Recent Blog Articles
Moving from couch to 5K
How — and why — to fit more fiber and fermented food into your meals
Tick season is expanding: Protect yourself against Lyme disease
What? Another medical form to fill out?
How do trees and green spaces enhance our health?
A muscle-building obsession in boys: What to know and do
Harvard Health Ad Watch: New drug, old song, clever tagline
Concussion in children: What to know and do
What color is your tongue? What's healthy, what's not?
Your amazing parathyroid glands
Heart Health Archive
Articles
A Chia Pet for diabetes?
ARCHIVED CONTENT: As a service to our readers, Harvard Health Publishing provides access to our library of archived content. Please note the date each article was posted or last reviewed. No content on this site, regardless of date, should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified […]
Decline in stroke deaths reinforces importance of preventing “brain attack”
Stroke killed 2,000 fewer Americans in 2008 (the last year with complete numbers) than it did in 2007, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said yesterday in its latest annual Deaths report. That dropped stroke from the third leading cause of death in the United States to the fourth. Good news? Yes and […]
Laugh and be thankful—it’s good for the heart
One of the things I like most about Thanksgiving is the laughter around the dinner table. The food is great, make no mistake. But it’s the sounds of happiness—the high peal, the good-natured guffaw, the snort-and-shaking-shoulders, and the deep belly laugh—that really make me give thanks. Laughter isn’t just a way to stay connected with […]
Aspirin and your heart: Many questions, some answers
Taking an aspirin can protect you from heart attack, blood clots and more
First marketed by the Bayer Company in 1897, aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) is one of our oldest modern medications — and its parent compound is much older still, since Hippocrates and the ancient Egyptians used willow bark, which contains salicylates, to treat fever and pain. Over the past 100 years, aspirin has made its way into nearly every medicine chest in America. Indeed, this old drug is still widely recommended to control fever, headaches, arthritis, and pain.
Although aspirin remains an excellent medication for fever and pain, other drugs can fill these roles equally well. But aspirin has a unique role that was not even suspected by its early advocates. In patients with coronary artery disease, aspirin prevents heart attacks.
Ask the doctor: Does pomelo juice affect drugs the same way grapefruit juice does?
Q. I avoid grapefruit juice because my doctor says it affects how my body handles the Lipitor I take for my cholesterol. Should I also stay away from pomelo?
A. The pomelo (also called shaddock, pumelo, pommelo, and Chinese grapefruit) is the largest citrus fruit, ranging from the size of a cantaloupe to that of a large watermelon. Botanists believe that crosses between pomelo and wild orange created grapefruit. Pomelo mixes the sweet taste of orange with the tang of lemon. Its lineage means that pomelo contains many of the same compounds as grapefruit.
Broken-heart syndrome (takotsubo cardiomyopathy)
Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, also called broken-heart syndrome, is a weakening of the left ventricle that is usually the result of severe stress. Its symptoms resemble those of a heart attack, and treatment is usually the same as that for heart failure.
Stem cell progress: Turning skin cells into heart cells
Embryonic stem cell research continues to be a political and legal hot potato that stirs up a lot of emotion and argument. In the meantime, researchers are making some remarkable progress using an alternative stem cell approach called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs (sometimes that gets shortened to iPS). An induced pluripotent stem cell is an adult cell, often a skin cell, […]
Kiss-kiss CPR: The mouth-to-mouth part may not be needed
The advice to “keep it simple, stupid”—kiss, kiss—seems to apply to cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). But with CPR, kiss-kiss means no mouth-to-mouth contact. A study published in tomorrow’s Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) adds to the evidence that the old way of doing CPR—alternating chest compressions with blows into the mouth—is needlessly complicated in most cases (there are exceptions, which we will get into below). Instead, this study and others (The New England […]
Strong warning on diabetes drug Avandia
Rosiglitazone (Avandia) should be used only by people who can’t control their diabetes other ways, the FDA said today. Across the Atlantic, the European Medicines Agency ordered rosiglitazone off the market until its maker, GlaxoSmithKline, can supply “convincing data” that there exists a group of people with diabetes for whom the blood-sugar-lowering benefit of taking rosiglitazone […]
Hormone therapy doesn’t seem to raise risk of cardiac death
Prostate cancer drug treatments that block the activity of hormones have been associated with a higher risk of heart attack and heart disease. But a 2009 study suggests that these drugs may not cause cardiovascular problems after all.
Recent Blog Articles
Moving from couch to 5K
How — and why — to fit more fiber and fermented food into your meals
Tick season is expanding: Protect yourself against Lyme disease
What? Another medical form to fill out?
How do trees and green spaces enhance our health?
A muscle-building obsession in boys: What to know and do
Harvard Health Ad Watch: New drug, old song, clever tagline
Concussion in children: What to know and do
What color is your tongue? What's healthy, what's not?
Your amazing parathyroid glands
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