The Link Between Diabetes and Heart Disease

If you’re among the more than 38 million Americans living with diabetes, your health can get complicated as the disease raises your risk for other serious conditions. From where we stand, one of the biggest concerns is the connection between diabetes and heart disease, especially considering that heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States.

To explain this connection in more detail, we turn to our own board-certified cardiologist, Dr. Satjit Bhusri, who leads the team here at Upper East Side Cardiology. Given that November is National Diabetes Month, we decided now is a good time to review the strong connection between diabetes and heart disease.

Diabetes and heart disease by the numbers

To set the scene, the one overriding statistic that should grab your attention is this: People with diabetes have twice the risk of heart disease as those who don't have the disease. As well, people with diabetes tend to develop heart disease at a younger age than people who don’t have diabetes.

By heart disease, we’re largely referring to:

• Heart attack
• Stroke
• Coronary artery disease
• Congestive heart failure

We can also include vascular issues on this list, such as peripheral vascular disease.

The direct link between diabetes and your heart health

When you have diabetes, your body isn’t able to properly regulate the levels of glucose in your bloodstream. This is due to the lack of insulin (the hormone that delivers glucose to your cells), as well as insulin resistance.

As a result of higher-than-normal blood sugar levels, your blood vessels and the nerves that control them can become damaged. Over time, this damage accumulates and interferes with the cardiovascular system’s function.

Indirect links between diabetes and your cardiovascular health

Though high levels of glucose in your blood can directly damage blood vessels and your heart, people with type 2 diabetes often have other cardiovascular issues. This is because the same lifestyle habits that likely led to the type 2 diabetes diagnosis can also impact your cardiovascular health.

For example, many people with diabetes have poor dietary habits — too much sugar and too much fat are the primary culprits — which can lead to issues like:

• Atherosclerosis — blockage (plaques) in your blood vessels that disrupts blood flow
• High blood pressure
• High cholesterol
• Obesity

Moreover, each of these is a big risk factor for heart disease.

Emphasizing heart disease prevention

At our practice, we place great emphasis on preventive cardiology. People living with diabetes can be candidates for this. Aside from better managing your blood sugar levels, we can provide you with an arsenal of tools and resources that can reduce your risk for heart disease, such as weight loss services.

To determine the preventive measures that are best for lowering your risk for heart disease when you have diabetes, we invite you to call our New York City office on the Upper East Side of Manhattan at 212-752-3464. You can also request information online by clicking here.