Although many of us do the right thing by going for yearly checkups and complete blood counts, there could be an underlying heart problem we don’t know we have. It doesn’t mean that because we appear to be fit and moving, our hearts themselves are necessarily working properly. Having an ECG also does not always give us the guarantee that our heart is healthy. I experienced a mild to severe heart attack two days after I had my last ECG. This made me investigate why this had occurred, as he was not displaying any of the typical signs such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or being overweight. However, what I did have was stress overload and another interesting factor that I thought would not affect me was the fact that the cardiologists had confirmed that my heart attack was caused by stress and the other interesting factor was that I had inherited a gene from my father’s side of the family that I thought would not have affected me the way it did.
My father had never shown any symptoms of heart disease, yet they were there latent and easily missed. He was a heavy smoker and drinker and he passed away at the age of seventy-five due to lung cancer. He too was of Maori/Polynesian descent and interestingly this plays a role in a person’s general health if he is descended from a Polynesian background. Since my mother was Caucasian, I thought I had gotten away with any heart problems related to my hereditary gene pool on my father’s side. The most common forms of disease that we often see in Maori and Pacific Polynesians are…
- Respiratory problems
- heart disease
- Diabetes
Maori and Pacific people are considered to have one of the highest rates of heart disease in the industrialized world, along with some third world countries, especially “rheumatic fever” which is most prevalent in those under twenty. This can lead to heart disease in later life. It has also been pointed out that a hundred years ago, the Maori race was expected to die out and be replaced by the white man. Rheumatic fever was intended to wipe out the Maori population that had originally been introduced by the white man.
In New Zealand, after the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840, there was a noticeable decline in the Maori population, which continued to decline. Europeans had already spent countless years building a resistance to such diseases through their lifestyle and even more so with the foods they were used to consuming, such as processed foods such as cream, butter, milk, bread, cakes, and of course. Of course, that’s how we ended up. he invented the delicious icon, “Devonshire Tea”, which was something the natives had never been accused of eating. His diet consisted mainly of fish and other shellfish along with watercress and other natural, unprocessed foods. From there arose among the original peoples the gene for low resistance to heart disease along with diabetes and respiratory problems, were the sudden changes in the consumption of their natural foods.
Although it appears that many Caucasian people suffer from different types of coronary heart disease, Maori and Pacific Islanders are at higher risk due to the dietary changes they made when the white man settled. Indians and Southeast Asians are also known to carry this type of gene. They come to the western world and eat western foods that are processed, making them much higher in toxins, sugar and fat. The safest and surest way to know the health of your heart is to talk to your doctor about having an “angiogram.” Here a camera tube is inserted into a main artery in the upper leg.
The tube runs the entire length of the artery until it reaches the heart itself, where the complete condition of the heart can be assessed and viewed on a monitor. You can see the entire procedure being carried out. That’s how they found my blocked artery, an ECG won’t pick it up. The procedure is painless, and as the tube is removed, a clamp is placed over the upper leg for about twenty minutes or more to make sure the bleeding has stopped. The only painful thing about doing this is the cost. I think it’s a great way to ensure you have peace of mind, and the cost is something I think everyone should consider, regardless of their hereditary background.
