Coronary heart disease (CHD) or Coronary Artery Disease

Harvard Medical School has derived a number of healthy practices for all of us to emulate. The following article will try to paraphrase the critical points on exercise, and why all of us should do it. And, for the ones who do it, perhaps they need to do more!

The Benefit of Fitness

Probably by now, everyone acknowledges the health benefits of exercise. Everyone should get at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise daily. Daily is not too much, as human beings we were designed to get a lot more exercise than just daily for 30 minutes. Benefits accrue quickly. Among them are:

She said she didn't feel well and had a back ache and was going to lay down on the bed with the heating pad. A while later her husband went to check on her and she was not breathing. They were not able to revive her.

Did you know that women rarely have the same dramatic symptoms that men have when experiencing heart attack. The classic symptoms of the sudden stabbing pain in the chest, the cold sweat, grabbing the chest and dropping to the floor. The classic symptoms are what we see in the movies. Here is the story of one woman's experience with a heart attack.

If you have coronary artery disease, you have a 34% chance of also having colon cancer. Why is this so? Seems the risk factors for both are the same:

• diabetes,

• smoking,

• hyperlipidemia,

• sedentary lifestyle,

• high-fat and low-fiber diet,

• obesity, and

• hypertension

Patients who took aspirin or statins were excluded from the group, as these medications mitigate both coronary artery disease and colon cancer. The mechanism involved is probably the decrease in chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation has been implicated in both artheroschlerosis (hardening of the arteries, or coronary artery disease) and colon neoplasms (cancers of the colon).

Public awareness of the link between diabetes and CVD is low, and many people with diabetes do not understand all they can do to manage their disease and reduce their risk for complications, including heart attack and stroke.

Adults with diabetes have heart disease death rates about two to four times higher than adults without diabetes, and the risk for stroke is also two to four times higher among people with diabetes.

Probably everyone is aware of the body mass index (BMI) and its relationship to our over all health. For instance, as our BMI goes up, our over all health, particularly heart health, goes down.

However, the BMI is not the best predictor of our heart's health. That indicator is the size of our waist in relationship to the size of our hips.

Yes, we alll worry about the cellulite we may have on our butt and thighs; however, we should be concerned about how flat our tummy is.

Air pollution, the culprit which is causing global warming, may now change the Olympic Games to be held in Beijing, China. For several years, we have seen the United States ‘pull back’ on signing the Kyoto treaty as Asia, especially China, was not in accord.

We may have acted very smug with those reports, insisting that America do its bit, despite pollution in China. After all, how much worse could China’s pollution be?

The American Heart Association has recently released some news which has importance for all of us. For many years now, it has been known that aspirin will decrease your risk of a heart attack or stroke.

Now we learn that taking Motrin may completely eliminate the value of aspirin, and make your risk for heart attack or stroke as high as if you took nothing.

Ibuprofen, also known as motrin or advil intereferes with the aspirin's ability to decrease clot forming. This is not true though, for tylenol, refecoxib (COX-2 inhibitor commonly referred to as Vioxx) or diclofenac (Voltaren).

Many articles have been written about the benefits of exercise, and how it affects one's cardiovascular system. It doesn't seem to matter how long one exercises, or the frequency, or the intensity. Some exericse is better than no exercise.

However, Japanese researchers have recently documented that the duration of the exercise per session does affect one''s HDL (good lipids, which counteract effects of bad lipids on the cardiovascular system). The intensity, nor frequency do not matter as much as how long one exercises.

The New England of Journal recently published a scathing report on the adverse cardiovascular effects of Avandia. Avandia has been used since 1999 to treat diabetes II, and was approved by the FDA with the knowledge that minimal cardiovascular effects existed, but not more than with any other diabetic drug which existed. However, the risk for people with congestive heart failure was slightly higher.

Gender disparities exist. Almost everyone would agree that differences are present with jobs, salaries, political aspirations, etc.. However, research has recently indicated that gender differences exist with cholesterol control in relation to practice guidelines. The gender bias seems to exist whether a person has commercial insurance or Medicare.

Women suffer the consequence of this discordance.