Asklemmy

I recently had a heart attack at 41.

I'm not obese and look and feel fit and well. I cycle regularly and don't eat a lot of refined foods (particularly carbs). I didn't think I was particularly "fit" but nor did I think I was at risk of heart disease. About 2 months before my heart attack I rode my mountain bike 150km over rough, remote, Australian terrain in 4 days.

Yes I have high cholesterol, have been a smoker in the past, and a family history of type 2 diabetes - I knew these things were problematic in some vague sense but no idea how they relate to cardio problems. Also information is very complex - there's a lot of misinformation about cholesterol for example and as someone who is not a cardiologist it's hard to know what it really means.

Basically, shit builds up in your arteries over time. You feel 100% fine until something clogs up. It's not a progressive deterioration of feeling unwell and not doing anything about it, it's fine > fine > fine > fine > dead. There's no therapy to clean the shit out of your arteries, it doesn't get reduced over time. Once an artery clogs the options are inserting an internal scaffold, or taking an artery from somewhere else to build a by-pass.

I kind of got unlucky but also lucky - unlucky with all of these contributing (mostly hereditory) factors - lucky in that my arteries are generally ok - there was only one bad spot which could be remedied with an internal scaffold. Imagine feeling fine through to your 60s and then finding that your arteries are generally fucked with many trouble spots.

I shouldn't be alarmist in that I don't think this is a problem for people generally, but in terms of things I recently learned that everyone should know - I think cardiovascular health is definitely on that list.

Suffice to say I recently learned that feeling fine does not necessarily mean that you are fine.