Can Heart Attack Damage Be Repaired?

Heart attack is a common name for myocardial infarction (MI) or acute myocardial infarction (AMI). When a person has a heart attack, some heart cells will die because of interruption of blood supply to a part of his or her heart. If a heart attack victim is not dealt with immediately, he or she might end up with death. That is why it is the leading cause for death for men and women worldwide.

Even if the victim is lucky enough to survive the heart attack, the damage to the heart muscle can never be repaired. He or she could have complications such as blood clots, heart failure, heart rupture, heart valve damage, irregular heartbeats and inflammation of the heart.

Good news is that doctors might be able to help the human heart repair itself in the near future. Researchers the Institute of Child Health in London had discovered cells in the hearts of mice that can make new muscle after a heart attack, and found a way to reactivate these cells that help build the heart in an embryo but generally go dormant in adulthood.

The findings, which were published on June 9, 2011 in the journal ‘Nature’, suggested that it might be possible to develop a drug for patients who are at risk of heart attack to keep those dormant cells ready in case of a heart attack.

In the study, researchers found that if the cells, which are found in the outer layer of the mouse heart, were injected with a particular substance and the animals were given a heart attack, the cells migrated to the injury part and made new muscle. The heart worked better as shown by several indicators found. Nevertheless, it was not clear if that was due to the new muscle or other known effects of the injected substance.

While it is generally agreed that very little in the cardiac world has translated from mice to man, some cardiac experts believe the new study would stir the field of heart regeneration studies that would eventually generate some positive findings to benefit people with heart disease.

Why Pregnant Mother Should Not Smoke?

Tobacco smoking is bad for the health. It would lead to many chronic diseases including lung cancer, hypertension (high blood pressure), heart disease, stroke, erectile dysfunction and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease).

The harm often extends not only to the smokers themselves but also to others, especially the family members and friends. Studies have shown that people might develop similar diseases through secondhand smoke.

Smoking is no longer the privilege for men. Many women have picked up this habit as well.

Around 15 percent of women smoke while pregnant in many Western countries. What these female smokers do not know is that a wide range of childhood health problems, including behavioral and neurocognitive problems and sudden infant death had been linked to smoking during and after pregnancy.

A recent study by researchers from the University of Sydney found that pregnant mothers who smoke could cause changes to their unborn babies that can lead them to have lower high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol. HDL is commonly referred to as ‘good cholesterol’ that plays a key role in protecting against atherosclerosis.

Atherosclerosis is a condition in which the artery wall thickens because of accumulation of fatty materials. It could cause heart problems and even heart attack.

Published on June 21, 2011 in the European Heart Journal, the Australian researchers reported that by the age of 8, children born to mothers who smoked in pregnancy had level of HDL cholesterol at around 1.3 millimoles per liter (mmol/L), which was lower than those born to mothers who had not smoked, with about 1.5 mmol/L.

The participants were 405 healthy 8-years-old children (born between 1997 and 1999) who had been enrolled before birth into a randomized controlled trial that was investigating asthma and allergic disease. Data were collected before and after they were born, including information on mothers' smoking habits before and after pregnancy, exposure to passive smoke, and data on height, weight, waist measurement and blood pressure.

Ultrasound scans were used to measure the arterial wall thickness and blood samples were taken from 328 children, who agreed, to measure lipoprotein levels. There was no effect on the thickness of the children's arterial walls, but it was found that there was an effect on levels of HDL cholesterol.

The findings suggested that smoking created an unhealthy set of characteristics on babies while they are developing in the womb, which might cause them prone to develop heart disease and stroke later on. The effect seemed to last for at least 8 years and the risk of getting heart disease for smokers’ children could be 10 to 15 percent higher.

Can Olive Oil Prevent Stroke?

Olive oil is known to benefit heart disease patients.

