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Heart Disease
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Definition of Heart Disease
Heart disease is an umbrella term for a number of different diseases which affect the heart and is the leading cause of death in the United States as of 2007.
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What Is Heart Disease?
The heart is the center of the body’s cardiovascular system. Throughout the body's blood vessels, the heart pumps blood to all of the body's cells. The blood carries oxygen, which the cells need. Heart disease is a group of medical problems that occur when the heart and blood vessels aren't working the way they should.
How Do You Get Heart Disease?
Heart disease is not contagious so it cannot be caught like the common cold or the everyday flu. There are certain things that can increase a person's chances of getting cardiovascular disease, also known as Heart disease. These are commonly known as risk factors.
Some of these risk factors a person are not able to do anything about, such as getting older or having people in their family who have the same heart problem. Risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, being overweight, and not exercising enough can increase the risk of getting heart disease.
What Are the Signs of Heart Disease?
Many people do not realize t
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'Magic' thimble predicts heart disease
An Israeli-developed, thimble-like device worn over a person's index finger has been proven by clinical studies to predict who is at high risk of developing endothelial dysfunction - a key precursor of atherosclerosis, a major component in cardiovascular disease.
Called the Endo-PAT, the device is based on PAT technology that measures subtle but significant vaso-motion changes through the pneumatic probe on the finger. It is the only non-invasive device approved by the US Food and Drug Administration that reliably detects impairment of the endothelial layer (the inner lining of blood vessels).
Developed and manufactured by Itamar Medical in Cesearea, the screening technology adds an important dimension to cardiac medicine by allowing physicians to reliably and non-invasively measure endothelial function and identify pathological cases of dysfunction, according to foreign researchers.
Presentations by four research groups (including the Mayo Clinic and Harvard University) in
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Lipitor and heart disease
Statins, the best-selling drugs in the United States, lower LDL (bad) cholesterol and decrease blood vessel inflammation to decrease the risk of heart disease in certain people. The top selling statin drugs are Lipitor, Mevacor and Pravachol. People with heart disease benefit from taking these drugs, but there is controversy about the use of statins by people who simply have high cholesterol. There is also controversy about the prescribing of 80 mg of Lipitor (rather than lower doses) that Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant, appears to be recommending.
The actual benefit of using statin drugs, including Lipitor, may surprise you. While the benefit of statin drugs for people with heart disease is proven, according to Dr. John Abramson and Dr. James Wright, if 50 men who are at high risk of developing heart disease take the drug every day for five years, just one man will avoid a heart attack or heart-related death.
One out of 50 men avoiding a heart attack, or death, over a five-ye
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CT Scans To Determine Heart Disease In The Emergency Room
ScienceDaily (Nov. 29, 2007) — In the future, patients who arrive at a hospital Emergency Department complaining of chest pain may be diagnosed with a sophisticated CT scan. If the diagnosis is negative, the patient can go home — and the total time at the hospital will be much shorter than it is today.
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That is the theory behind a study being presented at the RSNA November 26 by Rajan Agarwal, M.D., a resident in Radiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
“The cost of chest pain triage (where patients in the Emergency Department are prioritized based on their symptoms) and management has been estimated to be as high as $8 billion annuall
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How to fight heart disease with food
Some foods pack a particularly powerful punch when it comes to fighting heart disease.
"For some people, they're going to have a larger impact than others, depending on your family history," said Jennifer Jones, registered dietitian with St. Vincent Heart Center of Indiana.
For those with a history of heart disease, eating a diet that includes these foods can at least delay heart disease or help recovery after a cardiac event, she said.
St. Vincent's Healthy Spirit magazine lists these five "super foods" that should be part of your diet:
1. Oatmeal: Oat bran in oatmeal is a good source of soluble fiber, which binds to cholesterol, helping to remove it from your body and lowering your LDL (bad) cholesterol. Other good fiber sources: kidney beans, apples, pears, citrus fruits, peas and Brussels sprouts.
2. Fish: Fatty types of fish are rich sources of omega-3 fatty acids, which lower blood pressure and triglycerides. Good sources: salmon, mackerel, lake trout, herring and alb
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'Lower heart risk for English'
English people living in Scotland are a fifth less likely to die from heart disease than those born north of the border, according to a new study.
Those who are born in other parts of the UK and move to Scotland are 20% less likely to die from heart problems, the study conducted at the University of Edinburgh found.
The precise reason for this difference is not known, but scientists suspect it is because many who move are well-off professionals.
This would make them less likely to develop bad habits associated with heart disease, lead author of the study Dr Colin Fischbacher said.
But this does not fully explain the difference, he said, and rates of heart disease in Scots are still worse than their lifestyles suggest.
Scotland has been branded heart attack capital of the UK. A British Heart Foundation survey earlier this year found an attack is suffered every 15 minutes, and 10% of Scots are believed to be living with some form of heart or circulatory disease.
Dr Fisc
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Heart Disease Kills More Women Under 45
For decades, heart disease death rates have been falling. But a new study shows a troubling turn, more women under 45 are dying of heart disease due to clogged arteries, and the death rate for men that age has leveled off.
