The Plan will help you attack most of the risk factors discussed in this chapter. But some, like the ones listed below, you’re stuck with. Even so, keep in mind that your power to reduce your overall CHD risk is still monumental. Leg length. A British study of 2,512 men ages 45 to 59 found those with the shortest legs had more heart attacks and new incidents of angina than men with longer legs. Researchers in Wales monitored the men for 15 years to gauge their risks of developing heart disease and found men with shorter legs—even those who weren’t short overall—had higher levels of fibrinogen and cholesterol and were more likely to be insulin resistant. Researchers suspect that nutritional and environmental circumstances during childhood, which affected growth rates and leg length, also play a role in cardiac health. Baldness. When researchers at Harvard Medical Schoo! compared patterns of baldness with incidence of CHD in 22,071 male physicians, they found that the balder...
The following are sings of depression. If you’re experiencing one or more of them, see your doctor or a mental health care provider. Despair: persistent feelings of sadness, emptiness, worthlessness; excessive crying; inappropriate guilt; recurring thoughts of suicide or death, Apathy: loss of interest in activities, including sex. Trouble concentrating: difficulty making decisions, restlessness. Fatigue: loss of energy, constantly feeling tired. Low self-esteem: poor self-image, misdirected guilt. Sleep or eating problems: changes in weight or appetite, changes in sleep patterns or early-morning waking. Poor hygiene: often manifested in sloppy appearance. Persistent physical ailments: headaches or digestive problems, for example...
For most people coffee contributes little to overall heart disease risk. But if you’re a java junkie, keep reading. A 2001 study published in the Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that drinking four or more cups of coffee a day affects cholesterol and homocysteine levels. Researchers broke 191 healthy, nonsmoking, coffee-drinking volunteers aged 24 to 69 into three groups: no coffee, one to three cups a day, or more than four cups a day. Those who cut out the brew altogether saw their homocysteine and cholesterol levels drop, Another study, published in the same journal, found that in adults who drank strong filtered coffee, homocysteine levels rose 18 percent. Researchers concluded that if you’re used to drinking four or more cups of coffee a day, abstaining might reduce by 10 percent the risk of heart disease attributed to high homocysteine levels >...
The discovery of the link between homocysteine and heart disease owes much to an obscure case published in (he November 23, 1933, New England Journal of Medicine. described an 8-year-old boy admitted to Massachu setts General Hospital after four days of headache, drowsiness, and vomiting. He died three days later. An autopsy revealed the cause of death: hardening of the arteries resulting in stroke. It was hardly a disease doctors expected to find in a child. Thirty-two years later, a 9-year-old girl admitted to the same hospital had signs of homocystinuria, a genetic defect identified just a few years previously in which the liver can’t dispose of homocysteine, resulting in abnormally high levels of the amino acid. It turned out the little boy who had died in 1933 was her uncle. The cases intrigued Kilmer S. McCully, M.D., then a pathologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. He began investigating the disease and found that in these children (and a 2-month-old baby) the...
Think about this the next time you rush through brushing your teeth or decided to skip flossing: You’re more likely to have elevated C-reactive protein(CRP) levels—and a higher risk of heart disease—if you have gum disease. Gum diseases are bacterial infections that destroy the gum and bone that hold your teeth in your mouth, When this happens your gums separate from the teeth, forming pockets that fill with plaque and even more bacteria. About 15 percent of adults between ages 21 and 50, and 30 percent over 50, have gum disease. And overall, studies find that people with gum disease are almost twice as likely to suffer from CHD as those who don’t have it.’Researchers speculate that gum disease may allow oral bacteria to enter the blood stream, triggering the liver to make inflammatory proteins like CRP.The bacteria may also play a direct role in injuring the arteries. >...
