7 Visible Warning Signs of Clogged Arteries (Doctor Explains).

Most people think a stroke happens suddenly without a warning or a heart attack happens with a crushing chest pain, but there are specific signals that your body is sending you months and even years before a major heart attack or a stroke. And some of these are obvious once you know what to look for, but others will show up in places that you would never think had anything to do with your arteries. So in this video I want to talk about 7 early warning signs of clogged blood vessels, including a sound that you can hear And one of these is something that you can see just by looking in the mirror. And then one of these symptoms is especially important for women because it can look very different from the classic warning signs that we see in men. And it can show up weeks and even months before a heart attack. And if you're new here, I'm Dr. Leonid Kim. I'm a double board certified physician. And on this channel, my mission is to give you the science and the practical tools to not only live longer but to feel Better today. Let's get into it. Alright, sign number one is premature gray hair. Now obviously, getting gray hair does not automatically mean that your arteries are clogged. Genetics plays a huge role in when your hair turns gray. But there's a really interesting connection between how extensively someone's hair turns gray and heart disease. In one study, researchers looked at 545 men who underwent CT coronary angiography. So they were able to visualize the plaque on a CT scan. And they graded their hair from almost completely black to almost completely white. And among men who had heart disease, about 60% had predominantly white hair compared with about 32% of men without coronary artery disease. And this held up even after researchers adjusted for age and other cardiovascular risk factors. The amount of hair whitening was still independently associated with coronary artery disease and calcification. And there may be some overlap in biology here. Oxidative stress and chronic inflammation Impaired vascular repair and biological aging all play a role in atherosclerosis and some of those same processes may accelerate the loss of melanocytes, which are the cells that give your hair its pigment. And just to be clear, gray hair is not a diagnostic test, but if someone's going gray unusually early and they also have other risk factors like high blood pressure or high LDL or ApoB or insulin resistance or inflammation or a strong family history, well then this can become another clue worth paying attention to. Now the next sign is unusual because you don't see it but you hear it. Sign number two is hearing your heartbeat in your ear and this is called pulsatile tinnitus. It's a rhythmic whooshing or pulsing or thumping sound that stays in sync with your heartbeat. And one possible cause for this is turbulent blood flow through a narrow blood vessel near the ear. Now normally blood moves through a blood vessel that has smooth layers. That's called laminar flow. But when that blood The blood vessel becomes narrowed or irregular, Well that flow can become turbulent and because major blood vessels run very close to the inner ear sometimes you can actually hear the turbulence and many studies show a direct and a correlational link between pulsatile tinnitus and atherosclerosis. Now there are a lot of other causes of pulsatile tinnitus that have nothing to do with clogged arteries but if you suddenly start hearing a new whooshing sound that matches your heartbeat especially if you're only hearing on one side I would definitely have that promptly checked out by your doctor. All right sign number three also with your ears but this is something you can check right now just by looking in the mirror and what you're looking for is a fairly deep crease that runs diagonally across your earlobe usually at about a 45 degree angle and that crease is called Frank sign and it sounds like one of those things that somebody made up on the internet But there's actually a surprising amount of research behind it. A recent systematic review and meta-analysis that looked at almost 5,000 people found that patients with that diagonal earlobe crease had about four times the odds of having coronary artery disease. And this association was independent of age and other cardiovascular risk factors. And the signal was even stronger in people who had this crease in both their earlobes. Now, we don't actually know for sure why this is related. One theory is that the changes in the tiny blood vessels supplying the earlobe may reflect some of the same vascular aging happening in other parts of the body. And having that crease certainly doesn't mean that you definitely have atherosclerosis, but it is something to pay attention to. All right, sign number four is pretty classic and it's leg pain when you walk that goes away with rest. This is called claudication and people usually describe it as aching or cramping. or tightness in their calves, but depending on which blood vessel is affected, it can also happen higher up in the thigh or even in the buttocks. And what separates this from a lot of other types of leg pain is how predictable it can be. Let's say you start walking and after roughly the same amount of activity, the pain comes on. And then you may stop and that pain predictably goes away. And all it is, is a sign of reduced blood flow and reduced oxygen delivery to your tissues. The arterial blood flow is just not able to increase and match the demand. And claudication Simulation is a classic symbol. Same atherosclerosis that we see in the heart. But