Understanding the Relationship between Coronary Heart Disease and Diabetes: A “Buy One, Get One Free” Phenomenon

[Voice of Hope June 2, 2023](Editor: Guo Qiang) In clinical practice, we often encounter such a phenomenon: many patients with coronary heart disease are diagnosed with diabetes after a period of time; the same is true for patients with diabetes. Coronary heart disease and diabetes often occur together in patients. The relationship between these two diseases feels a bit like “buy one get one free”.

Indeed, a heart disease survey showed that the total detection rate of diabetes in patients with coronary heart disease was as high as 52.92%, of which newly diagnosed diabetes accounted for 20.1% of the total detection rate. In other words, more than half of patients with coronary heart disease have diabetes.

Patients with coronary heart disease will experience elevated blood sugar. There are two main types of blood sugar spikes:

First, the patient has diabetes himself, and his blood sugar control is not good at ordinary times. Sudden sudden illness on this basis will further increase the blood sugar on the original basis;

Second, the patient itself does not have diabetes, but when myocardial infarction, severe trauma or other life-threatening diseases occur, the body is in a state of stress and will automatically increase blood sugar.

In either case, the higher the blood sugar rise, the more severe the disease.

This is because when our body encounters an emergency, all the functions of the whole body will be actively mobilized.

Blood sugar supplies energy to the human body. When the body is in a critical state, it will automatically transfer a large amount of sugar from the liver and skeletal muscle into the blood, hoping to supply more energy and help cope with such a critical state.

Diabetic patients are also prone to coronary heart disease. Diabetes complicated with coronary heart disease is more prone to angina pectoris, myocardial infarction and other dangerous events than ordinary coronary heart disease patients. Therefore, endocrinologists often tell patients that diabetics must take strict precautions against coronary heart disease and myocardial infarction.

Diabetes damages blood vessels very much, and the longer the diabetes, the more serious the vascular disease. Many diabetic patients are wondering why the blood vessels are so bad when they have diabetes?

In fact, there are many medical theories about the mechanism of vascular disease in diabetic patients. Let me give you a very intuitive analogy. When blood sugar rises, our organs, nerves, and blood vessels are like soaking in concentrated sugar water. The tissues will become loose and fragile, and problems are very prone to occur.

The treatment of coronary heart disease mainly includes surgical bypass, coronary stent placement, and drug therapy. The first two are treatments that can quickly relieve symptoms.

However, diabetic patients with a long course of disease usually have a wide range of coronary artery lesions and multiple disease locations, and many patients have poor blood supply in the distal coronary artery. In this case, the effect of coronary artery bypass grafting or stenting is not ideal, and the therapeutic effect is difficult to meet expectations. .

For these patients, only conservative medication can be used. But in fact, patients with diabetes and coronary heart disease have a wide range of lesions, and the effect of drugs is relatively limited. Therefore, the clinical efficacy of diabetic patients with coronary heart disease is not ideal.

In addition, diabetes not only affects blood vessels but also has a great impact on nerves. After nerve damage, patients become numb and insensitive to discomfort, and even some patients have acute myocardial infarction, but do not feel obvious discomfort, thus missing the best opportunity for treatment.

Therefore, diabetic patients are more dangerous than ordinary coronary heart disease patients when they have a coronary heart disease attack or myocardial infarction. You must control your blood sugar well at ordinary times, and have regular physical examinations, and you should not be paralyzed because there is no obvious discomfort.

Editor in charge: Li Zhi

This article or program is edited and produced by Voice of Hope. Please indicate Voice of Hope and include the original title and link when reprinting.