With age, everyone's blood vessels have plaque, just like water pipes, have water rust, is a natural phenomenon of metabolism. But if the plaque is particularly large and unstable, it is a lesion, usually large plaque belongs to the atherosclerotic lesions, is a chronic and continuous progressive lesions. In general, the incidence of plaque tends to increase with age. Elderly people plaque than middle-aged people increased significantly, more than 60 years old than 50 to 59 plaque incidence increased significantly.
Often the stable plaque is called hard plaque, unstable easy to fall off the plaque is called soft plaque, soft plaque is a greater threat to human health, because soft plaque easy to fall off or rupture, the formation of thrombus, resulting in narrowing of the lumen of the blood vessels, and can cause vascular dysfunction. The most typical and dangerous plaques that require attention are carotid plaques and coronary atherosclerotic plaques. These plaques can lead to acute coronary syndromes, angina, myocardial infarction, stroke, and peripheral vascular disease.
With so much harm from plaque, how do we reverse or eliminate it?
Strictly speaking, in most cases, it is difficult to reverse or completely eliminate plaque, which is usually stabilized and slowed down by medication and lifestyle improvements. Only if the plaque is large enough to cause a stenosis of more than 50% of the blood vessel is surgery, such as arterial stripping, considered to eliminate the plaque.
1. Medication:
Medication is needed only for plaques that are large enough, or for large, unstable plaques.
The combination of lipid-regulating drugs, antiplatelet drugs, and antioxidant drugs has a clear intervention effect on atherosclerosis. Statins are the most effective measures to stabilize soft plaque at this stage, and long-term use of statins can stabilize plaque anti-inflammatory and antioxidant. Antiplatelet drugs: clopidogrel; anticoagulants: warfarin, dabigatran, heparin analogues can reduce the occurrence of atherosclerotic thrombotic events, which can stabilize plaque and reduce the occurrence of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. Antioxidants, including Chinese patent medicines, have a certain role in inhibiting plaque formation.
Note, must be under the guidance of specialists to choose the drug treatment program, for example, there are three high also need to use antihypertensive or hypoglycemic drugs, or even both drugs need to be used.
2. Surgery
Surgery is only considered when the plaque is large enough to cause stenosis of more than 50% of the blood vessels or to cause serious obstruction of the blood vessels, and it is mainly based on the location of the occurrence of the choice of different treatment methods. Carotid plaque treatment includes stenting, carotid ultrasound and stripping. Coronary plaque treatment: PCI stenting, balloon dilatation, plaque rotational dissection, thrombus aspiration.
3. Improvement of lifestyle
In fact, no matter whether there is a larger plaque or not, whether it is treated with medication or surgery, it is necessary to improve the lifestyle, so as to slow down the plaque enlargement, and at the same time with the medication or surgery, to effectively prevent serious cardiovascular and cerebral vascular diseases from occurring.
First of all, first of all, pay attention to the diet, to low fat, low sugar, low salt, multi-vitamin, coarse and fine food with the program. Fatty food intake calorie control within 25%, cholesterol intake in 200mg or less, eat less animal offal. For men to quit smoking, limit alcohol. In addition, you should do 30 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise every day, preferably at least five times a week. Target heart rate during exercise = 170 - age. Also, you should have regular medical checkups and make personalized checkup arrangements based on your own situation.
In short, treating vascular plaque, not to be careless, some small plaque, even if it can not be completely eliminated, but need to pay attention to it, not negligence.