Some clinical trials have found that Mediterranean diet, with olive oil as key ingredient, helps control some risk factors for heart disease, including high blood pressure, abdominal obesity and elevated levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol. Besides olive oil, Mediterranean diet also includes plenty of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, fish and moderate amounts of red wine. High olive oil intake is also linked to a lower risk of heart attack, and a longer lifespan among heart attack patients.

Recently, researchers from the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Bordeaux, France even suggested that older people who ate olive oil have a lower risk of stroke than those who did not. Their paper was published on June 15, 2011 in ‘Neurology’, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

They followed 7,625 French people who aged 65 and above from 3 cities (Bordeaux, Dijon and Montpellier) for a period of 5 years. The participants were divided into groups according to their use of olive oil, ranging from people who did not use it at all to those who used it in dressing, cooking and on bread (classified as ‘intensive’).

During the period of study, there were 148 strokes. Those intensive users suffered stroke at a rate of 0.3 percent per year, comparing with just over 0.5 percent among non-users and 0.4 percent among moderate users.

After adjusting for factors like body weight, physical activity and overall diet, the risk of stroke for ‘intensive’ olive oil users were found to have 41 percent lower than that of those who never ate olive oil.

Based on the findings, it seemed that a new set of dietary recommendation should be issued to prevent stroke in people who are 65 and above. Olive oil can be an inexpensive and easy way to help older people prevent from getting stroke.

People should choose olive oil and other unsaturated fats over saturated fats that are found largely in meats and dairy and trans fats that were found in some processed foods such as crackers, cookies and chips.

Would Meditation Help Heart Disease Patients?

Any practice in which the practitioner trains his or her minds or self-induces a mode of consciousness can be called meditation. As it is generally an inwardly oriented, personal practice, people can usually practice it by themselves. While meditation has been practiced since thousands of years ago for various reasons, it is now commonly used for relaxation and stress reduction.

Since 1960s, meditation has been the subject of scientific research. There were more than 1,000 published studies that linked various methods of meditation to changes in bodily processes including metabolism, blood pressure, and brain activation.

Meanwhile, popularity of meditation has grown steadily. A 2007 study by the United States government found that about 9.4 percent of adults (over 20 million) had practiced meditation within the past 12 years, up from 7.6 percent (more than 15 million people) in 2002.

In a paper published on June 27, 2011 in the ‘Archives of Internal Medicine’, researchers from the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa reported that meditation would cut the rate of death, heart attack and stroke by half.

The 9-year study on the effects of meditation of heart disease patients was funded by the National Institute of Health, and the stress-reducing technique used is Transcendental Meditation.

Trial was conducted at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee in collaboration with Schneider’s Institute. The study tracked 201 African American men and women, with an average age of 59. These participants had narrowing of arteries in their hearts. While staying on the prescribed medications, they were randomly assigned to either a meditation group or a control group that was given conventional health education classes.

A comparison of results from the 2 groups showed that those who practiced Transcendental Meditation had the risk of death, nonfatal heart attack and stroke decreased by 47 percent. Significant drops in blood pressure, stress and anger found among people in the meditation group might help explain the results.

Researchers felt that more studies should be carried out to confirm the results. They also pointed out that meditation should not be a substitute for drug therapy for heart disease patients.

The study, nevertheless, highlights a hope that health conditions of heart disease patients could be improve if these patients are taught how to effectively reduce psychosocial stress.

Is Chest Pain A Definite Sign for Heart Attack?

When someone is having a serious pain in the chest, the first thing that comes to our mind is: is he or she having a heart attack (or myocardial infarction)?

Serious pain in the chest seems to be an obvious sign of a heart attack. Researchers from the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, however, did not appear to agree.

In their paper published in August 2011 in the ‘Annals of Emergency Medicine’, they pointed out that a high degree of pain does not indicate that someone entering the emergency room with chest pains is having a heart attack.

