Search Results for: blog heart attack warning signs

Stocks, Weather, and Heart Attacks

Is there a link between the stock market and heart health? Researchers from Duke University think there might be. Researchers studied heart attack treatment data from Duke University’s hospital. They started with December 2007 — the beginning of the current recession — and stopped with the signs of economic recovery in July 2009. As Nasdaq stock market numbers sank, the number of heart attacks treated tended to rise. During the period studied, close to one thousand people suffered heart attacks and were treated at Duke University. Researchers found that when the stock market recovered, the number of heart attacks went … Continue reading →

Four Months without a Heart

A fourteen year old South Carolina girl survived for more than one hundred days without a heart in her chest. Since July 2008, D’Zhana Simmons had two heart transplants — and survived with artificial heart pumps instead of a heart between the two surgeries. That’s a total of one hundred and eighteen days without an actual heart in her chest. When the Simmons family found out that D’Zhana had an enlarged heart that was too weak to pump blood properly, they traveled to Holtz Children’s Hospital in Miami for a transplant. The heart she received in July 2008 didn’t work … Continue reading →

Not Enough People Know the Signs of a Heart Attack

A survey from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control found that too many Americans don’t know all the warning signs of a heart attack. Do you? More bad news from the CDC when it comes to heart attacks: More than nine hundred thousand Americans have heart attacks each year. More than one hundred and fifty thousand Americans die from a heart attack each year. Approximately seventy five thousand Americans die within an hour of symptom onset. Quick action and awareness of the symptoms are critical if you’re going to survive a heart attack. In case you weren’t sure, the five … Continue reading →

A Cat Can Lower Your Heart Attack Risk

As if we didn’t love our pets enough — here’s another reason to cuddle your kitty! A ten year study from the University of Minnesota suggests that having a cat for a pet can cut your heart attack risk by nearly a third! More than four thousand Americans between the ages of thirty and seventy-five were tracked between 1976 and 1980 for a National Health and Nutrition Examination Study. The University of Minnesota team looked at the data, then spent a decade following up with the participants to look at health issues and death rates. More than half the people … Continue reading →

Heart Attack Aftermath: Returning to Work

Returning to work after a major injury or health crisis can be exciting. You may be tired of resting and feeling a touch of cabin fever! Or, the prospect of going back to your regular routine may be frightening. Can you handle your old workload? Have you missed too much in your absence? When it comes to a heart attack, there’s one emotion you need to be careful of: stress. A recent study from Universite Laval in Quebec found that chronic job stress can double a person’s likelihood of having a second heart attack! There is a lot of potential … Continue reading →

I Didn’t Know I Had A Heart Attack

I’ve been taking classes at a glass studio in Portland. How does this relate to heart attacks? One of the owners had one recently, and ended up having a quadruple bypass! He told me he didn’t know he was having a heart attack. In fact, he spent a weekend in discomfort but going about his usual business before finally going to the emergency room on Monday for what he thought was kidney stones. The pain didn’t get too severe until the third day after the heart attack happened — the actual attack happened on a Friday. By the third day, … Continue reading →

A Nap Can Be Good For Your Heart

Enjoy an afternoon siesta? Like to catch a few zzzs between lunch and the end of the work day? Here’s some good news — research from the University of Athens in Greece says that a midday nap may help reduce the risk of fatal heart problems. This study tracked more than twenty-three thousand healthy Greek adults for six years or so. The ones who made time for a half-hour nap at least three times per week had a thirty-seven percent lower risk of heart attack and other heart problems than the non-nappers did. The majority of the participants were in … Continue reading →

For Women Only- Signs of a Heart Attack

Did your mother ever use the phrase “I am just sick and tired” on you when you were growing up? Mine did. She was sick and tired of my antics quite a bit. Sadly, this same phrase may also be the only signs a woman experiences when she is having a heart attack. Most sources that talk about warning signs for a heart attack base their symptoms on those of a male patient. Women are not the same as men. Yes, sometimes we really do need science to point out the obvious. Here are the hard facts of the matter. … Continue reading →

Spooky Halloween Adventures

These are no kiddie Zoo Boos. The following Halloween travel attractions are not for the faint of heart. Literally. Many theme parks post large signs warning guests that suffer from heart conditions NOT to partake in the gory Halloween hauntings that are a dime a dozen this time of year, for fear it may cause serious medical emergencies. If you are cool as a cucumber and creepy mazes, disorienting strobe lights, fog and fake blood don’t make your heart skip a beat or trigger panic attacks, then you might consider traveling to the following Halloween events: Busch Gardens Williamsburg in … Continue reading →

Coated Stents

Stents are the tubes inserted into arteries to help them stay open after angioplasty (surgery to remove clots). Right now, surgeons are using stents coated with drugs. Italian researchers are trying out a new type of coated stent with some success. These new stents are coated with a special compound that is designed to help prevent thrombosis (the formation of clots) and restenosis (the buildup of deposits that can clog blood vessels). The compound was developed by CeloNova Biosciences here in the United States and tested out by the University of Catania in Italy. The coating was designed to reduce … Continue reading →