Heart Health Archive

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 clinician. 

Look for the silver lining...

Buddy DeSylva's upbeat lyrics to Jerome Kern's lovely tune provide an appealing call to a positive outlook on life, even in the face of adversity. Indeed, a cheerful disposition can help you get through the tough patches that cloud every life, but do people who see the glass half-full also enjoy better health than gloomy types who see it half-empty?

They reduce harmful cholesterol, but should healthy women be taking them?

Where would we be without cholesterol? It's a vital component of cell membranes and nerve sheaths. It forms the basis of sex hormones. It enables bile acids to process the food we eat. As Martha Stewart might say, "It's a good thing." But since the mid-1960s, we've learned that we can have too much of a good thing. Medical research has demonstrated that excess levels of cholesterol in the blood can lead to atherosclerosis, heart attacks, and strokes.

Genetic testing helps some people glimpse their cardiovascular future.

The announcement in April 2003 that scientists had worked out the order of the three billion letters in the human genetic code revved up the hopes and imaginations of many people, cardiologists included. Personal genetic report cards, mused a few, will someday help each of us better understand our heart disease risk and point the way to new treatments. They're right, of course. But "someday" will be a while coming "" the human genome isn't giving up its secrets easily, and some of what we're learning we don't quite know what to do with.

Dietary supplements are wildly popular in America. According to the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 40% of all American adults take one or more.

It's easy to see why supplements are so popular. Because few are regulated by the FDA, manufacturers and retailers can assert many benefits and advertise them aggressively. It's a good strategy, bringing more than $20 billion a year to the supplement industry. But is it good for your health? Are there other ways to gain the benefits claimed for supplements?

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 clinician. 

What's the best way to "fix" a narrowed coronary artery? That question was the crux of a multimillion-dollar trial dubbed COURAGE, short for Clinical Outcomes Utilizing Revascularization and Aggressive Drug Evaluation. Its results, presented in the spring of 2007, stunned some doctors and seemed to shock the media, but we hope they won't come as a surprise to readers: For people with stable coronary artery disease (clogged arteries nourishing the heart), artery-opening angioplasty was no better than medications and lifestyle changes at preventing future heart attacks or strokes, nor did it extend life.

Disturbed sleep can trouble the heart and a troubled heart can disturb sleep

Sleep seems to be such a serene way to replenish energy and restore the mind. For your heart, blood vessels, and immune system, though, it's anything but peaceful. There are periods of calm, to be sure, but they are rudely interrupted by abrupt spikes in blood pressure and heart rate. Blood flow through the heart and brain varies widely during sleep, as do electrical activity in the heart, the elasticity of blood vessels, and the tendency of blood to clot. And all of this activity is just part of a normal night's sleep.

Researchers are just beginning to reveal the two-way street between sleep and heart disease: Poor sleep can interfere with the heart, and heart disease can disturb sleep.

Depression that develops for the very first time during recuperation from a heart attack affects recovery more than depression that started before the attack.

Recovering from a heart attack is tough enough without facing the fog of depression. Yet that's exactly what happens to nearly half of heart attack survivors. Depression is a painful, isolating, joyless state of mind that interferes with recovery and dulls life. It may even make it shorter "" people with post-heart attack depression are two to three times more likely to have another heart attack or to die prematurely compared with survivors who don't have depression.

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 clinician. 

Dr. Scipione Riva-Rocci started it all in 1896, when he perfected the sphygmomanometer, or blood pressure cuff. As doctors took blood pressure readings on millions of people over the years, it became clear that hypertension is a major threat to health, increasing the risk of stroke, heart attack, congestive heart failure, kidney failure, and visual loss. And as data accumulated, it also became clear that there is no bright line between a healthy blood pressure and a harmful one; in general, the lower the pressure, the better.

Cutting back on our most common seasoning is a necessity for some people, but not for everyone.

"The history of the Americas is one of constant warfare over salt."

There's no mercury to worry about, and flaxseed oil  does contain omega-3 fats...but not the best kind.

Troll the medical literature, and you'll come up with study after study showing that fish and fish oil are good for us, especially for our hearts but maybe also for our moods and immune systems. Various epidemiologic investigations have found that people who eat fish regularly are less likely to have heart attacks, suffer strokes, or die from sudden cardiac arrest. The definition of "regularly" varies, but it usually means at least a couple of times a week, although eating fish even once a month has been shown to make a difference.

Fish, and especially fish oil, have also been the subject of dozens of randomized clinical trials, most involving people with existing heart conditions. In large amounts (several grams a day), fish oil has been shown to nudge various cardiac risk factors ("good" HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure) in the right direction.