After examining and following for 30 days more than 3,000 patients who arrived at the UPenn hospital emergency department complaining of chest pain, the researchers found that most severe chest pain was not a good predictor for identifying patients who were having heart attack or who were more prone to having one over the next month. Meanwhile, they also stressed that a patient who does not have severe chest pain does not mean that he or she is not having a heart attack.

The results of their study showed that pain that lasted more than an hour was not a useful sign of heart attack versus other conditions, and the pain of a heart attack also does not always settle in the chest area but might be in the chest, arm, jaw back or abdomen.

According to the researchers, failure to diagnose acute myocardial infarction accounted for 30 percent of malpractice claims paid out, with 2 to 5 percent of patients who were having heart attack being inappropriately discharged from emergency departments.

Though pain severity was not a good predictor, it could correctly identify people who had such symptom and arrived at the emergency department in an ambulance. This might be due to the fact that people tend to ignore chest pain until it is serious enough to call for emergency services.

While the cause of chest pain might or might not be a heart attack, people who have such experience should not ignore it because something serious must have emerged.

What Is the Link Between Westernization and Heart Disease?

As a result of ‘Westernization’, the number of South Koreans with multiple risk factors for heart disease and diabetes has steadily increased. Westernization is the conversation to or adoption of western cultures including technology, politics, economics, lifestyle, diet, language and values.

A study published online on April 19, 2011 in the journal ‘Diabetes Care’ reported that one-third of Korean adults have risk factors associated with diabetes and heart disease. Since the late-1990s, Korea has become more westernized. Researchers from Gil Medical Center in Incheon intended to look at Korea's changing rate of metabolic syndrome, a collection of risk factors for Type-2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

Based on a periodic government health study on Korean adults aged 20 and above, the researchers found that 25 percent of Korean adults had metabolic syndrome in 1998. But by 2007, the figure had risen beyond 31 percent, which was closed to the rate of 34 percent seen in the United States at that time.

Such hike was seen amid a period of fast economic growth in Korea, together with the adoption of the less-than-healthy lifestyle often accompanying with it. Korean are eating more ‘Western’ food, watching more TV and having less exercise than a decade ago.

This is not the first study to link Westernization to health problems in Asian countries undergoing rapid economic growth. A recent study in urban Indian also found steadily increasing rate of obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes among young adults who were followed for 7 years. The researchers who conducted the study accused declining levels of physical activity and high smoking rate as the culprits for causing such health problems.

Meanwhile, several other recent studies in South and Southeastern Asia have also highlighted heart disease and diabetes as growing problems. A World Bank study on India and other South Asian countries had warned that people in the region get their first heart attack at the age of 53, which is 6 years earlier than people anywhere else.

To prevent from ending up with such health problems, people must change their lifestyle. For instance, they should perform regular exercise and adopt a healthy diet with low sodium (salt), carbohydrates and fat.

Do You Want Your Heart Disease Risk Doubled?

While cigarette smoking can induce numerous medical disorders to smokers themselves, people who are exposed to smokers’ tobacco smoke are also at a high risk of getting similar medical disorders. One of the disorders is heart disease, one of the leading killers in the world.

Researchers from the University College London reported that people who are around smokers and breathe in a lot of smoke are twice as likely to die from heart disease as those who are exposed to lower levels of secondhand smoke. Their study, which covered more than 13,000 people in England and Scotland, was published on June 29, 2010 in the ‘Journal of the American College of Cardiology’.

A saliva test was used to measure the amount of secondhand smoke people have been exposed to and the participants were followed for an average of 8 years, keeping track of who developed heart disease and who died.

It was found that 32 out of about 1,500 people who had never smoked but were exposed to high levels of secondhand smoke died of heart disease. In comparison, only 15 out of about 1,000 people who never smoked but with low exposure. Their analysis, which was restricted to never-smokers only, showed that high secondhand smoke exposure was linked to more than a 2-fold increased risk of dying from heart disease.

High level of exposure, according to the definition set by the researchers, would be equivalent to living with a smoker and exposed to secondhand smoke almost every day.

