•    One in five males and females have some form of CVD .

•    One in three men can expect to develop some major cardiovascular disease before age sixty; the odds for women are one in 10.5.

More than 2,600 Americans die each day of CVD-an average of one death every 33 seconds.

•    CVD claims more lives each year than the next seven leading causes of death combined.

•    Since 1900, CVD has been the number one killer in the United States in every year but one (1918).

•    Currently, 69 million Americans suffer from cardiovascular disease.
•    This year, 1.5 million people will have heart attacks.

There will be 500,000 deaths among these 1.5 million people.

What happened to Reverend Johnson could obviously have happened to anyone-male or female, black or white. It happens to 2,600 Americans every day, one death every 33 seconds.

Statistics give us the context, but people are more interesting than numbers. So let’s take a closer look at what actually happened to Asa Johnson. If Reverend Johnson had seen a doctor in time, he would have learned that his pains, fatigue, and hard breathing pointed to angina. Angina is the body’s way of telling us that the heart isn’t getting the

blood it needs to function normally. And it’s marked by the kinds of discomfort Reverend Johnson suffered-that is, a feeling of heaviness, pressure, or pain in the chest, pain that sometimes spreads to the arms or neck or jaw, or radiates to the back.

Angina results from what most of us call hardening of the arteries, and what doctors call arteriosclerosis, or, more simply, coronary artery disease or just plain coronary disease. It’s not very different from the kind of plumbing problem you might experience at home when the water flow in the pipe slows or is interrupted by calcium buildup or something th rt sticks at a bend in the pipe.

In the human body, what clogs the arteries isn’t only calcium but also fat deposits. When these clogs or blockages occur in the arteries that feed the heart, because the supply of oxygen to the heart is restricted, symptoms of angina will occur. Like every other organ in the body, the heart needs blood in order to function properly. If the supply of oxygen-rich blood fails, the heart will fail. That failure may be mild or severe, but if the condition that led to the problem isn’t addressed, the heart will become less and less able to do its job, and the symptoms of angina will eventually result in a heart attack.

A heart attack occurs when small or large parts of the heart muscle die because they aren’t receiving nourishment. In extreme cases, like Reverend Johnson’s, the entire heart is affected, and the result is death.

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