?

Matthew I Tomey, MD, NYU Langone and American Heart Association

Absolutely. While I think we’re all still looking for the fountain of youth to fix the age part, focusing on the controllable is really the key thing. I think the foundation of this is really recognizing that a heart attack as an event is really the pinnacle of a process that has not just immediately happened in the last minutes or hours, but which has been building up for years and frankly, decades.

Many don’t realize that the seeds of plaque in our arteries are actually sown in our young adulthood as early as our early 20s. You can start seeing plaque in the arteries. And that really builds up in a covert manner for years and decades before an individual would ever have their first heart attack event.

And so as a profession, those of us who care about cardiovascular prevention are really starting to think, how can we do better job earlier in the lifespan, earlier in adulthood to really proactively manage some of the controllable risk factors that I’ll mention now. The American Heart Association helps us to identify those risk factors through something called Life’s Essential Eight. And these are eight identified factors that are really within our control, whether in terms of our behaviors or our partnership with the physician to help reduce our risk of heart attack and stroke and more broadly to improve our cardiovascular health.

Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, and in terms of the prevention, is it going to your primary care physician and getting the standard tests that we all typically get, cholesterol, your triglycerides, all the other aspects on a regular basis so that your physician can track what’s happening internally?

Matthew I Tomey, MD, NYU Langone and American Heart Association

We’re certainly much better prepared to take action when we know where we stand. And so knowing your numbers, I think is a good point of entry. If you’re saying to yourself, listen, I woke up today and I wanna do a better job reducing my risk of a heart attack, reducing my risk of a stroke.

Start by going to your doctor and just getting a sense of your numbers. And it doesn’t even need to be fancy tests, just having a baseline understanding of how your blood pressure control is, how your blood cholesterol control is, being aware whether or not you have difficulties in managing blood sugar, if not a diagnosis of diabetes. This is a really valuable start.

And I think it can provoke some constructive conversations with a physician on actionable steps.

Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

And in terms of taking some of those actionable steps, what’s available to clinicians to help manage? Like say you just can’t get your cholesterol down. Maybe it’s genetic.

I mean, there’s all different reasons here. It’s the food, it’s your body. You may have a predisposition doing that.

Are there medicines and things you can take to help manage? So if you’re far along, if you’re an older guy like me, I’m 52 and you’re farther along, can you take certain medications to help manage this condition over time?

Matthew I Tomey, MD, NYU Langone and American Heart Association

Well, the first thing I’ll say is that there’s no point of no return. It’s never too late to say I’m gonna start today to be healthier. And wherever you’re at, there are opportunities to reduce risk and to feel better and live longer.

You’re absolutely right that there’s certain elements of our risk factor profile, which are genetically determined or at least influenced. Whereas there are other things that are impacted more so by our choices, our diets, our behaviors and so forth. At times in the past, some who have been found to have genetic predispositions to either risk factors or cardiovascular disease, I think they may have slipped into a sort of determinism and saying, well, this is my destiny.

It doesn’t matter what I do. And there’s been some important research which has helped us to realize that even those who have genetic predispositions have opportunity to reduce risk and promote health through adoption of many of these essential eight factors. And so I think it’s important to appreciate that there are heritable tendencies to cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular risk factors, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that we can do to reduce risk.

Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, so I mean, basically we as individuals can take the necessary steps to get back on track, pardon me, if we deviate for whatever reason from the essential eight. Dr. Tommy, we’re gonna have to leave it there. Thanks so much for joining us.

And we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon. It was a pleasure, thank you. And don’t forget to subscribe to our daily newsletter, The Morning Pulse, for all the news in one place.

Details, of course, at our website. And we’re back again tomorrow for another edition of BRN. Until then, I’m Jeff Snyder.

Stay safe, keep on saving, and don’t forget, roll with the changes.