This is definitely not the first study to reveal such association. In a 10-year study published in 1997 in the journal ‘Circulation’, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health reported that women who never smoked but regularly exposed to other peoples’ smoking in home or work had their risk of heart disease almost doubled.

More than 32,000 healthy women who never lighted up a cigarette were tracked. These women, aged between 36 and 61 when the study began, suffered 152 heart attacks, 25 of them fatal.

In order to prevent heart disease, smokers are urged to give up this unhealthy and selfish habit for the sake of their loved ones. Meanwhile, people staying with smokers should strive to help them quit smoking so as to lower the risk of heart disease for all in the house.

Avoid Processed Meat To Prevent Heart Disease!

Bacon, sausage, hot dog and some other processed meat have already become an integrated part of many meat lovers’ diets. But many are probably not aware that eating too much of these would raise their chances of developing diabetes and heart disease.

In a paper published on May 17, 2010 in the journal ‘Circulation’, researchers from Harvard School of Public Health reported that eating unprocessed beef, pork or lamb did not seem to raise risks of heart attack and diabetes. Therefore, salt and chemical preservatives are the real culprits responsible for these 2 health disorders.

Many past studies examining the relationship between eating meat and cardiovascular disease and diabetes had found mixed results, and few had looked at the differences in risk between processed and unprocessed red meat.

To get evidence of a link between eating processed and unprocessed red meat and the risk of diabetes and heart disease, a systemic review of nearly 1,600 studies from around the world were carried out.

Processed meat was defined in the study as any meat preserved by smoking, curing or salting, or with the addition of chemical preservatives. Good examples of processed meat included bacon, salami, sausages, hot dogs or processed deli or luncheon meats. On the other hand, unprocessed red meat included beef, lamb or pork but not poultry.

The findings showed that on average, every 50 grams serving of processed meat a day (equivalent to 1 or 2 slices of deli meats or 1 hot dog) was associated with a 19 percent higher risk of developing diabetes and 42 percent higher risk of heart disease. Meanwhile, they found no higher risk of diabetes or heart disease in people eating only unprocessed red meats.

Hence, they urged people to eat less (1 serving or less per week) processed meats such as bacon, salami, sausages, hot dogs and processed deli meats in order to lower the risk of diabetes and heart attack.

As expected, the American Meat Institute objected to the findings quoting that it was only one study that was different from other studies and the United States Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Hence, there is no reason for dietary changes unless further studies could justify so.

Women Benefit More In Certain Heart Disease Treatment!

Heart failure is a condition in which heart is unable to pump blood at an adequate rate or in adequate volume. In serious cases, heart failure patients could lose their life with cessation of heartbeat.

There are numerous reasons why one might develop heart failure, which can be sudden or happen gradually over a periods of time. Some common causes are heart attack, high blood pressure, defective valves in the heart, cardiomyopathies (diseases of the heart muscle), too much alcohol, and congenital conditions that one is born with.

Besides taking right mix of medications, heart failure patients could have their condition reversed if the heart valve is repaired or fast heart rhythm is controlled. In some cases, certain devices are used to help the heart beat and contract properly. For example, cardiac resynchronization therapy with defibrillator (CRT-D), which is a form of therapy for congestive heart failure caused by dilated cardiomyopathy, have been found to have remarkable benefits on appropriately selected patients with heart failure.

CRT-D can help guard against sudden death from irregular heart rhythm by using a specialized pacemaker to re-coordinate the action of the right and left ventricles in patients with heart failure. It can also help strengthen pumping action in patients with heart damage.

Researchers from the University of Rochester pointed out in their findings that CRT-D works twice as well in women. Their study, which was published on February 7, 2011 in the ‘Journal of the American College of Cardiology’, found that when using CRT-D, there was a 70 percent reduction in heart failure in women compared a 35 percent drop in men.

This is probably the first time in history of heart disease research that has credited a certain type of treatment that is more effective in women than in men. In the past cardiac studies, men and women generally received similar benefit from preventive medical therapy.

