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Specialty: Consumer Health News
Source: Harvard Health Blog
Condition: Heart Disease
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Total 39 results found since Jan 2013.
Tossing flossing?
The burning question in the news last week was this: should you bother flossing?
The answer for decades has been “of course.” And it’s likely you’ve heard something similar from your dentist. I know I have.
But, while the importance of flossing may have been widely accepted, the evidence supporting it turns out to be surprisingly thin. At least that’s the conclusion of health experts who developed the recently released Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2015-2020. These guidelines are issued every five years by the U.S. Department of Health and Humans Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture “…to reflec...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - August 17, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Robert H. Shmerling, MD Tags: Dental Health Prevention Source Type: news
For the good of your heart: Keep holding the salt
Your doctor has probably told you to cut back on salt, especially if you have high blood pressure. For years we’ve understood that excess salt raises blood pressure and increases deaths from heart disease. The guilty element is sodium, which pairs with chloride to form common salt. So when the journal Lancet recently published a study reporting that low dietary sodium was associated with an increased risk of heart disease and death, controversy was predictable.
A wealth of rigorous scientific studies supports a link between excess sodium intake and high blood pressure, heart attacks, and strokes. Yet the Lancet paper rep...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - July 11, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Naomi D. L. Fisher, MD Tags: Healthy Eating Heart Health Hypertension and Stroke Prevention Source Type: news
Farewell to the fasting cholesterol test?
At a recent meeting I offered a visitor lunch which she declined with obvious regret. She was hungry, and it was noon. But she was headed to her annual physical, and eating beforehand would mean returning another morning for a fasting cholesterol level. Most of us can relate to her annoyance, but thankfully this may soon be a thing of the past.
Doctors have traditionally ordered cholesterol tests to be drawn after an overnight fast. But this requirement causes a significant burden on both sides of the health care equation. Most people hate to fast. Skipping meals is particularly difficult for active people, people with dia...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - June 16, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Naomi D. L. Fisher, MD Tags: Health Heart Health Prevention Screening Tests and procedures Source Type: news
High blood pressure: Why me?
“I go to the gym, and I never add salt. So why do I have high blood pressure?” Despite its astonishing prevalence of one in three Americans, many people struggle with the diagnosis of high blood pressure, or hypertension. It’s worth exploring why, because being an active participant in your care is crucial for optimal blood pressure control.
Certain features make any diagnosis easier to accept:
First, people are more likely to accept a diagnosis if they have symptoms. A person with cough and fever will believe a diagnosis of pneumonia. But someone who feels fine would not.
Next, people more readily accept a diagnosi...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - May 2, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Naomi D. L. Fisher, MD Tags: Behavioral Health Health care Heart Health Hypertension and Stroke Prevention Screening high blood pressure Source Type: news
Teens may need to be much thinner if they want to be healthy adults
Follow me at @drClaire
We’ve long known that being overweight can lead to cardiovascular disease and early death. We also know that being overweight as a teen makes it more likely that someone will be overweight as an adult, which is why we pediatricians talk so much to teens and their parents about getting to — and staying at — a healthy weight.
But we may have set the bar too low. A study just published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) says that if we really want to prevent heart disease in adulthood, our teens should be much thinner than we currently tell them to be.
The number doctors use to figure o...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - April 19, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Children's Health Parenting Prevention Source Type: news
How much should teens weigh to prevent heart disease as adults?
Follow me at @drClaire
We’ve long known that being overweight can lead to cardiovascular disease and early death. We also know that being overweight as a teen makes it more likely that someone will be overweight as an adult, which is why we pediatricians talk so much to teens and their parents about getting to — and staying at — a healthy weight.
But we may have set the bar too low. A study just published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) says that if we really want to prevent heart disease in adulthood, our teens should be much thinner than we currently tell them to be.
The number doctors use to figure o...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - April 19, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Children's Health Parenting Prevention Source Type: news
Understanding the heart attack gender gap
Imagine someone in the throes of a heart attack. If you pictured a man clutching his chest in agony, that’s understandable. At younger ages, men face a greater risk of heart disease than women. On average, a first heart attack — the most common manifestation of this prevalent disease — strikes men at age 65. For women, the average age of a first heart attack is 72.
However, heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States for both genders. In fact, since 1984, more women have died of heart disease than men each year, although that is partly because women generally live longer than men.
