Hi! i need to find out about heart disease for my A-Level biology, does anyone know any causes of it?

also if you know of any good websites on cardiovascular (heart) diseases could you please let me know? thanks for your help!

Cardiovascular disease can take many forms: high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, valvular heart disease, stroke, or rheumatic fever/rheumatic heart disease.
Risk factors are divided into two categories: major and contributing. Major risk factors are those that have been proven to increase your risk of heart disease. Contributing risk factors are those that doctors think can lead to an increased risk of heart disease, but their exact role has not been defined.
The more risk factors you have, the more likely you are to develop heart disease. Some risk factors can be changed, treated, or modified, and some cannot. But by controlling as many risk factors as possible, through lifestyle changes and/or medicines, you can reduce your risk of heart disease.
Major risk factors include:High blood pressure (Hypertension), high blood cholesterol,diabetes,obesity, smoking,physical inactivity,gender,heredity and age.
Contributing risk factors include:Stress,sex hormones,birth control pillsand alcohol.

try bbc as guru or something, it helped me, but i only got through AS with an E, things like smoking, eating too many fatty foods, not getting enough exerices and the like cause heart disease, google atherosclerosis, stroke, heart attacks etc.
diet is a big cause
lack of exercise is a big cause
it's a "lifestyle disease"
caused by our lifestyle.
and some heredity thrown in.
The overwhelming cause of coronary heart disease is atherosclerosis. This is a build-up of fatty materials within the walls of the arteries.

This occurs when the inner lining of your artery walls becomes furred with a thick, porridge-like sludge (atheroma) made up of fatty deposits of cholesterol, cell waste and other substances.

These form raised patches on the artery wall known as 'plaques' that narrow the arteries reducing the space through which blood can flow. At the same time, the blood becomes more prone to clotting.

The growing plaques may block the delivery of nutrients to the artery walls, causing them to lose their elasticity. This in turn may lead to high blood pressure, which also increases the risk of coronary heart disease.

I got this of the bbc website, link below, hope this helps.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/conditions/h...
One of the biggest causes of heart disease is raised blood pressure (hypertension). Your blood pressure should be no more than 140/80. If tablets are prescribed, this will lower blood pressure and so relieve pressure on heart and surrounding arteries.

The other causes are lifestyle. For example, too much high fat food raises Cholesterol levels. Cholesterol should be no higher than 5.2. Again, tablets can be taken. In this case, a group of medicines called Statins which will help breakdown the fats stored in the liver.

Obviously, regular, gentle exercise also helps to keep the heart muscle healthy plus keeping to the recommended alcohol limits of 14 units per week for women and 21 per week for men. Smoking and hereditary factors also contribute towards heart disease.
This is a huge subject. Since you are doing research for an upcoming A-Level, your best course would be to go to your favorite search engine and type in "Heart Disease" There is a ton of stuff that will come up, with the added advantage that it all comes from expert sources, and you can pore through it all day. From this material you can then design your own overview to fit the needs of your upcoming exam requirement. My bet is that you will hand in an impressive paper.
One good place to start is MedlinePlus ( http://medlineplus.gov/ )
MedlinePlus is a free service of the US National LIbrary of Medicine. It is advertisement free and contains reliable current information. It has information on over 700 diseases and conditions, surgery videos, drug and supplement information, news items, dictionary, and an abbreviated medical encyclopedia.

Type...heart disease...in the search box
Then, scroll down, and click on..."Heart Diseases (National Library of Medicine) "

Hope this helps,
Janice
(part time medical librarian...at home this am)