this time, it's in your legs. And this one definitely warrants a prompt evaluation by your doctor. Now, sign number five is especially important for women because this sign is the single most common early warning symptom of a heart attack in women. And it can show up weeks to months before a heart attack. And the sign is unusual fatigue. And this is often missed in women because just like with many other things in medicine, a lot of what we historically learned about heart disease was based on how it showed up in men. The classic picture of a crushing chest pain that may radiate to your arm or your shoulder, but women don't always follow that pattern. And when I say unusual fatigue, I'm not talking about being tired like the same way you're tired because you didn't sleep well last night or because you've been working all day. Unusual fatigue in this case is a marked unexplained change from baseline energy levels. So it may feel like overwhelming exhaustion or weakness or feeling like you've been running on empty that's not relieved by rest or something that's not explained by poor sleep or illness. There's an There's an interesting study that looked at more than 1200. women after they had experienced a heart attack. And unusual fatigue was the most frequent early warning symptom reported by 73% of women. And by contrast, only 36% had chest discomfort. And by the way, the second most common preceding symptom was sleep disturbance at 50%, and then anxiety at 45%, and shortness of breath at 44.5%. And this symptom can start much earlier than we usually think. In another study of over 500 women, unusual fatigue was again the most common early symptom, And it was reported... one month before their heart attack. And just to clarify, fatigue is incredibly common and not specific, but there are many other things that can cause this, not just heart disease. And chest pain is still a pretty common presentation in both men and women, but this is definitely something to And to keep in mind and Not ignore if you experience this. And by the way, if you stuck around this long and if you learned something new, please consider subscribing to the channel as it really does help get this information out in front of the people who need it the most and it really helps the channel grow. Every day I'm incredibly grateful to have you as part of this community because without each and every one of you, I wouldn't be able to keep making these videos. Now, sign number six is specific to men this time and this one can show up years before symptoms from the heart and that's erectile And there's actually a pretty simple... reason why these two are connected. The arteries supplying the penis are smaller than coronary arteries supplying the heart. So if the same atherosclerosis is developing throughout the body, Those smaller blood vessels may have problems with blood flow sooner. But there's more to this. There's something called endothelial dysfunction. The endothelium is just a thin layer of cells lining the inside of your blood vessels and one of its jobs is releasing nitric oxide which allows those blood vessels to relax and open up. And erections depend heavily on that increase in blood flow. And studies show erectile dysfunction can precede symptoms of heart disease by about two to three years and they precede a a heart attack or a stroke by three to five years. So it's very important to identify this early and hopefully change the trajectory. A meta-analysis of 14 studies involving more than 92,000 men found that men with erectile dysfunction had a 62% higher risk of heart attacks and a 39% higher risk of strokes. Now, just like with all the other signs that we talked about, there are many other causes of erectile dysfunction. It could often be medications or low testosterone, or it could also be neurological or psychological And often these things can overlap. But if this is new or persistent, especially in someone who already has cardiovascular risk factors, well then I wouldn't dismiss it and get it evaluated, but I wouldn't just focus on your erectile dysfunction. I would also expand it to Make sure your heart's okay. All right, the last one is another sign that you can actually see. And sign number seven is xanthelasma, which are these soft yellowish deposits that can develop around the eyelids, usually on the upper eyelid, but you can also see it on the lower eyelid near the inner corner of the eye. And these deposits actually contain cholesterol. So in the Copenhagen City Heart Study, researchers followed more than 12,000 people for up to 33 years. And people with xanthelasma had a 48% higher risk of having a heart attack And there's one more important thing that I want to emphasize. The number of symptoms or signs that you have doesn't always match with your plaque burden. And they also may not correlate with how much atherosclerosis you have. You can have a significant amount of atherosclerosis and still feel completely normal. And the plaques that cause heart attacks and strokes aren't always the ones causing the biggest blockages. Often, it's the smaller, non-obstructive, and non-calcified plaques that can rupture and trigger a blood clot that can suddenly block an entire blood vessel. So, none of these seven signs means you definitely have atherosclerosis, but But on the flip side, not having any of them also doesn't mean that you're in the clear. So we always want to account for these signs through the lens of other risk factors for heart disease. And if you do find them, it's always better to assess it early. Alright, I hope this was helpful. Stay healthy and I'll see you in the next one.