According to researchers, CRT-D works better in women because women tend to suffer from a different type of heart disease than men. The male participants in the study were more likely to have coronary heart disease while the female participants were more likely to suffer from non-ischemic heart disease.

Coronary artery disease, which is also known as ischemic heart disease, is a condition in which narrowed vessels restrict blood flow to the heart. Non-ischemic heart disease, on the other hand, is one that involves more generalized scarring of heart tissue.

Is There A Link Between Migraine and Stroke?

Migraine is a fairly common type of headache, which might occur with symptoms like nausea, vomiting or sensitivity to light. For many victims of migraine, a shocking pain is felt only on one side of their heads.

There is no cure for migraine but medications could help reduce the frequency and severity of migraine. With the appropriate drugs together with self-help remedies and lifestyle changes, migraine can greatly be relieved.

Nevertheless, people with migraine should be more careful because they will face additional medical disorders, based on the findings published in 2010 in the ‘American Journal of Medicine’.

After analyzing the results of 21 International studies previously conducted between 1975 and 2007 involving more than 622,000 adults with and without migraine, researchers from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore found that people with migraine are about twice as likely as people without migraine to develop ischemic stroke (a common stroke that is caused by blood clot in the brain). Most of the studies also took into account factors that might link migraine to stroke risk. These factors include age, high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking habits and weight.

It is unclear whether the migraine itself would directly lead to stroke for some people, but one thing is sure: pain does involve constriction, and then swelling, of brain blood vessels. So researchers suspect that people with migraine might have dysfunction in the blood vessels throughout the body that might explain the higher risk of stroke and heart attack.

While researchers believe that a common process is likely to contribute to both migraine and stroke risk, they are not sure whether treating and preventing migraine could reduce the people’s risk of cardiovascular events (include heart disease and stroke). As such, suffers of migraine are warned to pay great attention in controlling any modifiable risk factors, such as high blood pressure, smoking and diabetes, for stroke.

Meanwhile, researchers also clarified that while migraine are associated with a higher risk of stroke, the absolute risk remains fairly low to any one person.

Why You Should Take It Easy?

Many management experts believe personality plays an important role in career advancement. For one to excel, he or she has to be confrontational, especially competitive and even aggressive. However, if you belong to this class of people, perhaps, you should take it easy from now onwards.

This is because a study by researchers from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) found that these types of people are at a higher risk of heart attack and stroke. Their findings were published on August 16, 2010 in ‘Hypertension’, Journal Of The American Heart Association (AHA).

5,614 residents, aged between 14 and 94 (on average 42), of 4 villages in the Italian Mediterranean island of Sardinia were examined. 58 percent of the residents were female.

The participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire that was a modified version of the NEO, a popular five-factor personality assessment questionnaire. People who marked themselves as aggressive on the questionnaire were at a higher risk to suffer from thickening of the neck arteries than those who were marked as affable or accommodating.

3 years later, those who scored higher on antagonism, especially those who were manipulative and expressed anger quickly, continued to have thickening of their artery walls. And for people who were the most antagonistic, the chance that they would get thicker arteries were about 40 percent higher.

Ultrasound technology (non-invasive ultrasonography) was utilized to measure arterial wall thickening, which is a sign of ageing that could predict future cardiovascular disease. It is known as intima-mediat thickness (IMT), a predictor for heart attack and stroke. The measurements taken in the study were on participants’ IMTs of the carotid artery, which supplies most of the blood to the brain, were measured.

According to the researchers, people who had high score on antagonism tend to be distrustful, skeptical and at the extreme arrogant, cynical, express anger quickly, manipulative, and self-centered, while people who are agreeable tend to be trusting, straightforward and care for others.

The new finding undoubtedly supports the fact that negative psychological factors do have a great impact on a person’s health as much as lifestyle and smoking.

Vitamin-B Therapy Benefit Diabetics?

