Heart Disease

January 31, 2020

Here’s why the U.S. surgeon general and WHO want smokers to quit, asap

Cigarette smokers got yet more chiding from public health officials about why and how they should quit an addictive and destructive habit. To do so isn’t easy, and a “shocking” number of doctors aren’t helping enough, the Surgeon General of the United States conceded. But there are big reasons to give up the nasty vice, especially before elective surgery, the World Health Organization warned.

The health experts found much to agree on when it comes to the carnage smoking causes. As the New York Times reported on the surgeon general’s work:

“More than 55 years after the first surgeon general’s report warned that smoking causes cancer, it remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of smoking in the United States has declined to an all-time low of 14%. More than 3 of every 5 adult Americans who have smoked have quit, the report said. Still, 34 million Americans currently smoke, and an estimated 480,000 die from smoking-related illnesses each year, the agency said. About 16 million people in the United States now suffer from cancer, heart disease and smoking-related disorders, according to the CDC. The financial toll is enormous too, with annual health care spending attributed to smoking exceeding $170 billion, the agency said.”

January 23, 2020

Yes, you may suffer heart disease, even in the most fitness-fanatical state of the union

by Patrick A. Malone

Sure, it can be fun to watch two East Coasters take a long, sharp pin and pop the fantasy bubble that Westerners, especially Coloradans, like to float around in. Mountain state residents may like to tell themselves how the people on the Front Range skew young, educated, and active. How blue skies and open spaces keep folks busy and outdoors. And did they mention super healthy?

Or maybe not.

There’s a bigger takeaway in the recent focus on the Rockies by reporters Betsy McKay and Paul Overberg. As the Wall Street Journal duo found:

January 20, 2020

On MLK Day, never forget his view: ‘Injustice in health is the most shocking …’

by Patrick A. Malone

With the nation taking a holiday to celebrate the remarkable life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and his pioneering push for Americans’ civil rights, it may be worth remembering that his far-reaching visions of equality and social justice were deeply unpopular in their time, as was he.

King infuriated many, including in medicine and health care, observing, for example, that:

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman because it often results in physical death.”

January 10, 2020

Need simple, clear, and direct ideas to be healthier? Heed these 48 words

by Patrick A. Malone

Bravo, brevity. Four dozen words is all it takes for a doctor and noted writer on diet and obesity to offer plenty of sound advice on how to get and stay healthy.

Here are the suggestions from Yoni Freedhoff, associate professor of family medicine at the University of Ottawa, founder and medical director of Ottawa’s Bariatric Medical Institute, blogger at Weighty Matters, and author of “The Diet Fix: Why Diets Fail and How to Make Yours Work:”

“Don’t smoke. Get vaccinated. Avoid trans fats. Replace saturated fats with unsaturated if you can. Cook from whole ingredients — and minimize restaurant meals. Minimize ultra-processed foods. Cultivate relationships. Nurture sleep. Drink alcohol at most moderately. Exercise as often as you can enjoy. Drink only the calories you love.”

January 5, 2020

With teens’ health at risk, White House plays politics with vaping

by Patrick A. Malone

The Trump Administration kicked off the new year with a whimper not a bang with yet another of its attempts to corral the health nightmare of e-cigarettes and vaping by the nation’s young, while not upsetting the industry too much.

Starting Feb. 1, the federal government announced it will forbid the sale of most flavored cartridges for e-cigarette use, notably those with popular tastes like candy, fruits, and mint.

At the same time, though, vendors still can sell menthol and tobacco flavorings. And they can peddle flavored vaping liquids if they are used in the open tank systems that most often are so big, they are limited to shops or stores.

December 30, 2019

Some Grinch-y news about a few popular holiday gifts

by Patrick A. Malone

Consumers may need to give a few seasonal gifts a second look about their safety and other health-related issues:

Powerful rare-earth magnets, used in many toys and especially in shape construction kits, pose big risks to kids when swallowed.
Widely used over-the-counter genetic testing kits may subject users to major privacy concerns they never contemplated. The risks have risen enough so the Pentagon has issued a warning to service personnel.

December 27, 2019

U.S. to require vapers and smokers to be at least age 21 to buy tobacco in any form

by Patrick A. Malone

Consumers soon may need to be 21 or older to buy burning tobacco cigarettes or e-cigarettes, the key component of the national health nightmare of “vaping.”

Both the House and Senate have passed the higher age requirement and President Trump is expected to sign it, joining hundreds of states (including Maryland, as illustration shows) and cities that have sought to make it tougher for Americans to damage their health with the popular products.

The damage caused by smoking have been well proven for decades now, with the American Cancer Society reporting the nasty habit’s persistent toll:

December 4, 2019

As life expectancy and fertility rates decline, health politics more key than ever

by Patrick A. Malone

Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Indiana — if you’re obsessed with national politics, these states might register in your mind as key partisan battlegrounds. But if you’re focused on Americans’ health and well-being, these states — along with New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, and West Virginia — may be causes for different and considerable concern: the nation’s plummeting life expectancy.

These states are flashing warning signs, racking up the greatest relative increases in death rates among young and middle-aged adults (New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, West Virginia, and Ohio).

Excess deaths among Americans in their prime, that is individuals in the 25 to 64 age group who would live longer if mortality rates improved, also were highly concentrated geographically, with fully a third of them in just four states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Indiana, experts say.

November 17, 2019

Drugs are better for heart patients than surgery (except in mid-heart attack), study finds

by Patrick A. Malone

Tens of thousands of patients with serious but stable heart disease soon may see themselves treated more with prescription drugs and less with rushed surgeries, especially bypass procedures or operations that seek to open clogged blood vessels with wire cages called stents.

A possible shift away from stents — which have come under question for some time now — may be accelerated by the just-announced findings of a $100 million, multi-year study of more than 5,000 heart patients at 320 sites and in 37 countries. The research, the New York Times reported, sought to provide rigorous and more incontrovertible evidence on procedures that now are a bulwark of heart care:

“[The study dubbed] Ischemia is the largest trial to address the effect of opening blocked arteries in non-emergency situations and the first to include today’s powerful drug regimens, which doctors refer to as medical therapy. All the patients had moderate to severe blockages in coronary arteries. Most had some history of chest pain, although one in three had no chest pain in the month before enrollment in the study. One in five experienced chest pain at least once a week. All participants were regularly counseled to adhere to medical therapy. Depending on the patient’s condition, the therapy variously included high doses of statins and other cholesterol-lowering drugs, blood pressure medications, aspirin and, for those with heart damage, a drug to slow the heart rate. Those who got stents also took powerful anti-clotting drugs for six months to a year. Patients were randomly assigned to have medical therapy alone or an intervention and medical therapy. Of those in the intervention group, three-quarters received stents; the others received bypass surgery. The number of deaths among those who had stents or bypass was 145, compared to 144 among the patients who received medication alone. The number of patients who had heart attacks was 276 in the stent and bypass group, compared with 314 in the medication group, an insignificant difference.”

November 6, 2019

Heart failure deaths spike as nation ages and diabetes and obesity abound

by Patrick A. Malone

Although many Americans fret that old age will afflict them with cognitive impairment, from Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia, it may be that their hearts will give way first.

Experts have expressed growing concern about increasing issues with rises in heart disease, especially in the elderly, and a new study appearing in the online medical journal “JAMA Cardiology” provides explanation why these fears are well-founded: After a period of decline, deaths due to heart failure are spiking.

As the Wall Street Journal reported: “The death rate from the chronic, debilitating condition [of heart failure] rose 20.7% between 2011 and 2017 and is likely to keep climbing sharply.”