Instead of a big makeover, try 10 small steps for better health.

Change is an important part of living with heart disease or trying to prevent it. A jump in blood pressure or cholesterol earns you a lecture on healthy lifestyle changes. Heart attack and stroke survivors are often told to alter a lifetime of habits.

Some people manage to overhaul their exercise pattern, diet, and unhealthy habits with ease. The rest of us try to make changes, but don't always succeed. Instead of undertaking a huge makeover, you might be able to improve your heart's health with a series ...

Databases help take the guesswork out of choosing a hospital.

Sooner or later, most of us spend some time in a hospital. In an emergency, you don't have much choice, but instead rush to the closest one. For an episode of worsening heart failure or a planned procedure like bypass surgery, however, you may have your pick of hospitals. Choosing among them isn't the most straightforward task.

If your city is anything like Boston, the Heart Letter's home base, local hospitals advertise on television and radio, in newspapers, and even on buses and trains. The ads tell you what services ...

A new movement called Hospital at Home aims to deliver high-quality care in the home.

Hospitals are going out of their way these days to make patients feel like they're at home. Here's a logical extension of these efforts: offering hospital-level care at home. That's the premise behind a movement called Hospital at Home. It is already established in Italy, the Basque region in Spain, and other parts of Europe. Now, several groups are trying to give it a toehold in the United States.

The concept is simple. Instead of admitting patients to a hospital for relatively straightforward conditions like ...

Cholesterol-lowering drugs also fight inflammation, stabilize plaque, prevent blood clots, and more.

Editors' note Medications are a fact of life for almost everyone with cardiovascular disease. From aspirin to Zocor, these drugs work to ease symptoms, strengthen and protect the heart and blood vessels, and prevent potentially deadly events like heart attacks and strokes. With this article, we begin an occasional series that gives an overview of the various classes of cardiovascular medications.

?

If you have heart disease, or are trying to avoid it, the odds are good that you take a statin. These cholesterol-lowering drugs, first approved in ...

  Two tests can be used to evaluate the health of a person's arteries, but there is also a free tool that estimates risk using answers to a few health questions.   Read More »

The body's nerve system regulates heart rate and blood pressure, so researchers are looking at ways to use nerve stimulation to treat cardiovascular conditions.

Tiny parts of chromosomes called telomeres appear to have a relationship to the development of heart disease, opening a new avenue of research.

A study is planning to test the effectiveness of continuing to take post-stent medication past the recommended 12 months.

I have been taking ginkgo pills for my memory for several years. I was just diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, and my doctor put me on Coumadin. Is it okay to keep taking ginkgo?

If you have a slow heart rate (bradycardia), is it safe to drink wine? If so, how much per day? Does alcohol affect the heart rate?