Hot MedFax

Family history of heart attacks?  Afraid you might be next?  Give blood. That's right.  Get yourself to a Red Cross blood center and give up some of that valuable red stuff. According to a new study , “Excessive iron is believed to contribute to heart disease and donating blood reduces the iron stores in the body,” newswise.com quotes Ivan Pacold, MD, chair, Cardiology Department, Loyola’s Gottlieb Memorial Hospital. “Plus you get a mini-assessment each time you give blood to reinforce wellness." Many years ago I edited an article for Good Housekeeping magazine about hemochromatosis, a disease just as ugly to have as to pronounce.  Simply put, the illness came from having too much iron in your blood.  The solution?  To bleed the patient once or twice a week. It's also the most common genetic disorder in the U.S. A type of anemia (thalassemia) and chronic liver disease can cause it, and it can lead to arthritis, liver and pancreatic disease, ev...

It's good for your heart.  It's supposed to help you lose weight.  And it makes a tasty spaghetti aglio e olio. I'm talking, of course, about olive oil.  My husband takes every vitamin under the sun and now it's going to be olive oil supplements. A new study has found that these supplements may protect us from air pollution. “Exposure to airborne particulate matter can lead to ( unregulated blood clotting ), a condition in which the inner lining of blood vessels does not function normally, which is a risk factor for clinical cardiovascular events and progression of atherosclerosis,” said lead study author Dr. Haiyan Tong, MD, PhD, a research biologist with the United States Environmental Protection Agency, at newswise.com. “As olive oil and fish oil are known to have beneficial effects on (this type of) dysfunction, we examined whether use of these supplements would counteract the adverse cardiovascular effects of exposure to concentrated ambient particulate matt...

All of you guys out there on the fence -- get married.  I know, I know, I'm with a man who waited 10-and-a- half years to do it.  But if you believe all the studies, you'll live longer.  And now you're less likely to get cardiac disease (I guess that makes sense) as well. According to newswise.com, " Analysis of surveys of more than 3.5 million American men and women, administered at some 20,000 health centers across the country — believed to be the largest analysis of its kind ever performed — found that married people, regardless of age, sex, or even cardiovascular risk factors, had significantly less chances of having any kind of cardiovascular disease than those who were single, divorced or widowed." The study went even further.  newswise.com reports it found:  Being married carried a 5 percent lower risk of having any cardiovascular disease than being single   Widowed and divorced people were, respectively, 3 percent and 5 percent, more ...

Here's another reason teens need to get their sleep .  Those who are obese and don't get enough heighten their chances of heart attack, stroke and diabetes, according to a new study. Lack of sleep and obesity have been associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases in adults and young children, newswise.com reports. The adolescents were fitted with a physical activity monitor, worn 24 hours a day for seven days, to measure typical patterns of physical activity and sleep. "One-third of the participants met the minimum recommendation of being physically active at least 60 minutes a day," the Web site notes. Most participants slept approximately seven hours each night, usually waking up at least once. Only five of the participants met the minimal recommended eight-and-a- half hours of sleep per night. Even after controlling for factors that may have an impact on cardiac and metabolic risk, like BMI and physical activity, low levels of s...

Here's another reason not to get angry.  A new study has found that there's a n early fivefold increase in risk for heart attack in the two hours following outbursts of anger. newswise.com quotes  lead author Elizabeth Mostofsky, MPH, ScD, a post-doctoral fellow in the cardiovascular epidemiological unit at BIDMC and an instructor at the Harvard School of Public Health ,  “There has been a lot of research on anger; we already know it can be unhealthy, but we wanted to quantify the risk, not just for heart attack, but for other potentially lethal cardiovascular events as well.  She notes that the study might help patients think more about how they manage anger in their everyday lives and encourage physicians to discuss medications and psychosocial supports with their patients for whom anger is an issue, especially patients with known cardiovascular risk factors. The study results showed that the risk of heart attack, with symptoms like chest pain, shortness of ...

Did you know you have a better chance of dying from a heart attack if you have it at night or on the weekend? A new study has found that "6,000 extra deaths a year" are a result of factors that occur after patients arrive at the hospital after regular business hours, according to Medical News Today.  It may be because emergency treatment is slower after business hours or that there are less medical professionals on hand, or a host of many other reasons, but the odds are relatively good that, if you have a heart attack in the evening or outside business hours, you might well die. In fact, if you arrive "after hours," your mortality risk is 5% higher than those who are treated during regular hours.   The study also found that patients arriving with  ST elevation myocardial infarction had a 15-minute wait before treatment for a stent to re-open their arteries, increasing their risk of death by 10-15%.   Heart attacks are the number-one killer of both men and...

Here's one of the really bad reasons to have a high deductible policy: when the premium rises, men don't go to the hospital for emergencies. According to The New York Times, "Men, it turns out, are more likely to delay treatment for serious conditions under high-deductible plans, in contrast to women, who tend to be more selective and cut back care for minor ailments only." "Such plans generally have lower monthly premiums than traditional health plans but higher out-of-pocket costs — sometimes, $4,000 or $5,000 for a family, or even higher," Ann Carrns writes. About a third of workers now have such plans. And that number is likely to grow, since lower-cost plans on the new health care marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act are likely to have relatively high deductibles.   I have that kind of policy, too.  Only, in my case, since I tend to go to the doctor when I need to (my husband calls me a hypochondriac), we wind up with outrageous medica...

