What Is The Impact of Smoking on Vascular Disease?
Smoking is one of the very strong risk factors for developing vascular disease. We have seen very young people who smoke develop vascular disease. Normally as our arteries become blocked, it is a part of aging. Most of the patients with vascular disease are in the 60's, 70s and beyond. But one who smokes very heavily, someone who started smoking very early in their teens, one who smokes one or two packs a day regularly... we see that they get vascular disease 10 to 20 years earlier. Some people in their 40s have severe vascular disease. So there is no question that smoking is a strong risk factor.
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Are Certain Thin People Actually Obese?
Research suggests that thin people may not be as healthy as they appear.
Medical researchers at Imperial College, London, have shown that people with low or average body weight may not be healthy on the inside. These doctors believe that internal fat surrounding various vital organs could be as detrimental to health as is the more obvious (subcutaneous) fat found directly under the skin. This internal lining of fat is invisible to the naked eye but is detected by MRI machines that create "fat maps" displaying where concentrations of this internal fat are stored.
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Reducing Stress Lowers Risk of Cardiovascular Problems
AMERICAN HEART—YOGA, WEDDING BLISS, AND BP CONTROL
Exercise
Outdoor Secondhand Smoke
Studies reveal the hidden dangers behind outdoor secondhand smoke exposure.
A 2006 U.S. Surgeon General's Report claims secondhand smoke kills tens of thousands of people each year, and it has long been claimed that second hand smoke can be dangerous through indoor exposure. However little is known about the risks of outdoor inhalation. Recent research from Stanford University examines how smoking can affect the quality of air at park benches, sidewalk cafes and other public places. Researchers concluded that sitting a few feet downwind of a smoker can leave someone exposed to contaminated fumes that are much more concentrated than normal air pollution levels.
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AMERICAN HEART—YOGA, WEDDING BLISS, AND BP CONTROL
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Vigorous Exercise with Age
People who sustain a highly active lifestyle gain less weight as they age.
A new study by Paul Williams of Berkeley Lab has found that maintaining a vigorously active lifestyle can help offset gaining weight with age. The data comes from the National Runners' Health Study which conducted 20 years of research on 120,000 runners. The runners maintained a weekly mileage over the course of 7 years. The men and women who ran over 30 miles per week gained half the weight of others that ran less than 15 miles.
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Potential Exercise Pill
A new study conducted on mice reveals the potential for a drug that can give the same results as exercise.
At the Salk Institute, Dr. Ronald Evans has engineered a drug for mice that chemically stimulates a key receptor known as peroxisome profliferators-activated receptor that controls the ability of cells to burn fat. The PPARd activates a set of genes that coordinates fatty acid oxidation and energy uncoupling which are the same cellular processes that occur from exercise.
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Are Certain Thin People Actually Obese?
Artherolsclerosis
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Lupus Awareness
October is lupus awareness month. It’s a disease that affects predominantly women, and many aren’t aware of it even when they do have it.
Lupus affects perhaps 1.5 million Americans, it hits women compared to men in a 9 to 1 ratio, and it affects the African American population in particular.
The problem: many women—especially those 18 to 24, those most likely to get it-- don’t know anything about this disease, its signs or symptoms.
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Psoriasis and Heart Attack Risk
There is new evidence that an extremely common skin condition is associated with an elevated risk for heart attack.
We’re talking about psoriasis, which affects about 2 to 3 percent of the adult population.
As if this condition isn’t bad enough--bear in mind, it can be extensive and really affect one’s way of life because of the problems with the skin itself.
But now, there’s new evidence it is associated with deadly cardiovascular disease. You know, it’s sometimes referred to as the heartbreak of psoriasis.
And that couldn’t be farther from the truth, in a literal sense.
New research in the latest Journal of the American Medical Association shows that adults with psoriasis, especially younger individuals, are at an increased risk for heart attack.
Dr. Joel Gelfand, the lead researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, says, “Psoriasis is such a complicated disease; most people that develop the disease earlier in life, in their 20s and 30s, it may be that these folks are the ones who may have the highest risk of developing uh heart attacks related to psoriasis if their disease is severe, as opposed to people who develop psoriasis later on in life.”
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Hearts and Harps
If you could wake up from anesthesia with your ipod in your ears, what music would you choose to hear?
Music therapy is now being used in some of the most critical postoperative patients.
There’s no question, adrenaline is bad for the heart, especially after open heart surgery.
So why not expose the patient to something soothing and calming…
While beeps and suction is the typical sound of an intensive care unit, at Morristown Memorial Hospital the appearance of a harp in the cardiac post anesthesia care unit or c-pac for short looks even more out of place.
But therein lies its benefit.
“It was very relaxing and in here you need something relaxing because everything else unnerves you. In fact I think I went to sleep,” says Don Bashford who just had open heart valve surgery. He says the harp was in fact healing. “It’s not the kind of music I normally listen to, but how many people have a chance to listen to harp music,” says Don.
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Migraines and Cardiovascular
They’re painful, they’re debilitating, but could migraines also be deadly?
New research says that at least one in five migraine sufferers, if not more, are at an increased risk of death.
At the age of 35, Hailey McDad is one of them. That’s because she suffers from migraines with aura. “My hands will tingle, my finger tips will tingle, and I see blurry vision, so I know right away I have to medicate myself, so those are my warning signs,” says Hailey.
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Heart Failure Device
“Back in 94 I was laying down Christmas Eve and my heart started racing and when I got here my heart rate was 250 beats.” Ronald McClarin has a dangerous heart rhythm--which is why doctors put into him an ICD--an implantable cardioverter. It keeps his heart beating regularly…and shocks it when the rhythm has gone arhy.
But pacemakers and ICDs do fail from time to time.
There are more and more pacemakers and so called ICD’s—implantable cardioverter-defibillators used each year.
Still there is not a lot known about their reliability and how often they malfunction--something that could cause a very serious problem.
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