Broken Heart

In the US, and thus in Miami, when you walk into a doctor's office and in the exam rooms, you always can tell what kind of disease that doctor is specialized in. I had a choice to show you either the display in a urologist's office, or this. Guess what I picked: This!

The plastic model illustrates a condition called Atherosclerosis (also known as arteriosclerotic vascular disease or ASVD,) a condition in which an artery wall thickens as a result of the accumulation of fatty materials such as cholesterol. It is a syndrome affecting arterial blood vessels, a chronic inflammatory response in the walls of arteries, caused largely by the accumulation of macrophage white blood cells and promoted by low-density lipoproteins (plasma proteins that carry cholesterol and triglycerides) without adequate removal of fats and cholesterol from the macrophages by functional high density lipoproteins (HDL.) It is commonly referred to as a hardening or furring of the arteries. It is caused by the formation of multiple plaques within the arteries.

The following terms are similar, but they are distinct, in both spelling and meaning, and it is easily confused: arteriosclerosis, arteriolosclerosis, and atherosclerosis. Arteriosclerosis is a general term describing any hardening (and loss of elasticity) of medium or large arteries (from the Greek arteria, meaning artery, and sclerosis, meaning hardening;) arteriolosclerosis is any hardening (and loss of elasticity) of arterioles (small arteries); atherosclerosis is a hardening of an artery specifically due to an atheromatous plaque. You've got to figure out for yourself which of your arteries are small, medium or large.

Atherosclerosis is a chronic disease that remains asymptomatic for decades. My recommendation to you is to pay a visit to your cardiologist. You wouldn't know if your heart's plumbing may be clogged up because you'd feel nothing at all. On the other hand, if your love ever decides to leave you, you, the leavee is left with a heart that may resemble this. It's broken! How do you mend a broken heart? Don't ask a cardiologist because he/she has no clue about this heartache!




Click on the player to hear Al Green asking the same question:
"How Can You Mend A Broken Heart"
Written by Barry Gibb and Robin Gibb
Performed by Al Green
This recording appeared in the movie "The Book of Eli" starring Denzel Washington.