Want to double your chances of a heart attack?  Just make sure you feel stressed all the time. Now, really, who doesn't feel that way?  Between work, family, home, activities -- who can possibly do it all and not feel a smidgin of pressure? But a new study has found that people who feel they are stressed are far more likely to suffer heart disease than those who simply don't.  (I'd like to know who these people are.) The findings, by French researchers, showed that "people who believe that they are stressed—and that the stress is affecting their health—have more than twice the risk of heart attack as those who don’t feel that way," according to Beth Greenfield at yahoo.com. “This indicates that individuals' perception and reality seem to be connected pretty well,” lead author Herman Nabi , of the  French National Institute of Health and Medical Research , told   Yahoo! Shine   in an email. “In other words, people seem to be aware when stress is af...

I had to read this news story twice to be sure it wasn't a joke.  But it's the truth.  There's been some concern that nitrous oxide -- or what the dentist gives you to put you out, laughing gas -- might be responsible for causing heart attacks during surgery or soon afterward. Well, sometimes they combine it with anesthesia during surgery, too, because by itself, the drug isn't strong enough to keep patients unconscious.  And previous studies had found that patients with certain genetic abnormalities had a much higher risk of heart attack during or after surgery. But the good news is, there now doesn't seem to be a connection, according to newswise.com Participants in the study reported at newswise.com received nitrous oxide anesthesia during heart surgery and were divided into two groups -- those who received a vitamin and folic acid to prevent homocystine levels from rising, and those who did not. Homocystines are an amino acid found in the blood suspecte...

I was horrified to read that a new study has found that preventive dentist visits may not help save any money or prevent any cavities. According to newswise.com, the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry recommends "that children see a pediatric dentist as soon as their first tooth appears in order to prevent dental problems." But earlier research has indicated that "actually does not show that these visits lead to less costly dental issues in kids." “There was actually more expensive restorative procedures among kids with more preventive dental visits," the Web site quotes Bisha Sen, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Healthcare Organization & Policy. But this may not be as counter-intuitive as it sounds. Usually it's kids with a family history of dental problems who visit the dentist most often, and therefore, are the ones usually found to be most in need of expensive dental care. Kids without problem teeth probably aren't t...

This will come as a big surprise.  Hospitals offer tests patients don't really need. According to a story by Julie Appleby, hoping to attract patients and promote good will in the community, hospitals "are teaming up with medical-screening companies to promote tests they say might prevent deadly strokes or heart disease." But they're not just offering them to people who might become sick but to those without symptoms or other risk factors.  In other words, these tests are totally useless for many and could prove harmful.  In a lot of cases, they're being given just to make money. Appleby quotes a government panel that notes that these tests find "too few problems" when weighed against the drawbacks -- unnecessary CT or MRI scans, biopsies, sometimes even surgeries. And guess what else?  The tests increase healthcare costs. “A lot that ends up being found is clinically of no importance at all,” Steven Weinberger, executive vice president and chi...

It's true.  We all know sleep deprivation robs us of health and energy.  But did you know it can also kill? It's called sleep apnea and it sneaks up on you in the middle of the night, especially if you are overweight, male, black or Latino.  Sleep apnea is a disorder that is characterized by abnormal pauses in breathing throughout the sleep cycle, experts say.  Sometimes you even  stop  breathing.  That's where the death part comes in.  According to experts, those with this disorder can stop breathing anywhere from 10 seconds to whole minutes and can occur from five to 30 times -- a night?  An hour. Experts estimate about 12 million in the U.S. have it, including one in 10 kids Most people who have it don't even know it, though their partners do. It often results in heavy snoring or something worse, sleep paralysis, where people become so afraid of falling asleep that they can't, leading to fatigue, lack of alertness, depression, even ...

It used to be the hour between feeding and bed was the "witching" hour for babies. But a new study has found that it can be just as harmful for kids and teens, only, with them, it starts earlier in the day. According to a story by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Harvard School of Public School, which ran the study, 60% of parents said their kids ate or drank something unhealthy that could lead to weight gain in the period between getting home from school and sleep. Another trend that could result in weight gain? Only one-half of the families surveyed said they ate dinner together six or seven nights out of the week. And it's not just eating that gets out of hand, but the lack of exercise most kids are getting these days after school and on weekends, Richard Knox and Patti Neighmond write.  Added together, they add up to a mountain of calories each year that may lead to heart disease, stroke, even cancer in your children's later years. Overall, it...

Toothbrushes have been around since the Middle Ages, according to Pagan Kennedy, but we might not have recognized them back then.  Pre-plastic, those who wanted to save their teeth had to go out and find a boar or some other animal to get the bristles off their backs to "groom their teeth," as Kennedy put it. Ironically, "the toothbrush is one of the most reinvented of human objects, with thousands of patents on file," Kennedy writes. She notes that William Addis is generally thought to be the first to patent the toothbrush, where he whittled down a bone and stuck it full of bristles while serving time in prison. Aren't you glad we don't have to worry about that anymore?  But a lot of people don't brush their teeth, and if you're a man, you have a lot more to worry about than just bad breath.  Try, raising your risk of a stroke or heart attack, and oh yeah, what's been so politely called "erectile dysfunction," according to...