December 18th, 2011 by John Mandrola, M.D. in Research
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Dear Endurance Athletes,
Accept an apology in advance. You have endured so much from me.
Sorry.
Let’s at least start by agreeing that I can’t control the data.
Yes, you guessed it. There is unfortunately more bad news pertaining to the deleterious effects of endurance exercise on the human heart.
Again, I am sorry. Maybe re-phrasing the previous sentence will soften the blow. How about this: “Yet another study on endurance athletes suggests that exercise, like everything else in life, has an upper limit.”
Here goes, buckle up. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*
December 15th, 2010 by Glenn Laffel, M.D., Ph.D. in Better Health Network, Health Tips, News, Research
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It’s beginning to look like chocolate, especially dark chocolate, really and truly is a heart healthy snack, though only if it’s consumed in small quantities.
A delectable taste of this news came last spring, in the form of a study by German scientists which appeared in the European Heart Journal. It was a retrospective study of nearly 20,000 people, and it showed that folks in the highest quartile for chocolate consumption (meaning they consumed 7.5 grams of chocolate per day — the equivalent of 2 to 3 small squares of a Hershey bar), had lower blood pressure, a 27 percent lower risk of heart attack, and a 48 percent lower risk of stroke than those in the lowest quartile (about 1.7 grams per day).
Now, a new study in the journal Cardiovascular Pharmacology has lent credence to those findings by suggesting a mechanism through which chocolate reduces blood pressure. In the study, Ingrid Persson and colleagues at Linkoping University showed that dark chocolate inhibits the activity of the angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE). This enzyme helps regulate fluids and salt metabolism in the body. It is the target of many well-known antihypertensive drugs including captopril, lisinopril and enalopril. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Pizaazz*
May 25th, 2010 by Toni Brayer, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Tips, News, Research
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The European Heart Journal studied 6,000 British civil servants and followed them for 11 years. They found that working an extra 3 to 4 hours a day is associated with increased coronary heart disease.
The researchers controlled and adjusted for lifestyle, cardiac risk factors, and other factors that would skew the results, and still found that people who worked 3 to 4 extra hours a day had a 60 percent increase in risk for heart disease. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*
