How can arteriosclerosis be prevented?
Preventive measures to prevent arteriosclerosis is classically a change in lifestyle. This includes: Preventive sports include above all endurance sports, as they strengthen the cardiovascular system and can thus prevent vascular diseases. A healthy and balanced diet is usually easiest to achieve with a Mediterranean diet.
This diet does without many “bad” animal fats and instead uses vegetable fats in large quantities. Only fatty acids from fish are also good for the body. The composition of the fats we consume determines whether we have more bad LDL or more good HDL in us.
The bad LDL is caused by animal fats and promotes the development of arteriosclerosis. In today’s world, stress also plays an increasingly important role in the development of vascular diseases such as arteriosclerosis. Therefore meditation, yoga and other relaxation techniques are a valuable option in the prevention of arteriosclerosis.
In addition, harmful stimulants such as too many sugary foods and drinks, alcohol and cigarette consumption should be reduced to a minimum or avoided altogether. They favour the imbalance of our blood fats, trigger high blood pressure and put the cells of the body under stress. All these factors have a negative impact on the risk of arteriosclerosis. Find out more about this under: How can we prevent arteriosclerosis? – enough exercise
- A balanced diet
- A consequent stress reduction
Can arteriosclerosis be cured?
Healing arteriosclerosis is not possible. These calcifications affect every adult person and settle in the vessels from the early twenties on. However, the severity of arteriosclerosis is strongly dependent on how active a person leads their life and how balanced their diet is.
In addition, the arteriosclerotic potential of the body can be greatly reduced with medications such as blood pressure and fat lowering agents. In principle, however, arteriosclerosis affects everyone. But much more important is the question of the disease value of arteriosclerosis.
Anyone who behaves in a healthy way will probably never feel that he or she has such vascular calcifications inside. Others fall ill with their arteriosclerotic plaques at the age of thirty. This arteriosclerosis with disease value can be stopped for several years (sometimes even decades) by a change in lifestyle and medication.
Nevertheless, it is not completely curable. Serious secondary diseases such as PAD, which usually leads to blockage of the blood vessels in the leg, or coronary heart disease, in which the coronary vessels become blocked, can be treated, but are not curable. Thus, diseased vessel sections can be bridged with a bypass.
Stents, i.e. small wire meshes, can keep the vessels open. Arteriosclerosis still remains as a disease. Due to arteriosclerosis, life expectancy is very limited compared to healthy people.
In particular, the secondary diseases of the heart and brain limit life expectancy. Even if other organs in the abdominal cavity are affected, life expectancy can decrease. The quality of life is also severely restricted. In addition, quality of life is usually affected by PADK, i.e. circulatory disorders of the legs.
