From the category archives:
Pets a Boon for the Human Heart, Cardiologists Say THURSDAY, May 9 (HealthDay News) — That four-legged friend of yours may be more than a companion — he also may be boosting your heart health, experts say. An official statement released Thursday by the American Heart Association says there is evidence that having a pet, [...]
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[This was the best summary article on factors related to heart attacks in winter months] Heart Health in Winter Lifeline Screening The holiday season is a time that usually gladdens our hearts as we gather with friends and family. But it’s also a time when our own hearts are under additional stress. During winter, the [...]
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from Medical News Today Heart Attacks and Winter: Examining the Seasonal Trend 13 Dec 2004 According to results gathered by the Second National Registry of Myocardial Infarction (heart attacks), winter was the top season for heart attacks, followed by fall, then spring, then summer. The December issue of the Harvard Men’s Health Watch looks at [...]
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[Emotional stress is often under-rated as major factor in heart disease.] from the article: When divided into three groups based on levels of the stress hormone, the third of study participants with the highest cortisol levels had a fivefold increased risk of dying from cardiovascular causes as the third with the lowest levels. High Cortisol [...]
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[In the 60's, when meditation become more mainstream. the phrase I would often here is: "If you are too busy to meditate, you are too busy." -- And today the phrase I came across was, "It is important to meditate twenty minutes a day.... If you are too busy to meditate, meditate for an hour [...]
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[The importance of Circadian rhythms are vastly underrated...] Intense Light Prevents, Treats Heart Attacks, Study Suggests ScienceDaily Apr. 25, 2012 — There are lots of ways physicians might treat a patient after a heart attack — certain resuscitation methods, aspirin, clot-busters and more. Now University of Colorado medical school researchers have found a new candidate: [...]
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From the article: One of the strongest and best-studied factors that thickens someone’s arteries is age, and that happens at around 10 microns per year,” Shah says. “In our study, users of antidepressants see an average 40 micron increase in IMT, so their carotid arteries are in effect four years older. This implications of this [...]
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From the article: Patients who begin an exercise program one week after their heart attack were found to have the best heart performance. For those who waited to begin their exercise rehabilitation program, the results showed that “for every week that a patient delayed his or her exercise treatment, he or she would have to [...]
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Heart attack portrayal critique Good Jack Nicholson is always good, especially when he is bad. He looked desperate and hopeless (although heart attacks are often not so obvious). Diane Keaton swore at him, but still took action. The ambulance was called immediately. Neutral Never saw the ambulance. First care is usually given in the ambulance. [...]
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Richard Pryor was one of the best and edgiest comedians, ever. Bob Newhart called him “the seminal comedian of the last 50 years.” He had his first heart attack in 1977. In 1990, Pryor suffered a more severe heart attack and underwent triple heart bypass surgery. He died in 2005 from cardiac arrest; however, he [...]
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After a heart attack, the anxiety about having another heart attack can be overwhelming. It feels like the odds are about 99% that one will have another heart attack, probably within the next day. For the first three weeks after my heart attack, I was deathly afraid of going to sleep at night, since I [...]
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Hair Gives a Heads-Up On Heart Attack Risk By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer 03 September 2010 Stress may make you want to pull out your hair, but those tresses could be the key to measuring just how much stress you’re under, according to a new study. The study found that the stress hormone cortisol [...]
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Strong earthquake jolts Anchorage by Rachel D’Oro The Associated Press 9/20/10 ANCHORAGE, Alaska – An earthquake jolted Anchorage on Monday and was felt well beyond Alaska’s largest city. The 4.9 magnitude quake struck at 1:24 p.m. about 10 miles southwest of Anchorage, according to earthquake monitors. There were no reports of injury or damage, but [...]
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Depression And Anxiety Can Double Chances Of Heart Ailments ScienceDaily (Jan. 19, 2008) — Matters of the mind can affect matters of the heart. A new study by McGill University and Université de Montréal researchers has found that major anxiety and/or depression, can double a coronary artery disease patient’s chances of repeated heart ailments. This [...]
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My own experience with cardiac rehab several years ago was mixed; it felt safer after a heart attack to be in a hospital setting and have my heart monitored, and it was good to have a schedule to stick to. However, there was absolutely no attention paid to the psychological factors associated with heart disease [...]
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Brilliant idea. Let’s also put statins in the drinking water. Outlets Should Offer Free Statins With Junk Food Say UK Researchers MedPage Today 13 Aug 2010 Imagine this: order a cheeseburger and fries, and pick up a free cholesterol-busting statin tablet along with the other free condiments, that’s what a group of UK researchers suggests [...]
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Colder Weather May Trigger Heart Attacks Study Links Drop in Temperature With Higher Risk of Heart Attacks By Bill Hendrick WebMD Health News Aug. 10, 2010 — A significant drop in temperatures may trigger heart attacks in elderly people, new research indicates. Scientists in the U.K. say they found that each drop in ambient temperature [...]
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The scaffold is built out of a flexible, biocompatible material with pores that support the fragile cardiac cells and allow access to blood and nutrients. The scaffold for heart repair includes channels, seen here as the larger holes, where the cardiac cells can fuse into long chains. (Credit: University of Washington) New Strategy to Fix [...]
