What is coronary heart disease?

  Coronary artery disease is also known as ischemic heart disease. According to Western medical theory, coronary heart disease is a heart disease caused by atherosclerotic plaque formation in coronary arteries, which leads to narrowing of the coronary artery lumen or rupture of the plaque followed by thrombosis, resulting in insufficient blood supply to the heart muscle and ischemia and hypoxia. Coronary heart disease is equivalent to “chest paralysis” in Chinese medicine.  The occurrence of “chest paralysis” is mostly related to the internal invasion of cold evil, dietary disorders, emotional and moral disorders, labor, weariness and internal injuries, old age and long-term illness and physical weakness. The pathogenesis of the disease has two aspects, the real is cold, blood stasis, qi stagnation, phlegm and heat toxicity, paralysis of the chest and Yang, blocking the heart vessels; deficiency is qi deficiency and yin injury, deficiency of heart, spleen, liver and kidney, dysfunction, and loss of nourishment of the heart vessels. In the process of formation and development of this disease, most of the evidence is first actual and then deficiency, and there are also cases of first deficiency and then actual. However, the clinical manifestations are mostly mixed with deficiency and reality, or mainly with actual evidence or deficiency evidence.  The main symptom of coronary heart disease is chest pain. The typical site of chest pain is in the middle and upper part of the sternum, but it can also occur outside the chest, and the nature of the pain is a feeling of constriction and pressure, and a feeling of suffocation. It is often triggered by exertion, exertion, satiety, cold, emotional excitement, etc.; however, it can also occur in a quiet and lying state.