Afternoon all.

Some/most of you are probably like myself, pretty much eat, drink what you want, some healthy, some not so. Do a bit of exercise, maybe smoke fags/cigars/other stuff etc. I'm 5 foot 8" and 11.5 stone, pretty average I guess.

Monday morning I arrived at work as usual, had my morning coffee, listened to my staff's tales from the weekend then hit my PC to do my mornings paperwork and catch up on some emails. At 10am I get dragged off into a meeting...yawn. 10.45am the meeting finishes and I return to my office. I notice 2 missed calls from my mother, a voicemail and a text all basically saying "call me ASAP"... so I called her back.

My 32 year old, younger brother was in an ambulance and on his way to hospital after collapsing whist at work. Now my brother, as mentioned before is 32 years old and is a professional tree surgeon. He’s able to get up and down trees like an undersized, over shaven gorilla and is extremely fit. He hasn’t smoked for over 2 years and although his diet isn’t the best, he easily burns off 100’s of calories a day with his job… he does however drink a bit of the caffeine based energy drinks that give you wiings.

About 40 minutes later I get a call from his girl-fiend to tell me that he has suffered a heart attack and is currently in surgery having a stent fitted. The artery to the right hand side of his heart was 50% damaged and the left 30% damaged. The stent went into the right hand side to reopen the artery.

Today he left hospital and it’s been confirmed that a combination of smoking, diet, energy drinks and cholesterol have weakened the arteries to his heart causing the heart attack. What it’s highlighted to myself is the fact that anyone is susceptible to these things and if you haven’t, get a cholesterol test done. He could have left his girl friend and 2 small children (1 & 4) without a father, as well as myself losing my only brother.

He’s now on a number of tablets, but should lead a normal life after 4-6 weeks of rest. I urge you to think of what you could leave behind should something like this go unnoticed because you didn’t have ‘time’ to get the test done…….I’m booked in next Thursday.
Thanks for reading
Neil

Wishing your bro a speedy and full recovery.
A salutary lesson to all.

+1

+2 most of the time its not until something like this happens that makes you realise whats most important in life...... Get well soon!

Neil,

I hope your brother makes a complete recovery from the surgery.

Thank you for the wake up call, we all to easily forget these things I think..

Glad he is recovering. The cholesterol debate is a complex one and many theories, often conflicting. best advice is as always a healthy diet exercise and don't smoke. Putting the population on statins is not a solution, except for increasing the profits of the drugs companies.

The treatment for this these days is very slick and your brother's every chance of making an excellent recovery.

A common cause of this event is when the artery, coated with several years' worth of "substance" known as plaque, develops a crack in the aforesaid coating. The resultant "sod" or clot which is summoned up to do a little Dutch boy with his finger in the dam job, can obstruct the blood flow. This is then forcibly re-routed via other unsuspecting channels which cause the tightness or pains associated with the attack, rather like a swollen river that can't flow under a bridge as debris is blocking it causing havoc around the area.

Aspirin is the usual way of keeping the blood thinner although he'll find cuts don't heal so fast and he may bruise easier.

An anti-rejection pill eg Clopidogrel also so that the stent isn't rejected (maybe for 12 months)

An ACE inhibitor to reduce the amount of fluid around the heart.

As bockers says it's really hard to steer away from that easy solution of statins as the statistics work so well in their support. There are alternatives such as CoQq10 but studies I suspect are kept modest so as not to interfere with the drug companies' profits

Your brother has been really active - he will probably now feel afraid of crossing the road in the first instance but reassure him that over time he will feel better and better. I know. Normal life...hmm, with caution, give it a chance - that flooded area around the bridge shows the tidemark for some time but will recover

As above, I hope your brother makes a full and swift recovery.

Being married to an intensive care nurse, I hear all sorts of stories of otherwise fit and (relatively) young people being struck down in their prime.

Whilst I think it's good advice to get things checked where possible and to lead a relatively healthy lifestyle, you can't prevent everything.

Look at Fabrice Muamba.

Sorry to read what's happened to your brother and wish him all the best in his recovery and future.

