Heart Disease in Eastern Europe

Any doctors or knowledgeable people around here know anything about this topic? Ive been taking an interest in some of these medical issues recently and doing some research on the web. Unfortunately there are no sites that can explain the drastic increase in heart disease in this region during the last 30 years or so.

Check this site

http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/coronary-heart-disease/by-country/

A change in diet and increased alcohol consumption seem like likely causes to me. I'm by no means an expert though.

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
A change in diet and increased alcohol consumption seem like likely causes to me. I'm by no means an expert though.

Increased alcohol consumption, probably not - "Drunken Slav" has been a stereotype for many, many decades, long before the fall of the Wall. Change in diet, very likely. I would think a lack of hard, physical labour (and in many cases a lack of labour at all) should also be an important factor.

Richard

1997 report: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199706263362614

and 2007: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40284005?uid=3737536&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=47698934570037 (you'll need a magnifying glass to read this one)

Originally posted by Shallow Blue
Increased alcohol consumption, probably not - "Drunken Slav" has been a stereotype for many, many decades, long before the fall of the Wall. Change in diet, very likely. I would think a lack of hard, physical labour (and in many cases a lack of labour at all) should also be an important factor.

Richard

Yes the high alcohol consumption was always there. Maybe that should lead to liver disease but im not sure thats the case.

Maybe I should ask some East Indians if they have any knowledge of this issue.

I am of East Indian descent and I have noticed that many [around 10 in the last 3 years] of friends and family have died of heart disease and they were between 35 and 65, pretty young really. The East Indian diet is high in carbs, fats and sugars so diabetes is rampant among East Indians here. This later ends up in high blood pressure and heart disease.

Originally posted by Kewpie
1997 report: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199706263362614

and 2007: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40284005?uid=3737536&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=47698934570037 (you'll need a magnifying glass to read this one)

Thanks for that link.

They seem to not really know for sure as no studies were done to investigate in detail. They did speculate that its a combination of hypertension and changes in diet and economic conditions.

See if you can find stats on obesity as that should give you some clues as to how much diet or lack of exercise are involved.

Originally posted by twhitehead
See if you can find stats on obesity as that should give you some clues as to how much diet or lack of exercise are involved.

Here is a site

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity

Looks like mostly North America, Western and Eastern Europe.

Is it the case that after the fall of communism in the 80s, there was a drastic increase in consumption of foods that cause obesity, so much so that heart disease went up so rapidly?

Originally posted by Rajk999
Is it the case that after the fall of communism in the 80s, there was a drastic increase in consumption of foods that cause obesity, so much so that heart disease went up so rapidly?

I really know next to nothing about Eastern Europe.
Another factors I could suggest looking into is better health care. It is my understanding that heart problems are far more common when health care is better because people live longer and heart issues are not so easily 'fixed'/cured by better health care.
In Zambia, heart problems are relatively rare, or at least they would be in the statistics. This is because people are far more likely to die younger and from major diseases (AIDS/ Malaria etc) and even if they have heart problems it would often not be diagnosed and would kill them when they get some disease and that is what would be blamed for the death.

Originally posted by Shallow Blue
Increased alcohol consumption, probably not - "Drunken Slav" has been a stereotype for many, many decades, long before the fall of the Wall. Change in diet, very likely. I would think a lack of hard, physical labour (and in many cases a lack of labour at all) should also be an important factor.

Richard

Well, I'm not sure but I would suspect that increased wealth also brings more opportunity to purchase alcohol. But I haven't looked at actual factual data of alcohol consumption in say, Poland.