Tag Archives: heart

Lower Vitamin D Levels in Blacks May Up Heart Risks

Posted on January 16, 2010 by | Leave a comment

(HealthDay News) — New research indicates that the darker skin of blacks may increase their risk of heart disease and stroke because it reduces production of vitamin D, which is made during exposure to sunlight.

Several studies have associated low levels of vitamin D with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and “the biggest source of vitamin D levels is sunlight,” said Dr. Kevin Fiscella, a professor of family medicine and community and preventive medicine at the University of Rochester, and co-author of a paper in the January/February issue of the Annals of Family Medicine. “People with dark skin who live at higher latitudes, where the intensity of sunlight is less, may be at greater risk.”

But the issue abounds with unanswered questions, starting with whether there is a real cause-and-effect relationship of vitamin D levels and cardiovascular risk, and ending with whether supplements that increase blood levels of the vitamin lower that risk, Fiscella said.

“We don’t truly know the answer,” Fiscella said. “That is the really pivotal question, what happens to cardiovascular risk if you correct blood levels of vitamin D. We do know that small supplements for middle-aged people don’t seem to have any effect.”

In the study, Fiscella and Dr. Peter Franks of the University of California, Davis, looked at data on more than 15,000 U.S. adults in a national nutritional study. They found that overall, the 25 percent of adults with the lowest levels of vitamin D had a 40 percent higher risk of cardiovascular death. When they singled out blacks, the report found a 38 percent higher incidence of such deaths than among whites. Most of that difference was related to lower levels of vitamin D...read more here

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What is the difference between an artery and vein?

Posted on January 8, 2010 by | 1 Comment

Arteries are the pipes which carry oxygen rich blood from your heart to your organs and tissues so they can function. Here, blood is bright red.

Veins carry oxygen poor blood from your muscles and organs back to your lungs so they can get more oxygen.
Blood in a vein has more of a purple color.

Addendum: I appreciate the comment from Sherry below. I made this too simplistic and missed blood flow in the lungs.

“In the pulmonary circuit, arteries carry oxygen poor blood from the heart to the lungs and veins carry oxygen rich blood from the lungs to the heart. In the pulmonary circuit, the color and oxygen content is the opposite of what you state.”- Sherry

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Exercise better than heart surgery

Posted on July 11, 2009 by | 1 Comment

Studies have shown that exercise is better than heart surgery, or angioplasty.

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(NaturalNews) At the European Association of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation meeting recently held in Barcelona, Spain, new heart research was presented that shows one treatment in particular can provide remarkable help for patients with certain forms of serious heart disease. It’s not a new drug or surgical procedure. Instead, it’s a natural therapy — plain old-fashioned regular exercise.

In fact, in several studies just presented at the meeting, exercise reduced the markers of heart disease in patients following coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG). What’s more, it improved indications of disease in people with heart failure, a condition usually thought to be incurable and often just treated with symptom-relieving drugs. But the news that’s perhaps most likely to make some interventional cardiologists’ hearts skip a beat or two was the evidence presented that showed that exercise improved cardiac event-free survival in coronary patients better than angioplasty with stents.

Also called percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), angioplasty is commonly used to help people with coronary artery disease whose arteries are narrowed and even blocked by a build-up of sticky plaque. By threading a thin tube through a blood vessel in the arm or groin, interventional cardiologists perform angioplasty to restore blood flood through a clogged artery. A tiny balloon at the end of the tube is inflated when it reaches the exact spot of blockage. That pushes the plaque outward against the walls of the artery, restoring blood flow. A small metal device called a stent is also carried by the tube and deployed at the site of the blockage in order to prop open the artery.

This approach to treating heart disease is a huge business. A report in Bloomberg News last fall noted that about 800,000 angioplasties are performed each year in the U.S. at a cost of about $10 billion annually. And, although many cardiologists consider angioplasty to be the “gold standard” of care in most types of acute coronary events such as heart attack, the procedure’s long term benefits have been questioned by many doctors. In addition, the role of angioplasty in treating other kinds of coronary disease, like angina, isn’t clear....read more here…

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Angioplasty Does Not Extend Life…

Posted on July 11, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Heart Drugs More Cost-Effective Than Angioplasty, Study Finds

By Alex Nussbaum

Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) — Artery-opening angioplasty adds $10,125 to a patient’s medical bill without significantly extending life or improving health for someone with chest pain, researchers said.

The figure, released today by the American Heart Association, is the latest finding that prompts some doctors to question the value of angioplasty procedures performed on more than 800,000 U.S. patients each year, at a cost of about $10 billion annually. Half of those are done to treat “stable” angina — temporary chest pains that can be treated with drugs, diet changes and exercise, the study said.

The procedure, in which a heart artery is unclogged with a balloon and propped open with a tiny tube called a stent, costs $34,843, including follow-up care. That compares with $24,718 for a regimen of anti-cholesterol medicines and lifestyle changes, researchers reported in the association’s journal, Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

“Although the difference narrows somewhat over time, it is never made up,” the researchers said in the study. While angioplasties may make sense for heart attack or severe blockages, “medical therapy alone offered better outcome at a lower cost” for those with stable coronary disease.

The results pose a challenge for device makers including Boston Scientific Corp., Abbott Laboratories,Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic Inc., whose revenue from drug-coated stents topped $4 billion in 2007. Sales of the $2,000 tubes have rebounded after falling 30 percent last year amid concerns the products triggered fatal blood clots.

Seven-Year Study

The study, funded by the U.S. and Canadian governments, is the third installment of a seven-year investigation dubbed Courage. Last year, researchers said drugs and lifestyle changes prevented deaths and heart attacks just as well as angioplasty. A report last month found both methods effective at easing chest pains after two years, though angioplasty offered some early advantages.

Most of the increased expense of angioplasty came from the operation itself, which cost $12,162 compared with $752 for the initial drug therapy. After that, follow-up care and medication expenses were about the same.

Angioplasties increased costs by $206,229 per year of extended life, said the researchers, led by William Weintraub, a cardiologist at Christiana Health Care System of Newark, Delaware….read more here…

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Do Not Take Aspirin to Prevent Heart Attack?

Posted on June 11, 2009 by | 1 Comment

June 3, 2009 (Oxford, UK) — The authors of a new meta-analysis of aspirin use in primary prevention say their results “do not seem to justify general guidelines advocating the routine use of aspirin in all healthy individuals above a moderate level of risk for coronary heart disease. [1]“

The meta-analysis, published in the May 30, 2009 issue of theLancet, was conducted by the Antithrombotic Trialists’ (ATT) Collaboration, led by Dr Colin Baigent (Clinical Trial Service Unit, Oxford University, UK).

Baigent commented to heartwire : “The present data that we have reported here have not been previously available. The current guidelines are based on previous meta-analyses, which have limitations. We have shown for the first time that the very same people at higher risk of heart disease are also at higher bleeding risk with aspirin, which is a very important piece of information and should influence the way in which aspirin is used.”

He added: “Medicine has moved on in recent years, and we now know that we can safely reduce risk of heart disease by lowering cholesterol and blood pressure, and the drugs used to lower these risk factors are probably safer than aspirin. A person wanting to lower their risk might well consider taking a statin or an antihypertensive first and only after that add in a less safe drug like aspirin.”…read more here…

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