Heart Health

Knowing when to take your blood pressure can help you predict your likelihood of suffering a heart attack. We know that having high blood pressure markedly increases your risk for heart attacks. Blood pressure is usually lowest just before you go to bed at night and when you first wake up in the morning.

Reports from Harvard School of Public Health shows that a diet rich in plants lowers high blood pressure (1,2). It's called the DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension.) Other studies show that similar eating patterns lower cholesterol, help to control diabetes and cause weight loss in people who are overweight.

The American College of Cardiology (ACC), the American Heart Association (AHA) and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) proposed guidelines for prescribing statin drugs to prevent heart attacks. The old rule was to prescribe statins whenever a person's bad LDL cholesterol is greater than 100 mg/dL

A study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that one of the best tests to predict your risk for having a heart...

The current cholesterol guidelines recommend that everyone should have a blood level of the bad LDL cholesterol below 100. If you live in Canada, divide the American number by 40.

One in ten Americans suffers from mitral valve prolapse and the vast majority have no symptoms and will never know that they have it....

Research shows that some beta blockers and diuretics that are prescribed to control high blood pressure can cause high blood sugar levels, weight gain, tiredness and impotence

Most of the chemicals in your body and in your food are safe, but when many chemicals in your body and foods are oxidized and converted to their oxidized forms they become harmful. Cholesterol is pure and safe for arteries. The cholesterol in fresh meat, fish, eggs and milk is safe. In fact, it functions as an antioxidant that protects your arteries.

More than forty years ago, Dr. Robert Wissler of the University of Chicago showed that arteriosclerosis is reversible in animals. Since then, hundreds of papers have shown that it is reversible in humans, even those who have already had heart attacks.

Almost everyone agrees that having total blood cholesterol levels above 250 is likely to shorten your life and markedly increases your chances of suffering a heart attack, unless you have a very high HDL (which is good). Other studies also show that people with very low cholesterol are at increased risk for cancer of the stomach, esophagus, liver and colon, but it looks like the incubating cancers cause the low cholesterol, rather than a low cholesterol causing the cancers.

What's the most common cause of winter-time heart attacks, shoveling snow or breathing cold air? A study in Toronto showed that most heart...

A slow pulse rate in athletes usually means a strong heart, but in non-athletes, it can mean heart damage. Athletes often have pulse rates below 60 because their hearts are strong enough to pump large amounts of blood with each beat and therefore don't have to beat as often.

Having high blood levels of cholesterol increaes your chances of getting a heart attack, but your blood cholesterol level is influenced far more by how many calories you eat than by how much cholesterol is in the food you eat.

It takes only two weeks for a diet to lower cholesterol as much as it is going to do. You lower cholesterol by replacing saturated...

Changes in diet should be the first strategy for anyone with high blood pressure, but most people will need to make drastic changes in...

Your leg muscles function like a second heart to pump fluid from your legs to your heart. When your leg muscles relax, the veins near them fill up with blood. When your leg muscles contract, they compress the veins and squeeze blood up toward your heart.

A regular exercise program helps to lower high blood levels of homocysteine, according to a study from multiple medical centers (European Journal of Applied...