Blood Test for Heart Failure
A new blood test may be able to correctly diagnose heart failure about 90 percent of the time in emergency room patients. Researchers studied nearly 1,600 patients at seven hospitals in the Unites States,...
Category: Cardiovascular Health
Aspirin: Is it Good for You and Your Heart?
Eighty billion aspirin tablets are taken every year to cure pain, inflammation and fevers and even for its cardioprotective effects. But is aspirin right for you? The answer, say doctors, lies in measuring your...
Atherosclerosis
Atherosclerosis, or arteriosclerosis, is a buildup of fat deposits on the walls of your arteries. These deposits cause cartilage in the arteries to lose elasticity and the artery walls to become hard and thick....
February is All About Your Heart Health
It can flutter with love, race in anxiety, or pound with excitement. Whatever it’s doing, your beating heart’s health must be protected so that you can keep living the crazy adventure that is your...
Common heart-health myths exposed
HEART DISEASE IS the leading cause of death in the United States, so it’s crucial that people understand the facts. All too often conventional wisdom is way off the mark, say many doctors, and...
Genes to re-grow heart
Doctors may finally be successful in growing new heart cells. Research reported in the Circulation journal details the results of a new study to understand more about the treatment of a common heart problem...
New Insight Into Cardiovascular Disease
A seldom-measured amino acid that is circulating in your blood may be an indication of cardiovascular disease. It is called homocysteine, and an increasing number of physicians and researchers are acknowledging that high levels...
Transplanted Hearts and Lungs: Discovering Ways To Keep Them Alive And Growing
The reasons people require lung transplantation are three sets of diseases. One is emphysema which most people are aware is where the lung sort of dilates up. It doesn’t have the ability to really...
Eat to Cut Your Risk for Heart Disease
Check out your pantry. Take stock of your fridge. Experts believe what you eat can play a critical role in cutting your risk for heart disease. As part of our special report, “Healthy Cooking,”...
Omega-3 Fatty Acid Supplements
A new study shows daily supplements of the fatty acid found in fish oil may reduce the risk of sudden death in patients who have recently suffered a heart attack. Patients who took omega-3...
Improper cholesterol levels
Cholesterol is a primary concern when addressing heart health, and the standard lipid panel tests of total, LDL, and HDL cholesterol levels are very valid indicators of risks for cardiovascular disease. Believe it or...
What Happens When Heart Disease Advances too Far?
For patients with congestive heart failure, treatments are limited to a heart transplant. However, a new heart procedure currently under development shows promise as a future alternative to heart transplant surgery. Autologous skeletal myoblast...
Making Lifestyle Changes to Stop Heart Disease
Scientists have identified the first gene confirmed as a cause of coronary heart disease in humans. The gene, MEF2A, was discovered by studying the genetic makeup of 21 members of an Iowa family that...
Preventing Heart Disease
Heart disease is virtually preventable. It is a disease that develops during the teen years but does not usually present until a person is in his or her 50s, 60s or 70s. There are...
Breakthrough Heart Disease Medications
High-Dose Statins For people recovering from heart attacks, drugs called statins are already standard medicine. Statins, such as Pravachol and Lipitor help patients lower their cholesterol levels. According to the American Heart Association, 42...
Vitamin C and Heart Disease
What happens when bodies don’t get enough Vitamin C? There is too little reproduction of the reinforcement molecules called collagen which make up not only the bones, but also the skin, the organs, the...
Do calcium supplements have the same positive effect for your heart?
Yes. There is some evidence that taking just some form of calcium supplement can have the same effect. However, at this point in time, it looks like that actually something about the combination of...
What is fish’s role in protecting your heart?
Fish is really becoming a superstar so to speak when it comes to heart health primarily because it’s such a great source of the omega-3 fatty acids. These omega-3 fatty acids do a number...
Heart Disease Q&A
What is the prevalence of heart diseases in Americans? Heart disease is the biggest killer of all of the chronic diseases. Cancer comes second. They say if you don’t die of heart disease you’re...
Ways to track your risk for cardiovascular disease
Carotid Ultrasound IMT Score Not surprisingly perhaps, the health of the carotid arteries (the ones that carry oxygen and nutrients to the brain) can give great insight into the health of the cardiovascular system...
Morning Blood Pressure Surge Linked to Stroke Risk
High blood pressure is diagnosed when a person’s systolic or top number is higher than 140 and a person’s diastolic pressure, or the bottom number, is greater than 90. Often patients undergo an ambulatory...
Coronary computerized tomography (CT) Scans
Once you reach the age of forty, annual physicals are a first line of detection for risk factors of cardiovascular and other life-threatening diseases. Typically your doctor will give you a standard battery of...