Heart Health Archive

Hiking isn't just a good cardiovascular workout. It may also enhance your strength and balance while lowering your stress.

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Autumn can be a great time to spend time in the great outdoors after summer's heat, humidity, and bugs have dwindled away. Hitting the trail in a local forest or other natural area may also offer some heart-related benefits that go beyond your typical neighborhood walk.

"The nice thing about hiking is that it exists along an entire continuum, from a gentle walk on a flat wooded path to mountain climbing," says Dr. Aaron L. Baggish, associate director of the Cardiovascular Performance Program at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital. Nearly everyone, regardless of age or athletic ability, can find a hike that offers the right level of personal challenge. And hiking may even offer some unique physical and mental benefits, Dr. Baggish says.

About one in three adults has nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, an often-silent condition closely linked to heart disease.

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The largest organ inside your body, your liver performs hundreds of vital functions. It converts food into fuel, processes cholesterol, clears harmful toxins from the blood, and makes proteins that help your blood clot, to name a few. But an alarming number of Americans have a potentially dangerous accumulation of fat inside their livers. Known as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), this condition is a leading cause of chronic liver disease in the United States—and an increasingly recognized contributor to heart disease.

"NAFLD increases the risk of heart disease independent of other traditional risk factors such as high blood pressure and cholesterol," says Dr. Kathleen Corey, director of the Fatty Liver Disease Clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital. Among people with NAFLD, heart disease is the top killer, accounting for more than 25% of deaths.

People who eat more plant-based proteins from beans, nuts, and grains may have a lower risk of dying from heart disease or any cause, compared with people who eat more animal-based proteins such as meat or eggs. 

The FDA approved the first artery-opening stent made from a substance that biodegrades in about three years. The new stents appear to work as well as older metal stents, but blood clots may be more likely to form inside the absorbable stents. 

The rates of heart disease have dropped over the past decade. How can you be part of this pattern?

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Heart disease continues to be the No. 1 cause of death among men, but there is some good news—fewer older adults have heart disease. A recent report from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey found the rates for this condition among people age 60 and older have fallen from 19.5% to 14.9% in the past decade.

What caused this downward trend? And how can you follow?

About 66% of adults over age 70 still take antihypertensive medication even though they now have low pressures, says a study from the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. Researchers say this exposes adults to medication side effects like dizziness and falls. 

Transient ischemic attacks, or TIAs, can signal an impending stroke, but prompt care can minimize damage.

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Have you ever experienced a brief episode when your body seemed to be a little off—your vision was blurry, your speech slightly slurred, or one side of your body felt weaker than the other? If so, you may have experienced a transient ischemic attack (TIA), says Dr. Natalia Rost, a neurologist at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital. She notes that many women may assume they have suffered a migraine and get back to life as usual once the episode has passed. In fact, a TIA is a serious medical issue and warrants getting immediate treatment.

Why white matter really matters

A daily aspirin may help defend against heart disease, but it should still be used with caution.

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Aspirin tablets have been a staple of home medicine cabinets and first-aid kits for nearly 100 years. Long before that, people chewed willow tree bark, which contains aspirin-like compounds, to treat a variety of ailments. On top of being an excellent painkiller and fever reducer at its standard dosage, aspirin dramatically reduces the risks for a second heart attack and certain types of stroke when taken daily at a low (81-mg) dose. Research also suggests that aspirin might help limit the growth of colorectal cancer and possibly inhibit other cancers as well, but more research in this area is needed.

These benefits, coupled with the fact that aspirin is both cheap and relatively safe, have led the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) to recommend that even some healthy people take a daily aspirin to ward off future disease. But figuring out exactly who is likely to benefit most from this therapy is a more complex calculation, says Dr. Michael Gaziano, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and cardiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Fasting for eight to 12 hours before a cholesterol test doesn’t seem to be necessary. But for now, people should continue to follow their physicians’ advice on this matter.

Nearly half of all heart attacks are silent, meaning they are not associated with any reported symptoms. Silent heart attacks, which can be detected on electrocardiograms, should prompt people to follow the same prevention steps as with a more typical heart attack.