Filtered By:
Condition: Hypertension
Education: Harvard

This page shows you your search results in order of relevance.

Order by Relevance | Date

Total 81 results found since Jan 2013.

Special MRI scan could identify stroke risk in people with atrial fibrillation
Atrial fibrillation is a heart rhythm disorder that affects millions of people. It can make you feel lousy. Even worse, it can cause potentially disabling or deadly strokes. A special MRI scan may — I stress the “may” — help identify people with atrial fibrillation who are at high risk of having a stroke. This could help many people with this condition to avoid taking warfarin or other clot-preventing medications for life. A normal heartbeat starts in a cluster of cells called the pacemaker. It sits in the heart’s upper right chamber (the right atrium). These cells generate a pulse of electricity that...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - April 28, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Howard LeWine, M.D. Tags: Heart Health atrial fibrillation MRI prevention special MRI scan Stroke Stroke Risk Source Type: news

Folic acid, a B vitamin, lowers stroke risk in people with high blood pressure
If you’re among the one in three American adults with high blood pressure, be sure you’re getting plenty of the B vitamin known as folate. Doing so may lower your odds of having a stroke, an often disabling or deadly event linked to high blood pressure, a new study suggests. Folate occurs naturally in many foods, but especially green leafy vegetables, beans, and citrus fruits. Here in the United States, add to the list most grain products, including wheat flour, cornmeal, pasta, and rice. They are fortified with the synthetic version of folate, known as folic acid. That’s not the case in many countries ar...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - March 18, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Julie Corliss Tags: Drugs and Supplements Hypertension and Stroke high blood pressure Source Type: news

8 ways to prevent a stroke
This year, nearly half a million women will have a stroke. The June 2013 Harvard Women's Health Watch offers eight steps women can take to limit the chances a stroke will strike. Women can't do anything about two leading contributors to stroke—age and family history. But there are many other stroke risk factors they can control. Becoming aware of them is the first step. "Knowledge is power," says Dr. Natalia Rost, associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and associate director of the Acute Stroke Service at Massachusetts General Hospital. "If you know that a particular risk factor is sabotaging your...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - May 31, 2013 Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news

10 steps to lower stroke risk
More than two dozen factors influence the odds of having a stroke. Some can't be changed, like getting older or having a family history of stroke. But a surprising number of these factors can be controlled, even when an underlying medical condition further ups the risk of stroke, reports the August 2013 Harvard Heart Letter. "Stroke is potentially one of the most devastating illnesses that we see, and it's especially tragic when simply taking good care of one's blood pressure or some other preventive measure might have averted it," says Dr. Thomas Lee, MD, co-editor in chief of the Harvard Heart Letter. There are two basic...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - August 1, 2013 Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news

Depression Could Double Stroke Risk In People Over 50
Published: May 13, 2015 04:35pm ET by LiveScience. People who have depression for a long time may be at increased risk for stroke, a new study suggests. Researchers found that adults ages 50 and older who had symptoms of depression that lasted more than two years were twice as likely to have a stroke in the following two years, compared with men and women of similar age with no signs of depression. "The exact pathway through which depressive symptoms may lead to stroke remains unclear, and is an important area for future research," said study lead author Paola Gilsanz, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard T.H. Cha...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - May 14, 2015 Category: Science Source Type: news

Johnson & Johnson Launches Heartline ™, the First-of-its-Kind, Virtual Study Designed to Explore if a New iPhone App and Apple Watch Can Help Reduce the Risk of Stroke
New Brunswick, NJ, February 25, 2020 — Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) today announced that the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, in collaboration with Apple, opened enrollment for the Heartline™ Study. The study is designed to explore if the Heartline™ Study app on iPhone and heart health features on Apple Watch can improve health outcomes, including reducing the risk of stroke, with earlier detection of atrial fibrillation (AFib). AFib, a common form of irregular heart rhythm, is a leading cause of stroke in the U.S. To enroll in the Heartline™ Study, individuals must be age 65 or older...
Source: Johnson and Johnson - February 25, 2020 Category: Pharmaceuticals Tags: Innovation Source Type: news

