Heart Health Archive

Sharing readings from a home monitor with your physician may help you reach your blood pressure goal more quickly.

 Image: © Bojan89/Getty Images

For treating certain health problems, finding the best drug or combination of drugs at the correct dose often requires some trial and error. High blood pressure is a good example. Because this common problem raises heart attack and stroke risk, the sooner you can get your blood pressure down to a healthy range (130/80 millimeters of mercury [mm Hg] or lower), the better. New research suggests that people could speed things up a bit by taking a more active role in the process (see "Tracking your blood pressure at home: Does it help?").

"The study showed that a period of home blood pressure monitoring — one week per month — was sufficient to guide people to better blood pressure control," says Dr. Paul Conlin, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and chief, Medical Service, at the VA Boston Healthcare System.

Advancing age may warrant changes to preventive therapies for heart disease. But one size does not fit all.

 Image: © Willowpix/Getty Images

Currently, the average life expectancy in the United States is about 79 years. But among people who survive to age 80 and beyond, health status can vary quite a bit. Some stay hale and hearty for years, while others gradually become weak and frail.

These differences are one reason there aren't any set guidelines for preventing heart disease in octogenarians. But there's a larger underlying issue — one that also explains why heart attack risk calculators (such as www.health.harvard.edu/heartrisk) don't allow you to enter an age above 79.

Heat, humidity, and haze can be rough on your heart.

 Image: © yacobchuk/Getty Images

Summer's long, sunny days often entice people to spend more time exercising outdoors. While being more physically active is great for your heart, it's important to exercise caution when the temperature and humidity rise.

"You hear stories about football players collapsing when they do strenuous workouts in hot weather, probably because they're not drinking enough fluid," says Dr. Adolph M. Hutter, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. However, hot weather can affect non-athletes as well. "For the average person, just walking on a golf course when it's 100° with high humidity is stressful for the cardiovascular system," he says.

This heart rhythm disorder is linked to thinking and memory problems. But anti-clotting drugs may lower the risk.

Bouts of atrial fibrillation, or afib — a rapid, chaotic heartbeat — make some people feel lightheaded and dizzy, while others don't notice any symptoms. But the most serious threat of this condition is the higher risk of stroke among people with afib compared with those without the disorder (see "Blood clot dangers, large and small"). Now, there's a growing recognition that people with afib also face an increased risk of thinking and memory problems — even if they do not experience a stroke.

Known as cognitive impairment, these problems include trouble remembering, learning new things, concentrating, or making routine decisions. The presumed underlying cause? Tiny blood clots that cause "silent" (that is, unrecognized) strokes and gradually injure parts of the brain involved with cognition.

 Image: © Josef Mohyla/Getty Images

Peppers, which belong to the genus Capsicum, come in a variety of colors, shapes, sizes, and flavors. Bell peppers (available in green, yellow, orange, red, and even purple) make a nice addition to a salad or plate of crudités. Supermarkets carry bags of assorted mini bell peppers that are convenient both for snacking and using in recipes.

While sweet bell peppers are crunchy and mild, hot peppers — such as jalapeños, serranos, and habaneros — provide a tongue-tingling punch of heat. They contain varying amounts of the phytochemicals responsible for the spiciness in hot peppers.

Research we're watching

About four in 1,000 adults in this country are born with a genetic condition marked by abnormally high cholesterol levels, known as familial hypercholesterolemia (FH). Their "bad" LDL cholesterol can be two to three times as high as the common target LDL value of 100 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) or lower for healthy people. But only about half of people with FH are getting proper treatment for the disease, according to a report in the May 22 issue of Circulation.

For the study, researchers analyzed health surveys done between 1999 and 2014 with nearly 42,500 adults in the United States. Although more than 80% of people with FH or severely high cholesterol were aware of their condition, only half were taking cholesterol-lowering statins. And among those who were, only one-third were taking optimal doses of the drugs.

Research we're watching

Staying physically fit helps lower your risk of heart disease — even if the condition runs in your family, a new study finds.

Researchers relied on data from nearly half a million middle-aged and older adults in the United Kingdom. Over the six-year study, people with high levels of grip strength, self-reported physical activity, and cardiorespiratory fitness (as measured by a stationary bike test) were less likely than others to have a heart attack or stroke. That was true even among people with high genetic risk, based on whether they carried certain gene variants that have been linked to heart disease.

Heart tests help show artery blockage and assess the risk of heart attack

If you are at high risk for heart disease or have a symptom such as shortness of breath or discomfort in your chest, your doctor may order certain heart tests. But there's more to testing than simply finding out if you have heart disease. Your doctor may also want to determine whether the fatty plaques inside your blood vessels pose a high, medium, or low risk for a heart attack. The answer will help determine whether you need treatment, and if so, which type of treatment will be best.

No single test is better than another, and no test is appropriate for everyone. "The best test for an individual is the one that provides the information needed to guide management," says Dr. Ron Blankstein, a cardiovascular imaging specialist at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital.