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Source: Harvard Health Blog
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Total 13 results found since Jan 2013.
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
Diabetes drug pioglitazone could get personal: Neither panacea, nor peril
When I was in training, one of my beloved mentors declared, “I never use a drug until it’s been on the market for 20 years.” I was young enough then that I couldn’t fathom being a doctor for 20 years, let alone waiting two decades to use a new drug. As my career has progressed, I’ve seen many new drugs released to the market. Some of them are truly miraculous, bringing people longer, healthier, and more productive lives. Many of them have not withstood the test of time. More than a few have even been taken off the market. Even though the Food and Drug Administration diligently reviews each new medicine before it...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - May 5, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Lori Wiviott Tishler, MD, MPH Tags: Diabetes Drugs and Supplements pioglitazone thiazolidinediones Source Type: news
The many ways volunteering is good for your heart
If you do volunteer work, whether it’s at a school, soup kitchen, or senior center, perhaps you’ve experienced the emotional rewards of donating your time. What you might not realize, however, is that volunteering may offer some added advantages for your heart.
“There’s a growing body of research showing that volunteering is associated with better physical and mental health outcomes,” says Eric S. Kim, a research fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. A study he co-authored, published in Social Science and Medicine earlier this year, found that volunteers were more likely to use preventive healt...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - June 3, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Julie Corliss Tags: Behavioral Health Healthy Aging Heart Health Prevention Source Type: news
Sauna use linked to longer life, fewer fatal heart problems
After shoveling for days, breaking up ice dams, and now shivering in this week’s frigid temperatures, I wouldn’t mind sitting in a sauna for a bit. A new report in JAMA Internal Medicine makes this pastime even more appealing: regularly spending time in a sauna may help keep the heart healthy and extend life.
Researchers from the University of Eastern Finland tracked 2,300 middle-aged men for an average of 20 years. They categorized the men into three groups according to how often they used a sauna each week. The men spent an average of 14 minutes per visit baking in 175° F heat. Over the course of the study, ...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - February 25, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Beverly Merz Tags: Complementary and alternative medicine Heart Health sauna Source Type: news
Precision medicine is coming, but not anytime soon
President Obama’s announcement of a Precision Medicine Initiative was one of the few items in this year’s State of the Union address to garner bipartisan support. And for good reason. Precision medicine, also known as personalized medicine, offers the promise of health care — from prevention to diagnosis to treatment — based on your unique DNA profile. Who wouldn’t want that?
We’ve already had a taste of precision medicine. Relatively low-tech therapies like eyeglasses, orthotic devices, allergy treatments, and blood transfusions have long been personalized for the individual. Genetic analysis o...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - March 26, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Beverly Merz Tags: Health care personalized health care precision medicine Source Type: news
CPR during cardiac arrest: someone’s life is in your hands
Cardiac arrest is the ultimate 911 emergency. The heart stops sending blood to the body and brain, either because it is beating too fast and too erratically, or because it has stopped beating altogether. Oxygen-starved brain cells start to die. Death occurs in minutes — unless a bystander takes matters into his or her hands and starts cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).
Doing CPR keeps blood circulating until trained and better-equipped first responders arrive on the scene to jump-start the heart back into a normal rhythm.
“The brain is the most sensitive of the body’s organs to oxygen deprivation,” sa...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - July 23, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Daniel Pendick Tags: Heart Health cardiac arrest CPR 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
FDA warns parents about arsenic in rice cereal
Follow me at @drClaire
For years, rice cereal has been a go-to for parents when they start their babies on solid foods.
It’s time to change that.
In 2012, the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) issued a report warning about high levels of inorganic arsenic in rice and rice products. Rice plants are particularly good at absorbing arsenic from the soil, in particular because they grow in a lot of water. Inorganic arsenic is a common ingredient in pesticides and other products used in farming, and can linger in the soil for a long time after it is used. It can be poisonous. In high doses it is lethal, but even small...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - April 5, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Children's Health Parenting Safety Source Type: news
3 reasons your child shouldn’t go “gluten-free” (unless your doctor says so)
Follow me at @drClaire
There is a puzzling and worrisome new phenomenon that I am seeing as a pediatrician: parents who are putting their children on gluten-free diets.
It’s puzzling because in the vast majority of cases it isn’t necessary — and it’s worrisome because, although parents are doing it because they think it’s healthy, a gluten-free diet can be very unhealthy for children.
Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye, barley, and some other grains. It’s in bread and other baked goods, cereals, pastas — and in many other foods in small amounts. For people with celiac disease, even those small amounts ca...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - June 7, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Children's Health Healthy Eating Parenting Source Type: news
A bummer for kids: Nasal flu vaccine not effective
Follow me at @drClaire
Every year, many of my patients have been able to skip the needle — and still get vaccinated against the flu. That was the great thing about the nasal spray version of the flu vaccine, known as the LAIV (live attenuated influenza vaccine): kids scared of needles could get a squirt up each nostril and be all set.
This coming flu season, everyone is getting the shot.
It turns out that the nasal spray just didn’t work that well. Despite studies from the 2002-2003 and 2004-2005 flu seasons that seemed to show that the nasal spray actually worked better than the shot in children ages 2-8 years, over t...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - June 28, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Children's Health Cold and Flu Infectious diseases Parenting Prevention Source Type: news
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 14, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Robert H. Shmerling, MD Tags: Dental Health Prevention Source Type: news
