Heart Disease: Why Our Arteries Weren’t Built for This
Cardiovascular disease kills approximately 18 million people per year — nearly 32% of all global deaths. In industrialised countries, it has been the leading cause of death for most of the past century. It is so prevalent that it can seem like an inevitable feature of human aging.
It is not.
Atherosclerosis: Ancient But Amplified
CT scanning of ancient mummies — Egyptian, Peruvian, Ancestral Puebloan, Unangan — has revealed atherosclerotic plaques in people who lived thousands of years before fast food, cigarettes, or sedentary desk work. Arterial ageing appears to be an ancient process, not an exclusively modern one.
But the rate and severity differ dramatically. Ancient atherosclerosis was typically mild and often confined to older individuals. Modern cardiovascular disease kills people in their 40s and 50s at rates that have no ancient parallel. Something has amplified the baseline process to epidemic proportions.
The Perfect Storm of Mismatches
Diet: The ancestral cardiovascular system operated in a context of dietary variety, intermittent fasting, high omega-3 intake from wild animals and fish, and minimal refined carbohydrate. Modern ultra-processed diets deliver constant glycaemic load, pro-inflammatory seed oils, and sodium levels the kidney was never designed to excrete continuously.
Activity: The cardiovascular system evolved for intermittent, varied exertion — walking, carrying, occasional sprinting — with long periods of low-level movement. It was never designed for either extreme of modern life: prolonged sedentary sitting OR high-intensity exercise without the base of continuous low-level movement.
Sleep: The inflammatory resolution that protects arterial walls is predominantly a sleep-time process. Chronic sleep deprivation (below 7 hours) is an independent cardiovascular risk factor comparable to smoking.
Chronic psychosocial stress: Our stress system evolved for acute physical threats followed by resolution. Chronic unresolvable psychosocial stress — job insecurity, relationship conflict, financial pressure — keeps cortisol and adrenaline chronically elevated, which accelerates arterial inflammation, raises blood pressure, and increases clotting tendency.
FAQ
Is cardiovascular disease primarily genetic?
Genetics contribute to individual risk — but the epidemic rates are environmental. Populations that maintain traditional lifestyles have dramatically lower cardiovascular risk despite similar genetic backgrounds to industrialised populations.
How does osteopathy relate to heart health?
Through the autonomic nervous system — specifically, improving parasympathetic (vagal) tone and reducing sympathetic overdrive directly moderates blood pressure, heart rate variability, and the inflammatory state of the arterial wall. Osteopathic treatment is not cardiac care, but autonomic balance is directly relevant to cardiovascular risk.
What is the most important lifestyle factor for the heart?
There is no single factor — it is the constellation. But non-exercise physical activity (simply moving throughout the day) has an outsized benefit that neither sedentary sitting nor intense weekend exercise alone replicates.
The health of the whole body — movement, sleep, stress, nervous system — is the health of the heart. Book →