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Salynn Boyles WebMD Health News July 29, 2010 — Millions of people who take calcium supplements in hopes of lowering their risk for bone fractures may actually be increasing their risk of having a heart attack, new research suggests. An analysis of close to a dozen clinical trials involving about 12,000 patients found calcium supplementation [...]
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FRIDAY, April 16 (HealthDay News) — Placing automatic external defibrillators in public places across the United States and Canada could save the lives of 474 people who otherwise would die of cardiac arrest each year, researchers report. Previous studies have found similar lifesaving results for defibrillators in more limited setting, such as casinos or airports, [...]
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Lack of insurance and financial concerns keep patients from treating a heart attack like the emergency it is, researchers affirmed. A delay in getting to the hospital for treatment of acute MI was 38% more likely among the uninsured (adjusted P<0.001) and 21% more likely among insured patients with financial concerns (P=0.01), reported Paul S. [...]
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Your character is going along in his daily life when suddenly he complains of a shooting, radiating pain in his left shoulder and arm. Within seconds he staggers, clutching at his chest while his face turns bright red, then he drops like a stone to the floor, unconscious and probably dead. Congratulations: your character’s just [...]
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Australian patients’ delay in response to heart attack symptoms objectives: To examine delay in seeking treatment among patients with an evolving acute myocardial infarction (MI), and to identify factors which contributed to this delay. Design: Patient interview combined with medical record review. Participants and setting: 317 patients with confirmed diagnosis of acute MI interviewed within [...]
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Commentary: I seem to be coming down the flu or a flu equivalent. Did not get a flu shot this year, for whatever stupid reasons. So here are some things I found out while trying to understand the combination of flu and heart disease: In 2003, The New England Journal of Medicine published researched showing [...]
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April 2, 2010 — Having a heart attack or chronic illness may raise the risk of being diagnosed with cancer, according to a new survey. Researchers found that people with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes were about twice as likely to have cancer as healthy people without these chronic illnesses. In addition, the [...]
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These are some of the best sources of medical information on the Web: www.mayoclinic.com Reliable, evidence based medical information. Well-presented, well-written. www.clevelandclinic.org Good collection of resources for heart issues. www.askapatient.com A tremendous resource on medication; consumers writing about their experience and side effects of medication. Information that you will not see on a pharmaceutical website. [...]
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— Bony fish like the tiny zebrafish have a remarkable ability that mammals can only dream of: if you lop off a chunk of their heart they swim sluggishly for a few days but within a month appear perfectly normal. How they accomplish this — or, more importantly, why we can’t — is one of [...]
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Strongly consider calling 911 Do not drive or have yourself driven to the hospital Call for an ambulance: they have equipment to help you CHEST DISCOMFORT OR PAIN This discomfort or pain can feel like a tight ache, pressure, fullness or squeezing in the center of your chest lasting more than a few minutes. This [...]
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FRIDAY, Feb. 26, 2010 (HealthDay News) — Cutting off the flow of blood to the arm by repeatedly inflating a blood pressure cuff appears to reduce the amount of tissue damaged during a heart attack, a new Danish study shows. This procedure somehow has a protective effect on heart muscle, by mechanisms that are not [...]
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Study Suggests Link Between Stock Market Turmoil and an Increase in Heart Attacks By Charlene Laino WebMD Health News March 17, 2010 (Atlanta) — When the stock market dips, your heart health may, too. New research hints at a link between market volatility and rising heart attack rates. Duke University researchers found that as the [...]
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A team of Mayo Clinic researchers have found that cardiac rehabilitation is associated with significantly reduced mortality rates for patients who have had stents placed to treat blockages in their coronary arteries. The findings, presented today at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Atlanta, found that patients who had coronary angioplasty [...]
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(An excellent review article on the history of care after heart attacks.).. “What we did for patients with acute MI was place them in a cool, dark place. Give them morphine for pain and lidocaine to prevent arrhythmias and hope for the best.” The speaker is Steven Nissen, MD, director of Cardiovascular Medicine at the [...]
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ANAHEIM, Calif., March 18— People, especially men, are more likely to suffer heart attacks on their birthdays than on other days of the same week, a new study has found. Researchers said that overindulgence might be the reason. The pattern was significantly different for men and women, Dr. Wilson said. The heart attack rates for [...]
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CNN) — The diabetes drug Avandia is linked with tens of thousands of heart attacks, and drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline knew of the risks for years but worked to keep them from the public, according to a Senate committee report released Saturday. The 334-page report by the Senate Finance Committee also criticized the Food and Drug Administration, [...]
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Arthritis: Closer to your heart than you’d think While many are focused on heart disease during February, and for a good reason, the Arthritis Foundation, Wisconsin Chapter wants to remind you to keep arthritis in mind as well. Arthritis and heart disease are more closely related than many would think. A recent study found that arthritis [...]
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A new US study found women’s knowledge of the warning signs of a heart attack is as poor as it was a decade ago, with half saying they would not call 9-1-1 if they were having heart attack symptoms; they also found that although getting narrower, there are still racial gaps in women’s awareness of [...]
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. . After I experienced a severe heart attack, I was extremely grateful to be alive; it was as if my ego had almost disappeared. I was grateful for every breath. This feeling wore off after several months, but the near death experience did substantially change my perspective and attitude towards life. It has [...]
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