“Shoveling snow can, in fact, precipitate a heart attack, and it does for thousands of Americans every year,” says Dr. Warren Levy, chief medical officer of Virginia Heart, one of the largest cardiology practices in the region.
He says shoveling snow involves a level of exertion that most of us just are not used to and don’t do on a daily basis.
“It is the same sort of trouble people get into [when they] have never exercised and decide to suddenly train for a marathon,” Levy explained.
People most likely to have problems while shoveling snow are those already diagnosed with heart disease, or who have significant risk factors, such as high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, cigarette smoking, a strong family history or a sedentary lifestyle.
This infographic and the videos below teach you our favorite cooking formulas (or techniques) for enjoying a wide variety of vegetables: sauteing, steaming, roasting, boiling, microwaving, including in salads, pureeing into soups, and turning into zucchini noodles. Enjoy them in season for the tastiest (and least expensive results).
Each year in the United States, there are more than 795,000 strokes. Stroke is the fourth leading cause of death in the country and causes more serious long-term disabilities than any other disease. Nearly three-quarters of all strokes occur in people over the age of 65 and the risk of having a stroke more than doubles each decade after the age of 55.
The National Institutes of Health through the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) developed the Know Stroke. Know the Signs. Act in Time. campaign to help educate the public about the symptoms of stroke and the importance of getting to the hospital quickly.
“I have hardly been sick a day in my life. I take vitamins, try homeopathic remedies and have a great immune system,” says Kilian, 53.However, little did she know while treating her flu/bronchitis symptoms at home in November 2013, that she would end up in the hospital for nearly three weeks.”
Over the winter, I just wasn’t getting better,” says Kilian. “I was having trouble breathing and was starting to feel like I was gaining weight from eating healthy foods to keep my strength up. But, in reality, I was retaining fluid from heart failure.”
Kilian said that her water retention started out slowly, but it became more rapid as her symptoms progressed. Eventually, her brother, who lives in Naperville, brought her to the Elmhurst Memorial Hospital Emergency Department.”
The doctors were shocked at the amount of fluid that I had around my heart. I ended up with a pacemaker in the process,” says Kilian.
Thousands of Americans every year develop an abnormal heart rhythm after having major surgery. These episodes have long been considered a fleeting phenomenon that is generally not a cause for concern.
But a large new study suggests that doctors should take these abnormal heart rhythms, known as atrial fibrillation, or A-fib, more seriously. It found that patients who experienced one or more episodes after surgery had a striking increase in their risk of having a future stroke. The findings are likely to encourage doctors to potentially monitor and in some cases treat the patients who experience them.
“This is telling us that once you see atrial fibrillation in the hospital, that’s a marker of potential trouble to come,” said Dr. Donald Easton, a clinical professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco medical school.
A remarkable discovery in heart research was made by scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB in Stuttgart: they found the surface markers of cardiovascular functional living progenitor cells CPCs. This discovery is extremely important for heart research because it demonstrates that the cardiovascular progenitor cells CPCs can be derived from induced pluripotent stem cells, iPS cells. Investigation results were recently published in the journal PLoS ONE.
Progenitor cells are cells that are normally found only in the fetus and have the ability to develop into all cell types of the heart: cardiomyocytes, etc. The goal of the study led by Prof. Dr. Katja Schenke-by Layland from the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB in Stuttgart, was to produce functional cardiomyocytes from progenitor cells. Cardiomyocytes are heart muscle cells that play an essential role in contraction. Myocardial infarction leads to loss of functional cardiomyocytes. As a result of a blockage of a coronary artery, myocardium served by that artery will not be supplied with oxygen anymore, thus it will die. A frequent consequence of patients who suffer a heart attack is heart failure, which means decreased ability of the heart contraction.