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Heart disease death rates no longer dropping
After decades of decline, deaths due to heart disease appear to have leveled off among young men and may be trending upward in young women, according to research released Monday. This is likely due to poor health habits and the growing number of young Americans who are overweight or obese, researchers say. "Young adults should take stock of their lifestyles," Dr. Earl S. Ford, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, noted in a statement. "If you're smoking, you should quit. If you're doing less than 30 minutes of physical activity per day, it's time to find ways to be more active. If you need to lose weight, you should burn more calories than you take in."
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Obese Kids May Face Heart Risks Later
NEW YORK (AP) — The chicken nuggets are coming home to roost. By the time today's teens are middle age, the rate of heart disease could be 16 percent higher because of the extra pounds they are carrying around today, a U.S. study suggests.
A second study, by Danish researchers, documents a connection between excess weight in even younger kids and heart disease in adults — especially boys.
The two reports in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine may well be underestimating the future health effects of childhood obesity, said Dr. David Ludwig, director of an obesity program at Children's Hospital Boston.
"We've simply never had a generation that's been this heavy from so early in life. The consequences of that are unprecedented and unknown," said Ludwig, who was not involved in the research.
While the U.S. projections were based on a computer model, the Danish study is a large, decades-long look at what happened in real life to 277,000 children as they grew up. Some 14,5
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Children�s physical fitness should be priority in?Congress
Two recent studies published by the New England Journal of Medicine on childhood obesity provide greater evidence that children are in dire need of quality physical education programs in schools. Overweight children have an increased risk for heart disease in adulthood as early as age 25, and are prone to premature heart attacks and strokes. Bottom line, our children are in trouble, and particularly here in North Dakota.
Congress has an opportunity to help improve the health and well-being of our children by supporting the Fitness Integrated with Teaching Kids Act, which amends the No Child Left Behind Act to encourage schools to increase physical education and give children the tools they need to stay fit and healthy through adulthood. Not only is a fit child at less risk for future heart disease, studies show they also achieve more academically.
Currently, more than nine million children and adolescents ages 6 to 19 are considered overweight. In?2005, 24 percent of North Dakota
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Rheumatoid arthritis boosts heart disease threat
People diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis run a greater risk of developing heart disease.
But that risk can be spotted and hopefully modified by using the same criteria used to identify heart-disease risk in the general population, a new study suggests.
Those screening checks include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, older age, and family history of cardiovascular illness. And people diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) should be screened using those risk factors as soon as possible following their diagnosis of RA, the study authors said.
""The bottom-line is that RA patients are at increased risk of heart disease,"" said lead researcher Dr. Hilal Maradit Kremers, a research associate with the Mayo Clinic Department of Health Sciences Research in Rochester, Minn.
""But we need to know how can we predict which RA patients are at a higher risk than others, so that we can then put more effort in the prevention of heart disease in these people,"" she added. ""An
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Depression Linked To Death Following Heart Attack
ScienceDaily (Dec. 10, 2007) — Depression nearly triples the risk of death following a heart attack, even when accounting for other heart attack risk factors, according to research presented today at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) annual meeting, which showed that among 360 depressed, post myocardial infarction patients followed for more than six years, those who did not recover from their depression in the first six months were more than twice as likely to die.
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See also:
Health & Medicine
Heart Disease
Stroke Prevention
Chronic Illness
Mind & Brain
Depression
Stroke
Anxiety
Reference
Coronary heart disease
Ischaemic heart disease
Oily fish
Low density lipoprotein
This study was one of several presented at a panel which examined the links between depression and vascular disease. "There is an unequivocal link between depression and heart disease, but i
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Falls, fractures only tip of iceberg for winter woes
It took Terry Brandt’s wrist nearly a year to heal after he broke it. The reason for the damage: an icy fall during a task as simple as washing his wife’s car a few winters ago.
Speaking from experience, the Lebanon man offers some advice to people this time of year.
Be careful.
Brandt, 56, is one of millions of people who were — or will be — injured doing winter activities.
According to the American Heart Association, falls and frostbite may be the best-known dangers of cold weather, but they are far from the only ones. People with heart disease may suffer heart attacks while shoveling snow or serious complications if they catch the flu.
“We do see an increase in the flu virus this time of year,” said Dr. Steven Roda, the Emergency Department medical director at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Lebanon. So far, however, the state has seen only two cases of flu this year, he noted.
As of Thursday, Roda said, the hospital’s ER hasn’t seen many, if any, winter-related
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Ketchup fights heart disease
EATING tomato sauce every day can significantly help your heart, according to new research.
Tests show the popular sauce could be good for the heart by attacking 'bad' cholesterol, known as low-density lipoprotein.
Volunteers who added a few dollops of ketchup to their breakfast, lunch and tea, or drank a few glasses of tomato juice, saw their LDL levels drop significantly in the space of just three weeks.
Researchers from Finland who conducted the study at the University of Oulo in Finland said total cholesterol levels dropped by just under six per cent and LDL levels by almost 13 per cent.
They urged patients with high cholesterol to start eating ketchup or drinking tomato juice to help reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
In a report on the findings, published in the British Journal of Nutrition, they said: "The changes we saw can be regarded as significant, considering that the time period was only three weeks and all the volunteers had normal cholestero
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