Silent assassin

The Silent Assassin Among Us 💔: ASCVD Unveiled

Overview

Think of ASCVD as the uninvited party crasher. It sneaks in quietly and often wreaks havoc without you even noticing. Unravel the mysteries of this silent assassin and discover why it’s humanity’s #1 unspoken villain.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 45 seconds.

ASCVD…what?

Hello, young hearts! 🌟

Ever been to a masquerade ball? 🎭 Imagine a suave guest stealing the spotlight, only to unveil a hidden agenda. Spooky, right? Now, let’s swap out that ballroom for your body and that shady guest for ASCVD. Yep, that’s the scene we’re setting today! 🎬

Now, you might be thinking, “ASC-whattt?” 🤨 So let’s break it down: Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease (ASCVD for the cool kids 😉) is like that silent villain in movies – always there, but you never see them coming. It’s stealthy, always in the shadows, plotting its next move. 🕵️‍♀️

How about some jaw-dropping facts? ASCVD is the sneaky culprit behind many of those heart-wrenching stories of sudden heart attacks and strokes. Gasp! No, seriously, I’m not exaggerating. Imagine feeling perfectly fine, having the time of your life, and then BAM! Out of the blue, ASCVD hits you with a plot twist! 🌪️

“But Pristy,” you say, “I’m in my roaring 20s! That’s an old person’s problem, right?” Honey, this is where the plot thickens! ASCVD is like that unwanted guest who arrives at the party WAY too early. You’re busy dancing and having fun, and before you know it, ASCVD is crashing on your couch, uninvited. 🛋️😖

The scariest part? It’s our era’s #1 hidden nemesis. And while we’re busy Instagramming our brunches, attending music festivals, or getting lost in TikTok, ASCVD is silently laying its groundwork. Creepy, right?

But hey, don’t let that stress ball in your stomach grow bigger! 🎈 The good news is, there are ways to unmask this silent assassin, kick it out of your party, and make sure it never crashes again. Ready to join the mission? 🚀 Stay tuned, because we’re about to embark on an epic quest of heart-saving heroics!

Geeky science

Let’s get sciency about ASCVD! Ranking at #1, it’s the globe’s top killer, consistently placing in the top 3 death causes for every age category. A chilling fact? For many, the first alarm bell is either a sudden heart attack or a stroke.

Picture our bloodstream as a bustling city’s transit system. Our blood delivers vital nutrients and building blocks throughout our body. While some ‘cargo’ simply mixes into the blood, the fatty ones, like cholesterol, need ’trucks’ to navigate.

Now, ASCVD havoc starts when ApoB lipoprotein ’trucks’ collide into the ‘sidewalks’: especially in ‘highways’ (arteries) near our heart and tiny ’lanes’ (capillaries) in our brain. ApoB ’trucks’ mainly transport cholesterol produced by our liver, not the kind we eat in our food.

The immune system’s ‘street cleaners’ (macrophages looking like pac-man) attempt to tidy up but get overwhelmed, leaving behind a fatty white mess (soft-plaque). Over the decades, these piles grow, thickening the ‘sidewalks’ and narrowing the ‘highways’ and ’lanes’.

Picture this: by the age of 18, many young people already show signs of their pipe walls being inflamed and thickened. And, here’s something even more shocking: medical books are filled with pictures of the pipes from young people, who sadly passed away due to accidents, showing clear signs of this silent killer, ASCVD, already at work.😱 ASCVD spans many decades, silently evolving within our body.

Once the soft-plaque forms within the arterial walls, inflammation ensues, deteriorating the inner layer of the artery wall so that it becomes increasingly easy for ApoB “trucks” to get entrapped in it.

Adding to the complications, high blood pressure collaborates to intensify ASCVD by compelling the ‘highways’ and ’lanes’ to accommodate significantly more traffic than they were naturally designed for.

To stabilise the soft-plaque, our body occasionally seals the most damaged spots with calcium ‘patches’. However, when soft-plaques tear open, their fatty insides pour out in the bloodstream, leading the body to dispatch ’emergency services’ (platelets) to seal it up, just like a scab fixes a wound. This hasty patchwork can choke off the entire ‘street’, blocking the blood flow, and resulting in heart attacks or strokes when parts of the heart or the brain are deprived of oxygen.

Interestingly, we humans stand alone in facing this issue, all thanks to our abundance of ApoB. Not all the fat transporting ’trucks’ are problematic: only those labeled ApoB, especially the ones with Lp(a) license plates.

Several unsuspecting people exhibit unusually high levels of ApoB, and then there are those rare individuals with baby-levels of ApoB: intriguingly, they seem to have almost no risk of ASCVD. These exceptional cases are otherwise healthy, indicating that humans don’t really need the high levels of ApoB that distinguish us from other animals. This discovery paved the way for science to create fantastic ways to stop the silent killer.

Now, because this silent killer takes many, many years to do its damage, starting early to stop it is super important. The earlier we start to take care of our pipes, the better chance we have to keep them clean and working well. But remember, it’s never too late to start looking after them, because every bit of care can make a difference.

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