My father smokes quite a lot, maybe 10 cigarettes a day. This, compared to many a patients I have come across, is quite less but then knowing what smoking can do ...
I had tried for almost 5 years for him to quit smoking.

Maybe I didn't try harder. Then I saw all these people having heart attacks. Almost 90% of them had been smoking for a minimum of 10 years. I knew I had a job in hand. Taking the advantage of Hyderabad's cyber culture, I manage to coax my father to come here promising to take him to so many beautiful places which even I have not seen.

The only reason being; I wanted him to run on the treadmill and take the chest x-rays. I finally managed to accomplish this. Luckily, he ran well being a player himself. But to my horror, I saw some 'shadow' on his chest x-ray and his cholesterol was very high. That moment I was more worried about the shadow, as he was a smoker, and again 90% of the patients with lung cancer were smokers.

Having discussed the 'shadow' with a pulmonologist colleague, it was settled to be the initial stage of COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), a lung condition amongst chronic smoker, which if the smoking is not stopped could lead to total destruction of the lungs and the heart leading to heart failure.

Maybe the very word COPD that was very alien to him was enough to scare him that he has been off smoking for the last 8 months. And after his cholesterol lowering drugs, things are looking better. His only risk factor, which now remains, is his age and sex, which are not modifiable.

I would like to highlights some of the important risk factors ...

1) Male sex and Women after their menopause. Women are protected by estrogen before their menopause but as the hormone decreases it make them more prone to heart attacks.
2) Smokers.
3) High cholesterol and triglycerides which were high in my father's blood.
4) Diabetes. These group are the people most prone as the lining of the blood vessels get diseased which leads to heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, etc. These we call end arteries disease.
5) Hypertension or high blood pressure where the heart has to work harder thereby leading to increased narrowing and loss of elasticity of the blood vessels.
6) Sedentary life styles, stressful life,
7) there are quite a few other causes which are dangerous but rare like the presence of high amount of homocysteine in the blood, if we remember biochemistry is one of the amino acids. Then vasculitis which is inflammation of the blood vessels, etc.

These tests have become mandatory in the developed countries, thereby decreasing the illness. Are we going to make it mandatory for our families? That would be my sincere suggestion. I hope convincing you all should be easier then our parents back home, because treatment of this condition back home are not well advanced, and to my experience mortality is very high.

Cheers and all the best talking to your parents.

B. Elangbam