Jeeez that's frightening shiz, i hope he's ok and recovers 100% physically and mentally

Best wishes to your brother for a quick recovery.

everybody is different i am 5'10" very well built over weight by a lot of stones .... my blood pressure is normal colesterol is normal .. blood count is spot on ... even my doctor asked me what i do with my life style ..... i have told him i drink lots of Stella eat loads of kebabs ... and the big thing ... i dont care ... i dont get stressed out ... if i have no money i dont care .. i pay for the things i want not what i should .... elec for the internet ... car insurance ... nuff said .. phone so i have facebook on my phone... everything else is in second place.... stress is a bad thing

and pay my rent ... i have lived in a cardboard box .... not good ... it gets cold

Glad he's ok. Coincidentally an old school friend (tree surgeon and fireman) had a heart attack on the rugby field (so you can could hardly say he's inactive). He used to smoke too. I think the risk factors are well-known.

He's fine and will recover too.

Good luck to your brother, I had similar a few years back at 38.
His chances of recovering physically are very high, keep an eye on him though as fellas take a life changer like this badly (Mentally). I would look into family history, in my case all the males had heart issues.
After years of thinking about why more of us are suffering from this I believe that it could be down to our ability to eat/drink pretty mush anything we want. The older generation ate simpler food and were more active. I remember growing up in a street with only a couple of cars and going our for a curry happened twice a year...

Anyway again good luck for your brother and if you have any questions I'll happily answer.

I had a similar incident a short while ago.
Doctor asked me if heart problems, diabetes and cancer run in my family.
I told him the problem is that nobody runs in my family. He saw the funny side of that.

Good luck to your brother to make a speedy and complete recovery.

No argument, proper food is better than pretty mush!

When I was diagnosed with diabetes, the doctor went through a long list of things I shouldn't eat/drink, *none* of which were things I ate or drank.

Rule of thumb: if it comes from the supermarket in a box, jar, packet, or tub, it's probably got far too much salt, sugar, and/or fat to be part of a healthy diet...

I have stopped adding salt to anything, like Barn' says it's everywhere in modern food.

I hope he recovers speedily and fully!

My only comment has to be that unless someone with health problems gives up smoking it's difficult to take them seriously. The risks of smoking far exceed all the other 'indiscretions' by a mile.

Good luck to your brother.

Me too.

I still add salt where necessary when I'm cooking and I know what all of the other ingredients are though.

Hope your brother gets better soon NB.

My dad died of a heart attack when he was 50. Non smoker, not overweight, didn't eat junk food and played regular sport. The only thing we never knew was were there any signs in the lead upto his death - he certainly never complained of anything but we don't know if that was the truth.

One of my best friends (35yo) was having chest pain before Christmas. He had an massively fast heart rate for a couple of hours which resulted in an irregular heart beat. He needed sugery a couple of days later(don't know the technical term).

Well, a year an a half after this thread started - and by coincidence I was the last one to comment on it.

Just been diagnosed with high cholesterol Possibly familial. Perhaps my dad had it

Need to get my act together.

It's very likely you will be prescribed statins then which are the "best" we have available the NHS will tell you, and in my own case I will accept that in general terms, i.e. effect and cost.

What I didn't know until recently was that statins pretty much wipe out CoEnzyme Q10 which is important for digestion and energy levels. My previous post on this was based on a meeting nearly 3 years ago with a GP of over twenty years who warned me about this. He was very much a lone voice we thought and we didn't know how accurate his information was, mainly due toour not being fully-informed. A couple of weeks ago I spoke to a nutritionist who corroborated this information, and in yesterday's appointment with our most popular GP I brought the subject up and she was not disagreeing.

Although not offered it on the NH I've decided to give it a go for a while even if a little pricey, especially after "sanction" from my GP which was the final reassurance I needed.

Don't think I'm plugging a miracle cure but I feel this is stuff which ought to be shared, and you can go a long way by attending to your diet.

My understanding is that cholesterol has not actually been shown to predispose to heart disease. But apart from that, statins are getting a bad press. It's always a problem knowing what to believe.