Heart Health Archive

New findings challenge the widespread belief that aggressive blood pressure treatment may trigger a condition linked to fainting and falls.

When doctors treat older people with high blood pressure, they often worry about a condition that causes blood pressure to plummet when a person stands up from a seated or lying position. Known as orthostatic hypotension (hypotension means low blood pressure), it affects as many as one in five people ages 65 and older.

Because orthostatic hypotension can make you feel dizzy or lightheaded after standing, it may lead to fainting and falls — with possibly serious repercussions. This concern leads some doctors to ease up on prescribed blood pressure medications. But a new study suggests that practice actually might do more harm than good.

For people recently diagnosed, taming the heart's rhythm rather than slowing it down may be a better approach.

The heart rhythm disorder known as atrial fibrillation (afib) occurs when the heart's electrical system goes awry. Instead of the heart's natural pacemaker creating a steady beat, the heart's upper chambers (atria) pulsate rapidly — up to hundreds of times per minute. Most of the electrical impulses telling the lower chambers (ventricles) to contract don't get through but many do, triggering a racing, irregular heartbeat that can leave people dizzy, breathless, or fatigued.

Therapies to tackle this common arrhythmia have improved over the years. Now, new findings suggest it may be time to rethink the treatment for people newly diagnosed with afib (see "Afib: Rhythm vs. rate control").

Spontaneous coronary artery dissection is an underrecognized but important cause of heart attack, especially in younger women.

Most heart attacks happen when a blood clot blocks an artery feeding the heart. But a small percentage result from a tear in the inner wall of one of the heart's arteries. The resulting flap or swelling inside the artery wall obstructs normal blood flow. Known as a spontaneous coronary artery dissection, or SCAD, the condition strikes both sexes but is more common in women.

In women who are under 50, SCAD is the most common reason for acute coronary syndrome. This medical emergency refers to inadequate blood flow to the heart; it includes both heart attacks and unstable angina (sudden chest pain that occurs at rest).

Editor's note: This year, we're highlighting fruits on this page. Starting in February, we'll showcase a different type of fruit or group of related fruits, such as citrus fruits or melons. We'll include ideas about the best ways to add more of these heart-healthy foods into your diet.

If you eat berries with breakfast, snack on a banana, and toss some cubed apple or pear in your dinner salad, you can easily meet the recommended amount of fruit for adults, which is 1.5 to 2 cups per day. But such habits are unusual: Fewer than one in 10 Americans consumes even the minimum recommended amount of fruit, according to a national federal survey.

Research we're watching

Walking even at a "casual" pace — covering a mile in 30 minutes — five days a week may lower the odds of high blood pressure in postmenopausal women, a new study finds.

Researchers relied on data from more than 83,000 women ages 50 to 79 who did not have high blood pressure. When they joined the study, they filled out questionnaires about their walking speed and duration. This was followed by yearly questionnaires that included checking for a diagnosis of high blood pressure.

Research we're watching

Google searches for "chest pain" spiked in March and April of 2020 during the initial sharp rise in COVID-19 infections, according to a new study. The findings suggest that people were attempting to self-diagnose heart attacks — and may explain why fewer people sought treatment for heart attacks in hospitals during the pandemic.

The study relied on Google Trends, a tool that monitors search term queries over time. The authors looked at searches for "chest pain" and five control terms — "toothache," "abdominal pain," "knee pain," "heart attack," and "stroke" — from January 2017 through May 2020. Searches for chest pain (a common symptom of heart attack but not COVID-19) spiked in states with high rates of COVID-19 infection (New York, New Jersey, and Illinois), while searches for other terms stayed steady.

If you've been diagnosed with heart disease, the FITT approach can reduce your risk for heart attack and stroke.

About half of all Americans have at least one of the key risk factors for heart disease, such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and excess weight.

You can address those risks with a heart-healthy diet and medications to lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels. But perhaps the biggest boost you can give your heart is regular aerobic exercise.

Research we're watching

Think you're doing your heart a favor by drinking diet instead of regular soda? That may be wishful thinking, according to a research letter published Nov. 3, 2020, in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Researchers studied nearly 105,000 people who filled out three 24-hour dietary recall surveys every six months. During a 10-year follow-up, researchers tracked the participants' cardiovascular health.

Labels on the bottles promise better health, but these supplements may wind up hurting you.

Keeping your heart healthy requires a combination of strategies, such as eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly, and managing stress. Adding a dietary supplement may seem like another means of protection.

But be careful. Unlike prescription medications, supplements are often sold without evidence that they work or they're safe. There's no way to know what's really inside pills or potions, since the FDA doesn't evaluate whether the manufacture of supplements is high quality, such as whether the pills are free from impurities. The following supplements may pose heart risks.

A new report suggests eating chili peppers regularly could lower the risk of dying of cancer or cardiovascular disease. One theory attributes such health benefits to capsaicin, an antioxidant that brings the heat. But just how strong are these findings?