Matias Escobar runs to control his physical and mental health bye Maas the 38-year-old find tuning his mind and body with years of triathlons until last October when the unthinkable happened butas collapsed at the end of a race from a heart attack how close to death did you come I was that for for several minutes I was talk you were dead I mean my heart stopped beating and they they they kept me with CPR for 12 minutes until the ambulance came the heroic CPR was caught on camera his Smartwatch recorded what happened to his heart so
you've got one heartbeat there yes and then nothing for 2 days he was in a coma doctors mystified by how this young man in great shape came so close to death did you eat a lot of red meat no no did you drink very very little I would say social how's the stress I wasn't a stressed out person at all trying to unravel the mystery of young heart attacks Dr deepack bot director of Mount siai Fuster Heart Hospital in New York City he's looking into patients presenting with no known risk factors like diabetes high blood
pressure and high cholesterol Dr bot says 12% of heart heart attack patients don't have those risk factors we're seeing younger people come in like we never used to see before why is that well that's a great question I think there are a lot of reasons for that one probably has to do with the Obesity epidemic but it could also be other things I hate to say it but you know there's uh more substance abuse these days things like cocaine for example even smoking marijuana another potential clue long smoldering inflammation when I'm talking about inflammation in
the arteries supplying blood to the heart it might lead to the plaque in that artery to act up in fact to rupture a blood clot to form if that blocks the blood flow in that artery that's what causes a heart attack or heart muscle damage the cause of inflammation in seemingly healthy people like Matias who are not obese and don't smoke is not yet clear Sy but as a precaution the husband and father of a 2-year-old watches his diet more carefully he's gone vegan eating lots of fresh fruits vegetables whole grains and less red meat
is recommended by Dr bot along with 30 minutes of exercise daily and getting a good night's rest not easy when you worry if it could happen again how do you manage that that fear of it coming back so I think that's probably the biggest part out of this entire thing what you do with fear then you're going to start feeling things in your body that don't exist so I it's very important that you work on that right from the beginning yeah Matias is learning to live with that fear but in this case knowledge is power
Dr bot says there are numbers we should all know they're your blood pressure your blood sugar cholesterol and yes the size of your waist because they can all be indicators of heart attack risk and I'm happy to tell you Matias is going to run that New York City try this year to get it back to get it back and Conquer what happened to him last what a great example though of this if it could happen to him I me my goodness Lord knows the rest of us are in big trouble real trouble good information thank
you so much hey thanks for watching don't miss the Today's Show every weekday at 11:00 a.m. eastern 8 Pacific on our streaming Channel today all day to watch head to today.com allay or click the link right here