Studies have shown that high doses of Vitamin-B do aid heart disease prevention. Meanwhile, many researchers also believed Vitamin-B therapy using folic acid, Vitamin B6, and Vitamin B12 could reduce diabetic kidney damage because Vitamin-B can help lower blood levels of homocysteine.

Homocysteine is an amino acid that induces clotting in the blood and damages the lining of arteries. It is also a strong risk factor for stroke and heart attack. Diabetics are known to have higher homocysteine levels, on average, than people without diabetes.

But, the findings of researchers from the University of Western Ontario and the Robarts Research Institute in London, Ontario seem to be quite different.

In their paper published in the April 28 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), they reported that patients with diabetic nephropathy might suffer rapid deterioration of their kidneys, if they were treated by high doses of Vitamin-B. They also pointed out that diabetics in addition to kidney function loss were affected by higher rates of heart attack and stroke than those who took a placebo.

Diabetic nephropathy is kidney disease or damage that is caused by a complication of diabetes. It affects the network of tiny blood vessels in the glomerulus, a structure in the kidney made of capillary blood vessels to filter blood.

To see whether Vitamin-B therapy would slow down the progression of diabetic nephropathy and prevent vascular events, the researchers conducted a clinical research in 238 patients with Type-1 and Type-2 diabetes. The placebo-controlled trial was conducted at 5 university medical centers in Canada between May 2001 and July 2007.

Patients were divided into 2 groups: one group received single tablet of Vitamin-B with folic acid (2.5 mg/d), Vitamin B6 (25 mg/d) and Vitamin B12 (1 mg/d) while the other group were prescribed with matching placebo.

After following the patients for an average period of 31.9 months, researchers found that those with Vitamin-B therapy had a faster reduction rate of kidney function, as compared with those who were on placebo treatment. In addition, those patients with diabetic nephropathy additionally had a higher rate of heart attack and stroke than patients who received placebo.

Why You Should Not Avoid Chocolate?

Chocolate is a raw or processed food produced from cocoa beans (also known as cacao beans or simply cacao or cocoa), and it is something that is liked by many people especially children.

Studies conducted earlier had shown cocoa-based products might lower blood pressure or improve blood flow. Scientists had also found that chocolate could reduce the rate of death linked to heart disease in healthy older men and post-menopausal women.

In a paper appeared in the September 2009’s issue of the ‘Journal of Internal Medicine’, researchers from of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston demonstrated that eating chocolate can help reduce the rate of mortality of heart attack.

According to them, it is the antioxidants in cocoa that are providing the life-saving benefit. Antioxidants have been known to protect against free radicals, which could damage cells when they accumulate in the body over time. Free radicals are believed to be partly responsible for heart disease, cancer and ageing process.

1,169 non-diabetic men and women, aged between 45 and 70 years old and situated in Stockholm during the early 1990, were tracked from the time they were hospitalized with their first-ever heart attack. Before leaving the hospital, all the men and women were asked on what they ate over the previous year, including quantity of chocolate they consumed regularly.

3 months after discharge, the participants underwent a health examination, and after that, they were monitored for 8 years. The rate of fatal heart attack was found to be correlated inversely with the amount of chocolate consumed.

Those heart attack survivors who ate chocolate 2 or more times a week, their risk of dying from heart disease could be reduced by about 3 fold, compared with those never touch chocolate. Smaller quantities of consumption would offer less protection, but are still better than none.

The results, even after taking into account of other factors like alcohol consumption, obesity and smoking that might affect the outcome, held true for men and women and across all the age groups.

Undoubtedly, the new findings would support the growing evidence that chocolate is a rich source of beneficial bioactive compounds.

But does this mean that people should start eating a lot of chocolate, especially those cocoa-rich sweets?

Frankly, this is not advisable! Sugar rich products would contribute to overweight, which can also bring along many serious medical disorders. So the best is to consume chocolate in small quantities, and if possible, eat unsweetened chocolate!