Cardio glossary
The words around the heart travel from clinic to news to dinner table, losing precision at each stop. This glossary collects them in plain English: each entry is short enough to read in a hallway, honest about what the word does and does not mean, and anchored to public sources. Two entries, blood pressure and cholesterol, grow into full sheets; the index grows with the magazine.
Atherosclerosis
The slow buildup of cholesterol and other material inside artery walls, narrowing the channel. It develops over decades without symptoms, which is why prevention starts long before anything hurts.
Blood pressure
The force blood exerts on artery walls, written as one number over another. High readings usually cause no symptoms, so the only reliable way to know is to measure. Open the blood pressure sheet
Cardiac arrest
The heart's electrical system fails suddenly and pumping stops, making it a circulation emergency. It is not the same as a heart attack, though one can lead to the other.
Cholesterol
A fat-like substance the liver makes and every cell uses, carried in particles named LDL and HDL. It becomes a risk factor when fractions stay high over years. Open the cholesterol sheet
Coronary arteries
The small vessels that wrap the heart muscle and feed it. A heart attack is usually a blockage in one of them, not in the heart's chambers.
HDL
High density lipoprotein, the particle fraction involved in carrying fats back toward the liver for disposal, often nicknamed good cholesterol by simplification.
Heart attack
Blood supply to part of the heart muscle is cut off, usually by a clot on a broken plaque in a coronary artery. It is a plumbing emergency; speed of care drives the outcome.
Hypertension
Sustained high blood pressure, defined by measurement categories rather than by feelings. The WHO calls it a leading, and largely silent, driver of cardiovascular disease.
LDL
Low density lipoprotein, the fraction that carries fats outward to tissues and, at sustained high levels, is most associated with plaque buildup in artery walls.
Resting heart rate
Beats per minute while calm and still, typically described for adults as roughly 60 to 100. It moves with sleep, fever, stress, caffeine and training, so trends say more than single readings.
Sleep apnea
Repeated closing of the airway during sleep that fractures the night into micro awakenings. Loud snoring with pauses and daytime sleepiness are the classic signs to raise with a clinician.
Triglycerides
The main form of fat circulating for energy storage, measured in a standard lipid panel. Sustained high levels travel in studies with metabolic and cardiovascular risk.
Where the words are used
- Heart health numbers worth knowingHow the dials of pressure, lipids and glucose read together.
- How the heart works, explained simplyThe mechanism the vocabulary points at.
- The everyday heart checklistTen lines that use almost every entry above.