Harvard Heart Letter articles from March 2005

Harvard Heart Letter archives from March 2005

Looking into heart disease.
March 1, 2005... Changes inside the eye can reflect the damage of high blood pressure and help gauge the risk of a future stroke or heart attack. Over a romantic candlelit dinner, the eyes may be the windows to the soul. In a more prosaic light, they're...

Carnitine promising, but no miracle for heart disease.
March 1, 2005... Hype for the dietary supplement carnitine as a treatment for heart disease far outstrips the evidence. Would you like to find a "natural" way to ease chest pain, reverse heart failure, or stop leg pain? Look no further than the amino acid...

Pain might mean gain for aneurysm repair.
March 1, 2005... Surgery to repair an abdominal aortic aneurysm is harder on the body than an inside-the-aorta approach, but it's also more durable. Imagine, for a minute, you have a circulation problem that needs fixing. Your doctor offers two choices. One...

Who needs Plavix?
March 1, 2005... This super aspirin is meant mainly for people at high risk of having a heart attack or stroke. If you have read a magazine or watched television, odds are you've seen an ad about taking Plavix to cut your chances of having a heart attack...

Heart Beat; Beta testing.(beta blockers for treating high blood pressure)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Beta blockers are among the best treatments for high blood pressure and stable chest pain (angina), as well as after a heart attack, because they reduce the heart's workload and help it beat more regularly. Yet they can also narrow the tubes...

Heart Beat; Gains for new heart disease marker.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... C-reactive protein (CRP), one of the newest villains in heart disease, may be inching closer to joining high cholesterol as a cause of this all-too-common malady. In two separate studies of people at very high risk for heart attack and...

Heart Beat; Migraine and stroke.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... In her classic essay, "In Bed," novelist Joan Didion calls migraine a "headache of blinding severity... a circuit breaker." One circuit that migraines might disrupt is blood flow to the brain. Over the years, a number of studies have...

ASK THE DOCTOR; Will there ever be an aspirin-only option for people with mechanical heart valves?
March 1, 2005... Q. Sometime soon I will need to have my aortic valve replaced. I like the fact that mechanical valves last longer than biological valves, but I don't like the fact that they require you to take the blood thinner Coumadin to prevent blood clots....