Stocks, Weather, and Heart Attacks

Is there a link between the stock market and heart health? Researchers from Duke University think there might be. Researchers studied heart attack treatment data from Duke University’s hospital. They started with December 2007 — the beginning of the current recession — and stopped with the signs of economic recovery in July 2009. As Nasdaq stock market numbers sank, the number of heart attacks treated tended to rise. During the period studied, close to one thousand people suffered heart attacks and were treated at Duke University. Researchers found that when the stock market recovered, the number of heart attacks went … Continue reading →

Checking in with Your Pulse

Do you check your pulse? It’s not something I do very often… but it may actually be a useful way to keep an eye out for heart disease! Your pulse is your heart rate — how many times your heart beats in a minute. Everyone’s heart rate is different, but the average pulse at rest for children (between six and fifteen) is 70-100 beats per minute. The average pulse for adults (ages eighteen and up) is 60-100 beats per minute. (Information provided by the Cleveland Clinic.) When you exercise, your pulse increases — this is so your body can provide … Continue reading →

Four Months without a Heart

A fourteen year old South Carolina girl survived for more than one hundred days without a heart in her chest. Since July 2008, D’Zhana Simmons had two heart transplants — and survived with artificial heart pumps instead of a heart between the two surgeries. That’s a total of one hundred and eighteen days without an actual heart in her chest. When the Simmons family found out that D’Zhana had an enlarged heart that was too weak to pump blood properly, they traveled to Holtz Children’s Hospital in Miami for a transplant. The heart she received in July 2008 didn’t work … Continue reading →

Calming Tachycardia

Tachycardia is any heartbeat faster than one hundred beats per minute. It can come on suddenly, and may bring shortness of breath, nausea, sweating, and panic. There are different kinds of tachycardia — some life-threatening and some not. If you are experiencing rapid heartbeat, you should talk to your doctor. A visit to the office and a few tests can rule out dangerous types of tachycardia. If you have a NOT life-threatening form of tachycardia — paroxysmal atrial tachycardia — these tips may help calm your racing heart. Cut back (or cut out) stimulants like coffee, tea, and soda. Overuse … Continue reading →

Wear Red Day: Friday, February 6, 2009

Pull something red out of your closet on Friday — it’s National Wear Red Day here in America. Why wear red? Heart disease is the number one killer of women in America. Wear red to help support heart disease awareness for women! It doesn’t matter what you wear — shirt, dress, socks, tie, hat — as long as it’s red. National Wear Red Day and the Heart Truth campaign come from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes for Health. The goal of these campaigns is simple: spread the message about how serious heart disease … Continue reading →

Three Major Indicators of Heart Attack

The signs of a heart attack can be subtle. Remember my friend who didn’t realize he had a heart attack? Not everyone experiences the same symptoms in the same way when they’re having a heart attack. Knowing yourself is a great way to start. Are you familiar with your risk factors? Have you had your cholesterol levels and blood pressure tested within the last year? If you aren’t at high risk for a heart attack, that chest pain might be gas or heartburn. That pain in your arm might be from rearranging the furniture. But if you are at risk, … Continue reading →

Heart Attack Survivors and Episodic Chest Pain

A study from the University of Colorado and the Denver Veterans Affairs Medical Center took a look at angina — episodic chest pain — in heart attack survivors. Bad enough to suffer a heart attack, but to have to live with weekly or daily chest pain, too? It happens more often than you might think. Nearly two thousand heart attack survivors participated in the study. Approximately twenty percent of the participants reported some kind of chest pain one year after the heart attack. That’s one out of every five heart attack survivors! One percent of patients reported daily chest pain. … Continue reading →

The Right Incentive Can Help You Fight Heart Disease

Are you at risk for heart disease? Are you already suffering from some form of heart disease — like high blood pressure or high cholesterol? Here’s a more important question: what are you doing about your heart disease risk, and why? Are you losing weight, eating a healthy, balanced diet, and exercising regularly? Or are you just coasting along and not making any lifestyle changes in order to reduce your risk? Cardiologists report that having the right incentives for fighting heart disease are just as important (sometimes more important) than anything else. Look at my mom, for example. She has … Continue reading →

Coated Stents

Stents are the tubes inserted into arteries to help them stay open after angioplasty (surgery to remove clots). Right now, surgeons are using stents coated with drugs. Italian researchers are trying out a new type of coated stent with some success. These new stents are coated with a special compound that is designed to help prevent thrombosis (the formation of clots) and restenosis (the buildup of deposits that can clog blood vessels). The compound was developed by CeloNova Biosciences here in the United States and tested out by the University of Catania in Italy. The coating was designed to reduce … Continue reading →

Strengthen Your Core, Protect Your Heart

Cardiovascular exercise is a great way to protect your heart. So is weight training! Experts suggest that people who are at risk for heart disease undergo a functional exercise program. Functional exercise works many muscle groups in different directions against a source of resistance. Some examples of functional exercise include shoveling snow, raking leaves, and vacuuming the house. You can often get the same results by doing a variety of different exercises — like combining a Pilates class with free weight training. Functional exercise helps build muscle mass, thanks to the resistance portion. As you build muscle mass, you raise … Continue reading →