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Heart Disease Is Not A Modern Problem
Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association has shown that heart disease is not a problem of the modern age. In fact heart disease has been affecting people for thousands of years.
The study was a collaboration carried out by a group of scientists from the University of California, the Mid America Heart Institute, Wisconsin Heart Hospital and Al Azhar Medical School in Cairo. They examined several mummies from Cairo’s Museum of Antiquities, performing medical scans on the preserved tissue. The result showed that the mummies were showing signs of hardened arteries.
It is thought that high society in ancient Egypt would have consumed a very rich diet. The mummies studied were a mixture of priests and high ranking servants of the Pharaoh of the time.
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Of 16 hearts that were preserved well enough for a medical examination, 9 had calcified deposits in the main artery leading to the heart. Three of the subjects showed serious signs of atherosclerosis (hardened arteries) which is caused by a long term build up of fat, cholesterol, calcium and other substances in the blood vessels. This is the main cause of heart disease.
Both male and female mummies showed similar patterns, which provides further evidence than men are not more prone to heart disease than women.
“While we do not know whether atherosclerosis caused the demise of any of the mummies in the study, we can confirm that the disease was present in many. So humans in ancient times had the genetic predisposition and environment to promote the development of heart disease. The findings suggest that we may have to look beyond modern risk factors to fully understand the disease.” Dr Gregory Thomas, University of California
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