Tag-Archive for ◊ Heart disease ◊

The risk of heart disease
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• Thursday, November 10th, 2011

Some titles for articles are intended to catch your attention and this is no exception. This is one of those times when you need to think carefully before you act. There’s a tendency to think medication will solve all your problems. Indeed, that’s what the marketers are relying on. They link the brand name to a disease and you are programed to remember the drug if you have the disease. You walk in to see your doctor and ask for a prescription, or you buy the drug online and await the cure with confidence. But this only works if your diagnosis of the disease is correct or if the symptoms are being caused by a relevant problem. Since we’re talking about erectile dysfunction, it can be a side effect of some of the drugs you are taking. If that’s the case, taking one of the three erectile dysfunction drugs is not going to help. You need to reduce the dosage in the other drug or change to a different drug. This may cause the erectile dysfunction to disappear without having to do more. If it does not, it’s possible the lower dose is still too high or the second drug is causing the same problem. This is something that needs to be managed by an experienced doctor. If you try experimenting with the drugs you are taking, this can produce some very unfortunate results.

 

So there’s no single cause for erectile dysfunction and it’s unwise of you to try guessing what the problem might be. Why might this be a problem? If you are older, i.e. over 50, dysfunction slowly grows more common simply by virtue of the aging process. The older you are, the more likely it is, but the narrower the range of possible causes. If the dysfunction affects you as a younger man, there’s one very serious possibility to explore. The artery leading into the penis must dilate properly if an erection is to form. If you are developing artherosclerosis, this is the smallest artery in the body and so the first one likely to show signs of a hardening of the wall of the blood vessel. Should there be a build up of plaque preventing proper dilation, this is not going to be restricted to one blood vessel. It’s going to affect all parts of the body including the blood vessels leading into and out of the heart.

 

The statistics show that the younger you are when the dysfunction first shows, the higher the risk of a stroke or heart attack within five years. Yet, the preventative treatment is both cheap and effective. So, if you have the cardiovascular tests and diagnose artherosclerosis early, you have receive the treatment to give you a long and healthy life. Should the dysfunction persist, Cialis is available to restore an active sex life. Why should younger men take this warning seriously? The answer comes in the rising number of young people who are seriously overweight. One of the main causes of this epidemic of obesity is the amount of carbohydrates in our diet. Indeed, the higher the fat content in our food, the more likely it is you will develop artherosclerosis. So, if you cannot control your diet, the first sign of possible trouble will be erectile dysfunction (and then you should go and buy your cialis).

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Heart disease and canaries
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• Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

In the good old days when men sold their souls to the company store for sixteen tons and even then only got deeper in debt, there was no technology to warn the miners if gas was building up. The first they might know is an explosion bringing down the roof. Being careful men, they experimented with different ways of testing the air for gas and canaries were the most reliable indicator they found. All they had to do was keep the birds in the mine. If they fell off their perches, there was too much gas around and it was time to evacuate. So much for the history lesson.

Every year, modern medicine directs a lot of money into basic research to look for ways of detecting serious health problems in their early stages. Sometimes, technology is the answer. So many women who go for regular mammograms detect breast cancer early and the treatment is more likely to save the breast and guarantee a long life. In other cases, there are early symptoms that may not, at first sight, have any connection to the more serious condition that appears later. In the case of heart disease, there’s now very clear evidence that erectile dysfunction in younger men is a very clear warning of a possible stroke or heart attack within the next five years.

The explanation for this is slightly complicated. Various types of cells line the walls of our blood vessels. The most sensitive of these are called endothelial. For reasons no one can explain, there are more of these cells in the penis than anywhere else in the body so anything that affects them is going to show up in erectile dysfunction. If you eat a diet containing too much fat, there’s likely to be a build up of plaque on the walls of the arteries. This hardens the cells and prevents the arteries from dilating and contracting. Since the formation of an erection depends on dilation, anything preventing it in younger men signals high risk the same problem will spread to other blood vessels in the body.

If you’re under the age of 50 and you experience a consistent pattern of erectile dysfunction, you should ask a doctor for a full cardiology workup. Indeed, the younger you are, the more urgent it is you have the tests done. But if you’re older, there are fewer risks. It’s reasonably safe to buy Viagra online and rely on that to solve the problem. That said, we’re all aware of the so-called epidemic of obesity. That’s too many men carrying too much weight. No matter what your age, you should think about changing your diet. One of the most common causes of a plaque build-up is eating too much carbohydrate in your food. The evidence shows men find erectile dysfunction is less of a problem if they lose weight. This should not be a big deal. It’s just a matter of eating a low-fat diet in smaller portions. If you can add in a little exercise, so much the better. If this is too much of a challenge, there’s always Viagra but, if your weight does continue increasing, it may only be a short-term fix. Losing weight is better.