So why do middl...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - April 15, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Julie Corliss Tags: Health Heart Health Women's Health Source Type: news
A twist on the genetic link between Alzheimer’s and heart disease
Alzheimer’s disease often strikes fear in people’s hearts because it gradually erodes a person’s ability to remember, think, and learn. There is no cure, and available treatments alleviate symptoms only temporarily. An estimated 5.3 million Americans currently have Alzheimer’s disease, yet this brain disorder is far less common than heart disease. More than 85 million people in the United States are living with some form of cardiovascular disease or the after-effects of stroke, which also affects brain function.
Many people don’t realize that Alzheimer’s and heart disease share a genetic link: the apolipoprotei...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - March 25, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Julie Corliss Tags: Alzheimer's Disease Behavioral Health Brain and cognitive health Genes Healthy Aging Heart Health Memory Mental Health Source Type: news
Decline in dementia rate offers “cautious hope”
“The number of Americans with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias will grow each year as the size and proportion of the U.S. population age 65 and older continue to increase. The number will escalate rapidly in coming years as the baby boom generation ages.”
2015 Alzheimer’s disease Facts and Figures
Despite these alarming projections, a report from a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) offered a few words of encouragement. Researchers from the longstanding Framingham study found that the rate of dementia has declined over the course of three decades.
Framingham researchers had been study...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - March 9, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Beverly Merz Tags: Alzheimer's Disease Behavioral Health Brain and cognitive health Caregiving Healthy Aging Memory Mental Health Prevention cognitive decline dementia Source Type: news
Four new recommendations for adolescent health
The yearly “check-up” is the perfect (perhaps only) time to not only see how kids are growing and give any needed shots, but to see how they are doing more generally — and help be sure that they grow into healthy, happy adults. After all, prevention is really what pediatrics is all about.
That’s why the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has a checklist for pediatricians called “Recommendations for Preventive Pediatric Health Care.” These recommendations, which are updated every few years, are based on the most up-to-date research about the health of children now — and in the future.
While the latest versio...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - January 4, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Children's Health Parenting Prevention Source Type: news
Do statins interfere with the flu vaccine?
Statins are powerful, unusual, and, like El Niño and Tom Cruise, not well understood. Statins have a huge upside. They improve survival after heart attacks and lower the risk of recurrent strokes. They are also the only cholesterol-lowering medications that have been clearly shown to reduce heart attacks and deaths in high-risk patients without heart disease. In addition to reducing cholesterol, statins also lower levels of inflammation in the body. Reducing inflammation probably helps statins to prevent heart attack and stroke. However, evidence is emerging that these statin effects may also have a downside, hindering th...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - November 30, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Ross, MD, FIDSA Tags: Cold and Flu Drugs and Supplements Health Heart Health Vaccines flu vaccine statins Source Type: news
Gout: Sleep apnea may raise your risk
Gout is the most common type of inflammatory arthritis and affects more than 8 million adults. Men are at a higher risk than women. And according to a new study, your risk for gout also climbs if you suffer from sleep apnea, a condition where your breathing repeatedly pauses while you sleep.
What exactly is gout?
Gout is triggered by the crystallization of uric acid within the joints. It happens like this: Your body produces uric acid from breaking down purines, a natural waste product of living cells. Normally, uric acid is dissolved in your blood and passes through your kidneys into your urine.
However, sometimes your bo...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - November 17, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Matthew Solan Tags: Arthritis Health Sleep gout sleep apnea Source Type: news
The type of fat you eat matters!
By: JoAnn E. Manson, MD, DrPH, and Shari S. Bassuk, ScD
Contributing Editors, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
If you saw last month’s news headlines declaring that saturated fat is no longer deemed harmful to your heart, you may be (understandably!) confused. After all, for years, clinicians and scientists have recommended reducing saturated fat for heart health. Is it time to rethink this advice? Hardly. Here’s the deal.
The research that sparked the recent news splash was an analysis by Canadian researchers of up to a dozen long-term observational studies of diet that included a total of 90,000...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - September 22, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Contributing Editors Tags: Health Healthy Eating Fats saturated fats unsaturated fats Source Type: news
The SPRINT trial: A major advance in treating high blood pressure
This study was sponsored primarily by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health. This trial is a wonderful example of the kind of long-term, large-scale clinical trials that are necessary to advance patient care meaningfully. The study results also illustrate the importance of randomized clinical trials — that is, studies in which patients are randomly assigned to one of two treatment arms. Lastly, credit must be given to the participants who consented to be enrolled in the study. They have generously and selflessly contributed to advancing medical science and improving the care o...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - September 16, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Deepak Bhatt, MD, MPH Tags: Hypertension and Stroke high blood pressure Source Type: news
