I'm nowhere near an expert in this field but it's something I do a lot of research about because of my family history. Heart disease has been the leading cause

I'm nowhere near an expert in this field but it's something I do a lot of research about because of my family history. Heart disease has been the leading cause of death (mostly for men over 30 and women over 60) for a very long time [1]. According to [2] and [3] the world's number of deaths by cardiac illness was about a million people larger in 2021 than in 2017, but because of the delayed effect that heart issues can have we might not be able to see the true increase the last year has had until it's well behind us. The sad fact is that a lot of us are going to die of a heart problem we didn't even know we had. And since heart health is affected by so many things it's very difficult to find a single root cause for it in anybody. That said there's already research showing that cases of arrhythmia and atrial fibrillation are increased in people who had covid within 1 year of contracting it [4]. Which makes sense because heart problems increase in people who contract many life threatening illnesses, such as certain types of cancer [5]. Our hearts take hits from just about everything that happens to us and everything we do, and our means of identifying, preventing, curing, or (someday I hope) reversing heart illness is still far behind where it needs to be. Please remember to get physicals at the recommended pace for your age group (ask your doctor) and try to do things to get your heart pumping in a good way when you can. [1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/causesofdeathover100years/2017-09-18 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde... [2] https://deadorkicking.com/death-statistics/worldwide/2018/ https://deadorkicking.com/death-statistics/worldwide/2018/ [3] https://deadorkicking.com/death-statistics/worldwide/2021/ https://deadorkicking.com/death-statistics/worldwide/2021/ [4] https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2022/covid-and-the-heart-it-spares-no-one https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2022/covid-and-the-heart-it-spa... [5] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28618843/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28618843/ edit: some grammar