Your heart and blood vessels change as you age, even in the absence of any disease process. The muscle of the heart loses its elasticity, and your body's metabolic processes may produce less of the energy that the heart needs. The heart becomes a less powerful pump, and needs to work more to do the same job. Your heart may atrophy with age and therefore weigh less than it did when you were young. There also may be some loss of the pacemaker cells that control your heart's activities. In addition to these changes in your heart, your blood vessels become less elastic with age. Arteriosclerosis may make the passage way through your vessels narrower. This makes it necessary for your heart to work harder to pump the blood through the more resistant network of vessels.
Less elasticity in the walls of your arteries and atherosclerosis may cause high blood pressure, which makes your heart work even harder. The arteries supplying the heart itself (coronary arteries) may narrow. The result of this is less oxygen reaching your heart, which may cause angina or heart attack. A mild increase in blood pressure with age is normal. Blood pressure readings beyond this, however, are cause for concern. Prolonged high blood pressure (called hypertension) can precipitate a heart attack or stroke.
Despite such general age-related deterioration in your cardiovascular system, your heart is strong enough to meet the needs of your body. However, as your body ages, your cardiovascular system has much less reserve capacity for overcoming injury or handling the sudden demands placed on it by stress or illness. Such changes in the cardiovascular system occur gradually rather than overnight.
By the middle years, the process already may be well along. The middle years see many heart and blood pressure problems, particularly in men. People now seem to be more conscious of death due to cancer or AIDS, but heart attacks kill as many people as cancer, AIDS, and all other diseases combined.
Activity level and diet play significant roles in keeping your cardiovascular system healthy. An aerobic exercise, such as vigorous walking or running for at least half an hour a day on at least three days a week, places demands on your cardiovascular system that sitting at a desk does not. Your body responds to the demands of exercise by increasing its capacity to pump blood. This increased capacity is healthy, becomes a characteristic of your body, and stays with you when you are not exercising (provided of course that you keep up the exercise program).
Especially important is the fact that, in situations of physical exertion, the extra capacity is there; also, exercise may slow or even prevent the progression of atherosclerosis. You cannot stop the effects of aging altogether, but you can greatly minimize them and thus increase the odds of having a healthier life.
Exercise programs should be phased in gradually to avoid injury. If you have been inactive, contact a physician before embarking on an exercise program.
Another way to help your cardiovascular system is by following a low fat low cholesterol diet. A principal effect of a healthy diet is to slow the process of atherosclerosis, the process by which fatty deposits accumulate in your blood vessels. Atherosclerosis occurs in nearly everyone, narrowing the openings in the blood vessels and thereby increasing the resistance to the heart's pumping action.
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