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A Weekend Lie-in Can be Good for Your Health
Author:
• Friday, August 06th, 2010

Dragging a teenager kicking and screaming out of bed too early on a Sunday morning could be bad for their health. Scientists have shown that a weekend lie-in is more than lazy indulgence and could be vital for well-being.

Tests on volunteers showed that the occasional sleep-in provides an invaluable antidote to the harmful effects of sleep deprivation. The findings will be welcome by all those lucky enough to be able to enjoy an extra hour or two of slumber on Saturdays and Sundays.

It came as another study warned of the dangers of persistently sleeping too much  -  and showed that people who regularly get more than seven hours every day are putting themselves at risk of heart disease.

Dr David Dinges, of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia, who conducted the first study, said: ‘The additional hour or two of sleep in the morning after a period of chronic partial sleep loss has genuine benefits for continued recovery of behavioural alertness. The bottom line is that adequate recovery-sleep duration is important for coping with the effects of chronic sleep restriction on the brain.’

Inadequate sleep interferes with the way people think, handle stress and keep their emotions in check. It can also disrupt the immune system, increasing the risk of infection.

In the study, 142 adults with an average age of 30 were restricted to four hours in bed from 4am to 8am for five consecutive nights. At the end of the week, the volunteers were assigned to one of six ‘doses’ of a single night’s ‘recovery sleep’  -  ranging from zero to ten hours. Another 17 made up a comparison group who spent ten hours in bed nightly.

As expected, the test performance of the sleep deprived volunteers was consistently worse than that of the well-rested control group. But just one lie-in after a week of sleep deprivation improved mental faculties  -  and the longer the lie-in, the more alert they become.

However, even after ten hours in bed, sleep-restricted participants still had worse scores than the control group for attention lapses, poor reaction times, and fatigue.

Meanwhile, the second study showed that seven hours is the ‘perfect’ amount of sleep. Researchers at West Virginia University showed that sleeping fewer than five hours a day  -  including naps  -  doubles the risk of being diagnosed with angina, coronary heart disease, heart attack or stroke.

But sleeping more than seven hours increases the risks of cardiovascular disease too, the researchers found. Researcher Dr Anoop Shankar was unable to explain why length of sleep is linked to heart problems, but past studies have shown that sleep deprivation can increase blood pressure and diabetes.

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Every Hour in Front of The TV Raises Risk of Heart Disease
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• Saturday, June 26th, 2010

Watching too much TV can be deadly even for the healthy, claim researchers. Every hour in front of the box pushes up the risk of dying from heart disease by 7 per cent, according to a study.

Those looking at their favorite programmers for four hours a day – the UK average – face a 28 per cent rise in the risk. The study from the Medical Research Council says changes in lifestyle could stem the toll from heart disease which causes 193,000 deaths a year and is responsible for a third of the UK’s deaths.

For almost a decade, researchers from the MRC Epidemiology Unit studied 13,197 middle-aged, healthy men and women in Norfolk.

In that time 373 of the participants died from heart disease, according to the findings published today in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

It was found that the amount of time spent watching television was a significant marker of the likelihood of death from heart disease.

Scientists estimated that 8 per cent of the deaths might have been avoided if TV viewing times had been reduced from the UK average of four hours a day to just one hour. That would have saved 30 lives.

Study co-author Dr Katrien Wijndaele warned: ‘Our bodies are not designed to sit for long periods and we should be aware that, as we put in the TV hours watching the World Cup, our risk of heart disease is probably increasing.’

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A Heart Attack Shouldn’t Kill Your Sex Life
Author:
• Saturday, May 29th, 2010

Surviving a heart attack can kill your sex life. But it doesn’t have to, and a new study shows doctors play a key role in whether it does.

Patients were less likely to resume having sex if their doctors did not talk about when it was safe, the study found.

Many heart attack survivors fear that a tryst could land them back in the hospital – or even in the graveyard. But the chance of that is extremely small, doctors say.

“People perceive it might kill them. And it’s not just the person with the heart attack, but also their partner,” said Dr. Stacy Tessler Lindau, a gynecologist and sexuality researcher at the University of Chicago.

“If you can walk up two flights of stairs or do moderate exercise, then it’s OK to have sex,” she said.

Lindau led the study, the largest ever on this topic, and was to present results Friday at an American Heart Association conference in Washington.

