Heart Health Archive

A better understanding of the gut microbiome may herald novel ways to prevent artery-clogging plaque.

Image: Christos Georghiou/Thinkstock

The trillions of bacteria dwelling deep inside your digestive tract play a key role in your health. Collectively known as the gut microbiota, these microbes not only assist with digestion, but also make certain vitamins, break down toxins, and train your immune system. Over the past decade, scientists have uncovered compelling connections between different types of gut microbes and the development of obesity and diabetes—two factors closely tied to a higher risk of heart disease. Recently, several studies have explored how our gut microbes interact with the food we eat to spur artery-damaging inflammation and narrowing. While these findings are preliminary, experts hope they'll one day lead to personalized diet recommendations or other therapies to lower the risk of heart disease.

Artery damage

Gut check?

Genetic testing can help doctors guide care for families with a history of heart disease.

Having a family member with heart disease—especially when it shows up at a young age—is a warning sign that you too may be at risk. The more common maladies such as high blood pressure and coronary artery disease are influenced by an array of different genes and compounded by lifestyle choices and environmental factors. However, certain relatively rare conditions stem from only one or a few faulty genes with powerful disease-causing effects. The most common of these inherited heart conditions is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), which affects up to one in every 500 people.

What is HCM?

Decision making in the family

Regular, moderate-intensity dancing may lower the risk of dying of cardiovascular disease. Aside from the exercise benefits, dancing is often a lifelong habit and provides stress-lowering social connections. 

When older people start taking a new blood pressure drug or change the dose of their current drug, they may be more prone to a serious fall during the following two weeks. But this increased fall risk doesn’t seem to persist over the long term. 

Dancing, playing sports, and even cleaning your house can give you a nontraditional workout that helps maintain good health.

 Image: Jon Feingersh/Thinkstock

Exercising is supposed to be a regular part of your daily health maintenance. That can be a problem if you don't have the motivation to get your heart pumping; you raise your risk for weight gain, chronic disease, and an earlier death.

Fortunately, you can get plenty of effective exercise by engaging in recreational or household activities that work your heart and muscles. "There's a real reward in doing an activity you enjoy, such as swimming or playing with your grandchildren. You get a workout, but it doesn't seem like you're exercising, and you may be more willing to keep doing that activity every day because it's fun," says Dawn Rogers, a physical therapist at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital.

On June 1, 2016, the FDA proposed voluntary guidelines for short- and long-term goals to cut sodium in commercially processed and prepared food. 

A recently published study claimed that people who ate a low sodium diet were more likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease and death. However, there were problems with this study – including difficulty with accurately measuring each study volunteer’s daily intake of sodium. Low sodium diets may be harmful for small subsets of people, but for the majority of people restricting salt intake is still important for cardiovascular health.

How many times your heart beats per minute when you’re resting — also known as your resting heart rate (RHR) — can provide important clues to your current overall health and even predict possible future health problems.

Some people experience muscle aches or muscle cramps, but trying these tips may help.

About 10% to 20% of inidividuals who take statins report that they experience muscle pain or muscle cramps. 
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Statins, such as atorvastatin (Lipitor), simvastatin (Zocor), rosuvastatin (Crestor), and lovastatin (Mevacor), are commonly prescribed medications that lower "bad" LDL cholesterol and have been shown to help reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke, and death.