The link between CHD (Coronary Heart Disease) and a high fat diet

Joonhyuk Hyun

According to the article “‘Sausage not steak’ increases heart disease risk”, we can notice a lifestyle that consumes excessive fats per day can be led to a coronary heart disease. Diets with fats have a lot of risk that affects to our body and a heart disease is one of the most serious risk of the fat diets.

There are two types of fats, an unsaturated fat and a saturated fat. For examples of an unsaturated fat, there are almonds, walnuts and vegetable oil and ones saturated fat are butters, animal fats and processed meats.

 According to the AHA (American Heart Association), diets with high saturated fats can dramatically increase human’s cholesterol which contributes to raise a risk of getting a heat disease.

Saturated fats are fat molecules without double bonds between carbon molecules because they are saturated with hydrogen molecules. The saturated fats are usually solid at room temperature and this feature make easier to stick to our blood vessels and also, the fats raise cholesterol levels in the blood.  

The heart disease occurs when a waxy substance which is plaque builds up inside the coronary arteries. On the one hand, the high saturated fats from foods such as sausages and bacons cause this plaque to block blood vessels and it leads to an abnormal blood flow not to provide a sufficient blood to the heart.  

In a condition of atherosclerosis, the plaque will keep building up as time passes. The flow in a narrowed artery cause the problem with a human’s heart so that a heart can get a disease like CHD.    

Processed meats have much more risks of heart disease than other saturated fats even though they have a similar fat content because a lot of salt and preservatives are added into the processed meats. In addition, a processed meat can dramatically affect to the heart disease as it contains salt itself as it is able to raise blood pressure in some people. Furthermore, if this occurs with atherosclerosis, the raised pressure with narrowed artery makes a synergy to amplify the risk of heart disease.

In conclusion, if a person takes a processed meat which contains a high saturated fat and salt, the saturated fat will make a condition called atherosclerosis which builds plaques inside of blood vessels so that the vessels get blocked not to supply a proper amount of blood to a heart with highly raised blood pressure by salt. Hence, the CHD occurs.