It involved 1,184 male and 576 female heart attack survivors taking part in a bigger nationwide study, funded by the federal government. The average age was 60.

Less than half the men and only about a third of the women said advice about resuming sex was part of the instructions they got when leaving the hospital. Even fewer had that talk with their doctors over the next year.

One year after their heart attacks, more than two-thirds of the men and 40 percent of the women reported some sexual activity. They were 30 percent to 40 percent more likely to be having sex if they had talked with a doctor about it.

Men were more likely to be sexually active and married before the heart attack, and to maintain their sex life after it.

Some people actually reported more sex after their heart attacks, but this was the exception rather than the rule, Lindau said.

A heart attack should not keep people from enjoying sex, said Dr. Edward Havranek, a cardiologist at Denver Health Medical Center and leader of the Heart Association conference.

“The risk of having a heart attack during sex is really, really low,” he said. “The amount of actual physical exertion people have during sex is actually lower than one might think. It’s not as demanding as shoveling snow.”

Doctors say it is safe to resume sex as soon as the patient feels better and can handle moderate exercise. Chest pain during sex means you should stop and consult a doctor, Lindau said.

Depression and mood swings are common after a heart attack and can dampen interest in sex, but this usually goes away within three months, says advice from the Heart Association.

It has these tips for resuming sex:

-Prepare by improving your physical condition and personal hygiene.

-Choose a time when you’re rested, relaxed and free from daily stress.

-Wait one to three hours after eating a full meal.

-Pick a familiar, peaceful setting that’s free from interruptions.

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Five Health Numbers that You Need To Know
Author:
• Saturday, January 09th, 2010

Perform medical tests to obtain 5 One apple a day may be preventing you from seeing doctors. But you still need to see a doctor once a year for health check. Starting from, blood pressure check, weight, blood sugar levels, and detect other health problems in the early stages.

And, it is important to note that the health index have a number that indicates whether or not you have to worry about health conditions.

Consider five points of health, you need to know:

1. Woman’s blood pressure – 120/80 mmHg
This is a measure of heart health.

Blood pressure measure of the strength of blood as it pumps blood along the artery walls. Number 120/80 mmHg can provide information that represents the pressure when the heart pumps blood (systolic pressure) and when the pressure was relaxed between beats (diastolic pressure). The higher the score, the more pressure, and the harder the heart has to work to get blood through your body. It means you are more susceptible to hypertension or stricken with a heart attack.

Blood pressure is blood pressure on the arteries when the blood vessels in the heart to pump by all members of the human body.

2. Cholesterol – 100 mg / dl for LDL and 40 mg / dl for HDL
LDL is a poor measure for cholesterol, while HDL is the good cholesterol in your body. Cholesterol is the size (measured in milligrams (mg) / deciliter (dL)) fats in your blood. LDL (or low-density lipoprotein) is the type of bad cholesterol that can increase the buildup of plaque in your arteries.

HDL (or high-density lipoprotein) is a good type of cholesterol that can help keep LDL cholesterol from your arteries. If you have too much LDL in your body then the risk of heart attack or stroke will easily happen to you. To avoid this dangerous attack, consume almonds could be one way of telling the body to reduce cholesterol.

3. Resting heart rate – 60 beats per minute (bpm)
This is the frequency of your heartbeat in a moment to rest. If the heart rate below 60 bpm showed a healthy body condition.

This is important to note, because the higher resting pulse rate, the harder your body must work to pump blood. High resting heart rate also means your body must work harder to complete simple tasks each day (ranging from breakfast to open a jar of food). If a high heart rate can interfere with the activity, because it can cause fatigue and cardiovascular strain. But, do not worry it can be prevented by exercising every day and keep your weight in order to remain an ideal.

4. Waist size – 80 cm for women and 90 cm for men
This is to determine your waist size.

It is important to note that your waist size can predict the health risks you may be suffering, such as heart disease and diabetes. The most effective way compared to other measurements such as measuring body weight and body mass index measurement. Even if you lose just 3 inches from the waist, the effect can improve heart health.

To find out what size your waist is very easy, just use the meter used by the body and wrap the waist above the belly button.

5. Blood sugar levels: when fasting – 80 mg / dL to 100 mg / dl
Fasting is a test that can measure the amount of glucose in the blood after sleeping (or for eight hours of fasting). Blood sugar or blood glucose is a good indicator to see how well the work processes of the body. This test is also useful to know if you run the risk of diabetes.

If the results of each measuring more than 100 mg / dl indicates that you have pre-diabetes, a condition of your blood sugar levels higher than normal but not high enough to be diagnosed with diabetes. The solution, begin a healthy lifestyle.

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