Your Healthy Heart

Having a Heart Attack? Not on a Weekend

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 13:01:00 -0800

Well, the best option is not to have a heart attack at all. But if you have one and are admitted to the hospital on a weekend, you have a 5 percent higher risk of dying in the following month than if you were admitted on a weekday.

That's the conclusion of a study of about 230,000 patients hospitalized for a first heart attack, published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine. ...

Quiz: Your Heart-Health Nutrition Knowledge

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 20:21:00 -0800

Everyone knows that a healthy diet is one way to help prevent cardiovascular disease and possibly avoid taking medications.

But you may be confused about which dietary recommendations to follow, because they change over time and the media doesn't always keep up with the latest guidelines. This heart-health quiz will give you an idea of how well you're keeping up.

If you can answer all of the questions below correctly, you are already savvy about heart-healthy nutrition. ...

Finding the Trans Fats

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 02:53:00 -0800

I was pleasantly surprised the other day when my wife brought home a brand of margarine whose package proclaimed that the product contained no trans fats. I hope this statement is accurate and not just an advertising ploy.

Trans fats are the unhealthiest kind of fat because they raise LDL cholesterol and lower protective HDL cholesterol. ...

Lifelong Low LDL Cholesterol: Are You Off the Hook?

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 16:20:00 -0800

Some people are fortunate enough to have an uncommon genetic variant that speeds the removal of harmful low-density lipoprotein (LDL) from the blood - these lucky people have significantly lower LDL cholesterol levels throughout their lives.

In fact, recently published research has found that the 2.6 percent of blacks in the study who carried this beneficial genetic mutation had LDL cholesterol levels 28 percent lower than those without the mutation; and the 3. ...

Low-Carb vs. Low-Fat Diets

Sun, 09 Sep 2007 21:52:00 -0800

Will the debate about the relative virtues of low-carbohydrate vs. low-fat diets for weight loss never end? All the chatter is doubly annoying since, until now, all the talk is backed up by little data comparing the two diets.

A recent review of multiple scientific studies (a "meta-analysis") examined the findings of five controlled clinical trials involving 222 people on low-carbohydrate diets and 225 on low-fat diets. ...

Assessing Your Heart Attack and Stroke Risk

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 06:26:00 -0800

Are there accurate ways to predict the likelihood that you will have, or die from, a heart attack or stroke in the near future?

Quite a few "biomarkers," or predictors, of these dire events have been discovered. But how helpful are these tests? You shouldn't have to pay for tests you may not really need.

Researchers examined 10 of these biomarkers in more than 3,000 participants in the long-term Framingham Heart Study to see which ones were most useful. ...

Waist-to-Hip Ratio vs. BMI: What's the Better Heart Disease Predictor?

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 09:29:00 -0800

Researchers have put their seal of approval on a simple, do-it-yourself method to accurately assess your risk of acute heart trouble.

Up to now, BMI (body mass index) has been the time-honored measure of the coronary risk associated with overweight and obesity. ...

How Hard Should You Exercise?

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:32:00 -0800

When it comes to exercising, the trick is to work out hard enough to produce heart-healthy benefits and yet not so fiercely that you do yourself harm. Luckily, there are several easy ways to determine whether your level of activity is helping or harming you:

The talk test. You have exceeded the moderate-intensity level if you are breathing so hard that you cannot carry on a normal conversation.
The "8 to 20" scale. ...

Know the Latest Recommendations to Protect Your Heart

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 20:10:00 -0800

When I came across these recommendations in the journal Circulation, I decided to provide them to my readers almost verbatim because they represent such a concise, yet sweeping, description of heart-healthy lifestyle measures, as well as the proper choices of foods and their preparation.
My own recommendations on how to implement them are in italics. ...

Diabetes Ups Heart Disease Risk 15 Years Earlier

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 14:57:34 -0800

If you have diabetes, you probably already know about your increased risk for heart disease and stroke. But did you know that the risk of atherosclerosis (narrowing of the arteries) and its associated risks - heart disease, stroke, and peripheral artery disease - appear earlier in people with diabetes?
You should care about this because heart attacks and strokes are responsible for about 75 percent of deaths in people with diabetes. ...