Reversing the effects of the new anti-clotting drugs
The oral anticoagulant warfarin (Coumadin) became available for prescription in 1954. This anti-clotting drug commanded national attention when President Dwight Eisenhower received the drug as part of his treatment following a heart attack. No other oral anticoagulant was successfully developed and marketed in the United States until 2010. Warfarin is a dangerous drug. Along with insulin, it is responsible for the most emergency hospitalizations due to adverse drug reactions. Whereas insulin causes low blood sugar, warfarin is notorious for the complication of major bleeding. Warfarin is plagued by hundreds of drug-drug an...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - December 9, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Samuel Z. Goldhaber, MD Tags: Drugs and Supplements Health Heart Health Hypertension and Stroke anti-clotting coumadin deep-vein-thrombosis DVT Source Type: news

Only the overworked die young
Follow me at @JohnRossMD Billy Joel was on to something. As the singer-songwriter suggested in “Movin’ Out,” working too hard really can give you a “heart attack-ack-ack…” And, as a recent study has also shown, stroke may be an even bigger problem than heart attack in people who are overworked. For the study, researchers from University College London compiled data on the relationship between working hours and heart attack risk in over 600,000 workers, as well as similar data on stroke risk in over 500,000 workers. They adjusted their data to compensate for individual workers’ differences due to healt...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - December 14, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Ross, MD, FIDSA Tags: Behavioral Health Heart Health Hypertension and Stroke Prevention Stress overworked Source Type: news

Mild high blood pressure in young adults linked to heart problems later in life
Editor’s note: Since 2000, Dr. Howard LeWine and other other experts from Harvard Health Publications and Harvard Medical School have been writing daily News Reviews for InteliHealth.com. Sadly, InteliHealth shuts down tomorrow. This is the final (4,255th) news review written by the Harvard Health team. Young adults with even slightly above-normal blood pressure may be more likely to have heart problems later in life, according to a new study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The study focused on nearly 2,500 men and women who were 18 to 30 years old when the study began. Researchers kept track o...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - June 23, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Howard LeWine, M.D. Tags: Heart Health Hypertension and Stroke prehypertension Source Type: news

Update on the SPRINT trial: Preliminary results pan out
In a previous blog, I reported on the preliminary results from SPRINT, a clinical trial that examined whether a systolic blood pressure target of 120 mm Hg or less would be better than a target of 140 mm Hg in patients with hypertension (high blood pressure). The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health issued a press release with the exciting results. Now, the full paper has been published in The New England Journal of Medicine, and the results appear to be as practice-changing at it initially seemed, demonstrating a stricter blood pressure goal can reduce the likelihood of dying. In ...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - November 9, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Deepak Bhatt, MD, MPH Tags: Health Heart Health Hypertension and Stroke 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

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

Daily low-dose aspirin can prevent heart attack and stroke but is often misused
Aspirin is often hailed as a wonder drug, thanks to its ability to help stave off heart attacks and clot-caused strokes. But fewer than half of people who could benefit from a daily low-dose aspirin take it, while many others take it when they shouldn't, reports the January 2014 Harvard Heart Letter. If you don't have heart disease, but do have high blood pressure, diabetes, or other risk factors for heart disease, don't automatically assume that taking aspirin every day is a good idea. "A lot of people take aspirin who really shouldn't," says Dr. Christopher Cannon, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and profe...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - December 20, 2013 Category: Consumer Health News 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

Strokes 'may be linked to temperature', study finds
Conclusion This retrospective study reports that there is an association between lower temperature and increased humidity and a slightly increased risk of ischaemic stroke. It was a large study, but there are several major limitations of this study design: The temperature was matched with discharge dates. There is a wide variation in the length of hospitalisation after a stroke, so the temperature at discharge may be very different to the temperature when the stroke occurred. The researchers assumed that changes in outdoor air temperature would have been experienced by all of the people who suffered from a stroke. It...
Source: NHS News Feed - February 13, 2014 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Lifestyle/exercise Neurology Source Type: news