Harvard Heart Letter articles from March 2006

Harvard Heart Letter archives from March 2006

Nothing peripheral about this artery disease.
March 1, 2006... Guidelines put the spotlight on the consequences of peripheral artery disease. If ever a disease deserved a splashy new name, peripheral artery disease is it. "Peripheral" smacks of something on the sidelines. Nothing could be further from...

Eating your way to lower cholesterol.
March 1, 2006... Foods fortified with plant sterols or stanols can help nudge down high cholesterol. It's odd, but true, that eating foods fortified with a cousin of cholesterol can lower your cholesterol. These substances, called plant sterols and...

Survival of the fittest.(measuring cardiovascular fitness )
March 1, 2006... Knowing your cardiovascular fitness, and improving it, can help you live longer and better. You can probably rattle off many of the truly wonderful benefits of exercise, which range from protecting the heart to extending life and...

Heart Beat; Pay attention to shortness of breath.(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... Chest pain is a near-universal signal of heart disease. Shortness of breath may be an equally valuable tip-off. Since 1991, doctors at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles have asked almost 18,000 men and women who were about to...

Heart Beat; Play it safe, avoid L-arginine supplements.(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... L-arginine, touted as a supplement that prevents and treats heart and circulation problems, doesn't help heart attack survivors -- and it may even harm them. L-arginine provides the raw material from which the body makes nitric oxide, a...

Heart Beat; No cancer bonus for statin therapy.(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... A massive study that sifted through almost 9,000 articles nixes the hope that statins might prevent cancer even as they lower cholesterol and protect against heart disease. Writing in the January 4, 2006, Journal of the American Medical...

Heart Beat; A little quiet for the heart, please.(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... There's little question that loud noise hurts your hearing. The growing din of everyday life may also be bad for blood pressure and the heart. Several dozen studies over the last thirty years have demonstrated links between noise in the...

Heart Beat; Heart disease -- it's all relative.
March 1, 2006... Brothers and sisters often share traits like facial features, body shape, certain turns of phrase, or a fondness for peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Add heart trouble to the list. A report from the second-generation Framingham Offspring...

On the horizon; Stop-smoking aids.(rimonabant and varenicline)
March 1, 2006... Most stop-smoking aids are little more than nicotine delivery devices. They work by easing the body's craving for this highly addicting substance. One FDA-approved drug that influences something other than nicotine is Zyban (buproprion), an...

Ask the doctor; What causes fluid to build up around the heart and what can be done to treat it?(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... Q. My brother-in-law was told that he has some fluid around his heart. What does that mean, and how is it treated? A. The heart is surrounded by a thin, two-layer sac called the pericardium. It looks a bit like a cellophane bag. The...

Ask the doctor; What's the best way to tell heartburn from angina or a heart attack?
March 1, 2006... Q. I'm worried that someday I will confuse my heartburn with my angina or a heart attack and end up in the emergency room for nothing. How do I tell the difference? A. That's an excellent question, one that is often tough for doctors to...