A new study recently published shows that omega-3 fatty acids, the main component of fish oil, may actually keep heart failure patients away from the hospital. It is already known that fish oil reduces the likelihood of coronary artery disease, but this is a definite breakthrough. According to the study, the patients who were given the fish oil survived longer than those who took a placebo. This is surprising in the fact that a similar study was done with statins (cholesterol lowering medication) to no avail. It will be curious to see what further research proves about this new study.
We all know that smoking can be one of the worst things you can do to your heart. Smoking causes problems within the walls of blood vessels and also causes platelets to stick together, leading to clots. Other problems for the heart include alcohol, and caffeine. Alcohol increases the risk of afib, which leads to an increased risk of stroke. In some severe cases, alcohol may even cause heart failure. The following video answers many questions people may have about things that are good for one’s heart, and others which may actually be harmful. VideoJug: Heart Disease Risk Factors And Prevention
According to wikipedia, an epidemic is defined as “a classification of a disease that appears as new cases in a given human population, during a given menistral period, at a rate that substantially exceeds what is “expected,” based on recent experience.” Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death in today’s society and seems to be turning into an epidemic according to the definition above. Watch the following video to learn more and about other basics. VideoJug: Heart Disease Basics
Cholesterol is a major component that keeps your body running, but it can also be one of the worst things you can do to it. Cholesterol builds up in your blood vessels leading to many blockages around the heart and ultimately to a heart attack, the leading cause of heart failure. Keeping a low cholesterol and low sodium diet can save your life in the future. Watch this video to learn more about the effects of cholesterol in your body:
Smoking cigarettes is one of the worst things you can do to your heart. Here is a guest post that will inform you about “harmless cigarettes” and common misconceptions:
We live in a world where we are bombarded with opposing messages. Turn on the television and just watch a thirty-second commercial. You’ll need an hour to figure out why the advertisers chose their messages to make us want to buy their product. It can be confusing for the viewer. One thing that can no longer be misunderstood is that smoking cigarettes will lead to cardiovascular problems. We still hear some people say that if you cut down or only smoke at a certain time of day that you’ll be alright. This just isn’t true. To further beat this subject over your head here are some reasons that cigarettes are terrible for your cardiovascular health:
Smoking increases your chances of coronary disease. The United States Surgeon General has called cigarette smoking the leading cause of preventable deaths and diseases. This fact could and should stand alone when someone thinks about starting smoking or quitting smoking. It has also been discovered that smoking poses a greater risk in people under fifty years old than over.
Smoking creates a windfall effect. Smoking will decrease your good cholesterol. This is bad news if you have any other bad habits or risk factors in addition to smoking. Poor diet, family history of heart disease and little exercise are a few examples that if mixed with smoking create a veritable pressure cooker in your body.
There is no good news about smoking. Further studies show that women who smoke and take oral contraceptives greatly increase their risk for stroke. Inhaling cigarette smoke severely affects the cerebrovascular system making it one of the most damaging risk factors for stroke.
To reiterate: secondhand smoke is still bad. Conservative estimates indicate that up to 70,000 preventable deaths each occur with people who have inhaled secondhand smoke. It’s hard to imagine that there are still some parts of the country that allow people to smoke indoors. Even provincial cities like Boston and New York have only, just recently, banned smoking in bars.
Cigars and pipes aren’t good alternatives. Some people that just because you don’t inhale smoke as much when smoking a cigar or out of a pipe that you’re home free when it comes to coronary disease. The study doesn’t back this up. While you may be “safer” than a cigarette smoker, the risk of coronary disease is greater in cigar and pipe smokers than non-smokers.
By-line: This post was contributed by Heather Johnson, who writes on the subject of Nursing Salary. She invites your feedback at heatherjohnson2323 at gmail dot com.
I came across this great video today that summarized many treatment methods for treating cardiovascular problems. Everything form dieting and exercise to common drugs are discussed in the video. Even important drugs that lower blood pressure are summarized. If you are someone who takes medication for heart problems, this video will teach you what each drug does and how it is vital for your health. Enjoy:
An alarming study was recently published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. It would appear that many existing heart patients know very little about heart health. In fact, nearly half of the coronary patients polled didn’t know the symptoms of a heart attack and didn’t realize that they are in a higher risk category for a heart attack.
Patients were given a list of possible heart attack symptoms, with 15 correct answers and 6 incorrect answers randomly listed. When asked to choose the correct symptoms on this test, almost half of all patients scored a grade under 70.
Of course, people who suffer from heart disease are five to seven times more likely to have a heart attack than people without coronary health problems. How is it that the average heart patient knows so little about his/her condition?
This is a widespread problem, unfortunately, amongst both heart patients and healthy patients. This is why people should become more involved with health advocacy, as ignorance is rampant where the subject is concerned.
The problem isn’t relegated to one area of the world, it seems, as this was an international medical study. Those polled included 3,522 patients from the United States, Australia and New Zealand. The complete study is available here.
This post was contributed by Heather Johnson, who is an industry critic on the subject of lpn to rn degree. She invites your feedback at heatherjohnson2323 at gmail dot com.
Even though heart failure is a leading cause of deaths among millions of Americans, other cardiovascular diseases can lead to forms of heart failure. Coronary artery disease is the single leading cause of death in the country today. “Rebecca Fox gives us an overview of the diagnosis and shows us what options are available.”
One thing that I want to talk about is edema. Edema is the accumulation of fluid in a certain part of the body. Congestive heart failure keeps the heart from properly pumping fluids throughout the body and thus these fluids build up in places such as the legs and arms. This can be very dangerous. Usually doctors will prescribe a diuretic such as Lasix to eliminate the fluids from the body. However, these medications can also lead to other complications such as kidney failure. People with heart failure may wake up one day to notice that they have gained 20 pounds. This is because of the accumulation of these fluids. In severe cases of pulmonary edema in which fluids accumulate in the lungs, some people can even drown to death if they are not treated immediately. If anyone ever experiences swelling in the legs and arms, you should immediately seek a health care professional.
Hello everyone, I thought it would be interesting to start podcasting and doing interviews with some of the leading professional physicians involved in the world of heart failure to bring some helpful information to the viewers of this site. Starting in the next month or so, I will try to start a system where podcasts can be available on itunes to be downloaded for free. However, first I need to find some doctors who are willing to be interviewed. If anyone is willing to be interviewed, all you need is a computer and a microphone and you can contact me at alexhakimi@gmail.com. I hope to hear from you if you are interested.
This website was created to educate people about heart failure. The first step to helping treat heart failure is to educate people about it. Many small symptoms such as being short of breath when doing small activities can sometimes prove to be big signs of heart failure. By educating others, the symptoms will not go unnoticed. Watch this video to learn how important education can be.
Sometimes, the medication needed to treat adult heart failure is not good for children who have heart failure. Medications in the class of “Beta-Blockers” are very expensive and do not have the same effects on children as adults. What is significant in the trial that was done was that 50% of the children ended up getting better on their own. Watch the video to learn more.
In order to be able to understand CHF to the fullest extent, one must comprehend the parts of the heart and the way they work together. I have read many articles on congestive heart failure and one skill that I have developed is to understand the medical terminology. When you read a new report on the drugs that are being developed to treat CHF, you can not really learn from the article unless you understand some of the jargon. This video allows you to understand the heart and all the big words that are associated with it. You will understand how the heart pumps blood, which is vital to comprehend ing heart failure. Enjoy!
There was a post in the past about the function of ICDs and their importance to heart failure patients. Just to recap, ICDs are miniature versions of those huge emergency defibrillators. Many people that suffer from heart failure develop arrhythmias which can be potentially dangerous. ICDs are responsible to correct these problems and to record the heart’s activities in the device memory to be studied by doctors’ who can better treat the patient. These devices are truly heart savers. The following link shows the process in which these devices are installed and their importance in the medical world. This truly is an interesting video and there is a doctor present to describe everything that is going on. Enjoy the following link thanks to Or-live.com. LINK
Well I got a lot of response for the last post about the way a heart attack damages heart muscle. Here is a video that describes the symptoms of a heart attack. This one is probably more important, because if you ever feel many of the symptoms given, you should immediately go the emergency room to get checked out.
One of the biggest causes of heart failure is a major heart attack. A heart attack keeps oxygen from reaching the myocardial cells in the heart, which leads to heart failure. This is because the damaged tissue is unable to contract anymore. A heart attack can vary in the amount of damage it causes to the heart due to the size of the artheroma and the location in the coronary artery. Learn more by watching this video.
This is an excellent video brought to you by UCSF’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. The video explores different types of treatments and how to manage Cardiovascular disease. “Join William Grossman, MD., Chief, Division of Cardiology, UCSF for a look at the use of drug therapy in the treatment of Atherosclerotic Heart and Vascular Disease. Series: Osher Lifelong Learning Presents [Health and Medicine] [Professional Medical Education] [Show ID: 11317]” I hope you all enjoy this video as it is very interesting. Thanks to UCSF for putting it on the internet.
“Hawthorn extract has ‘significant benefit’ for patients with chronic heart failure, and seems to be safe, researchers conclude based on a literature review they conducted. ” (Daily Times). There is supposedly a new herbal remedy to help heart failure patients. This new treatment was tested on heart failure patients and it actually seemed to decrease the number of people experiencing shortness of breath and or fatigue. This testing was done on an exercise bike. Researchers have concluded that the herbal remedy may help a few patients but that they must still ask their doctors before trying them out. The secret of the herbal remedy seems to be that it improves blood flow and increases the power of the heart’s contractions. Read more HERE.
I am currently working with a directx 10 engine from Microsoft to create an interactive application to teach users more about heart failure. Although the videos on this site may be interactive enough to some people, I want the users to choose what they want to learn about. This interactive application will allow the user to walk around in a graphic environment and to look at pictures and read information about what they see. Even though this is a very long and hard process to get it working, I think it will be able to help many people out. The program will be available for free to all users on this site. Keep in mind that it will only work with Windows Vista and directx 10 compatible video cards. Currently, the best video card that will work is from Nvidia and is the 8800 model. However, all Nvidia 8 series cards will work. If you meet these system requirements and would like to beta test the program, please drop me an email at alexhakimi@gmail.com. I look forward to meeting a few beta testers. I will also be posting screen shots and work in progress videos soon.
I remember I posted a site recommendation for the site or-live.com. Well on the 12th, they will have a live streaming video of a Surgical Ventricular Reconstruction. You can send messages to the surgeons and ask them any questions, that will be answered live. People that have enlarged hearts, develop systolic heart failure. This surgical procedure fixes these problems such as valve defects and problems with the ventricles. It is a very serious surgery, but in the long run it allows the heart to pump much more effectively than before. I hope you all watch the presentation. Here is a short video that explains everything.
Well, I opened up firefox today to find my normal yahoo homepage running full screen. However, something that caught my attention was the main news section. It read, “Growing an organ in a jar.” Curious, I watched the video and read the article. The organ turned out to be a heart, specifically a rat’s. These scientists have found a way to take all the muscle cells out of a damaged heart, leaving behind only the matrix structure. They then injected stem cells back in, resulting in a “renovated” heart. The hearts have seemed to recuperate well and beat normally after 7-8 days. These scientists have also been successful in doing the same procedure with pig hearts. This means that we may be able to do the same, with the thousands of patients that need new hearts in our own nation. Even though the researchers have agreed that they have a long way to go, this may be a start of something great in the medical field. Heart Failure patients might even have something to look forward to. Here is a link to the article with the video.
Hey everyone, I have some excellent news. You might have remembered that I was on the news a few months past. Well, I will be going in February to pick the award up at the ABC News Studio in Glendale. I have also had talks with a few other news companies and I am trying to get this site more in the public eye. Stay tuned, because ANet United is going to go big. I will post some pictures when I get back.
“According to the latest research, patients with atherosclerotic arterial disease—hardening of the arteries–have relatively high rates of experiencing a cardiovascular event like a heart attack, stroke or death within one year.”
You should watch this interesting video to find out more. Atherosclerosis is very serious and you should be checked often for other cardiovascular diseases.
Hello everyone. Sorry for the post delay, but I had a very hard week of work for colleges. Anyway, today, I have a new site recommendation for heart failure education. AboutHF.Org is an excellent site that combines videos with information to bring new news about heart failure. There are many great parts of the site for treatments, plans and other helpful links to teach patients about the condition. You can receive e-mails for future updates as well. Overall, this is a great clean site with many nice tools to utilize. Happy reading!
August 31st, 2008 