Heart Health Archive

During waking hours you may feel your heart rate fluctuating, and activity or intense emotions can cause it to spike. But what happens to your heart rate when you sleep? It varies then too, depending on the phase of sleep you are in.

The culture of American medicine has long believed and supported the idea that more early detection and treatment is best. But some testing is costly, invasive and carries needless risks, and some conditions go away on their own. Early detection and treatment can be lifesaving — just not for every health issue.

Regardless of your size or fitness level, exercise has multiple benefits. Almost anything that gets you moving counts, and some activity is always better than none. These suggestions can help you make exercise work for you.

Learn when, how, and why you should keep track of your heartbeat.

Soon after you wake up tomorrow morning, before you even sit up in bed, take your pulse. It's fairly easy if you have a clock or timer nearby (see "Measuring your heart rate"). Known as your resting heart rate, this value ranges from 60 to 100 beats per minute in most adults.

"To get a good sense of your resting heart rate, check it every few mornings over the course of several weeks," advises cardiologist Dr. Aaron Baggish, director of the Cardiovascular Performance Program at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital. It's best to measure your resting heart rate when you've been getting your typical amount of sleep and exercise and aren't feeling ill or dehydrated.

Your cholesterol and other factors linked to cardiovascular health may be influenced by the bacteria in your belly.

The roughly 38 trillion bacteria that dwell deep within your intestines perform many important tasks. Collectively known as the gut microbiota, these microbes help digest food, metabolize medications, and protect you from infectious organisms.

In many ways, your gut microbiota — which weighs about half a pound in total — functions somewhat like a distinct organ in your body. Just as you have a unique genome, you also have a unique gut microbiome, consisting of some eight million genes that control your microbiota. Scientists are still learning how the composition and diversity of the gut microbiome influence the health of the cardiovascular system.

New findings challenge the widespread belief that aggressive blood pressure treatment may trigger a condition linked to fainting and falls.

When doctors treat older people with high blood pressure, they often worry about a condition that causes blood pressure to plummet when a person stands up from a seated or lying position. Known as orthostatic hypotension (hypotension means low blood pressure), it affects as many as one in five people ages 65 and older.

Because orthostatic hypotension can make you feel dizzy or lightheaded after standing, it may lead to fainting and falls — with possibly serious repercussions. This concern leads some doctors to ease up on prescribed blood pressure medications. But a new study suggests that practice actually might do more harm than good.

For people recently diagnosed, taming the heart's rhythm rather than slowing it down may be a better approach.

The heart rhythm disorder known as atrial fibrillation (afib) occurs when the heart's electrical system goes awry. Instead of the heart's natural pacemaker creating a steady beat, the heart's upper chambers (atria) pulsate rapidly — up to hundreds of times per minute. Most of the electrical impulses telling the lower chambers (ventricles) to contract don't get through but many do, triggering a racing, irregular heartbeat that can leave people dizzy, breathless, or fatigued.

Therapies to tackle this common arrhythmia have improved over the years. Now, new findings suggest it may be time to rethink the treatment for people newly diagnosed with afib (see "Afib: Rhythm vs. rate control").

Spontaneous coronary artery dissection is an underrecognized but important cause of heart attack, especially in younger women.

Most heart attacks happen when a blood clot blocks an artery feeding the heart. But a small percentage result from a tear in the inner wall of one of the heart's arteries. The resulting flap or swelling inside the artery wall obstructs normal blood flow. Known as a spontaneous coronary artery dissection, or SCAD, the condition strikes both sexes but is more common in women.

In women who are under 50, SCAD is the most common reason for acute coronary syndrome. This medical emergency refers to inadequate blood flow to the heart; it includes both heart attacks and unstable angina (sudden chest pain that occurs at rest).

Editor's note: This year, we're highlighting fruits on this page. Starting in February, we'll showcase a different type of fruit or group of related fruits, such as citrus fruits or melons. We'll include ideas about the best ways to add more of these heart-healthy foods into your diet.

If you eat berries with breakfast, snack on a banana, and toss some cubed apple or pear in your dinner salad, you can easily meet the recommended amount of fruit for adults, which is 1.5 to 2 cups per day. But such habits are unusual: Fewer than one in 10 Americans consumes even the minimum recommended amount of fruit, according to a national federal survey.

Research we're watching

Walking even at a "casual" pace — covering a mile in 30 minutes — five days a week may lower the odds of high blood pressure in postmenopausal women, a new study finds.

Researchers relied on data from more than 83,000 women ages 50 to 79 who did not have high blood pressure. When they joined the study, they filled out questionnaires about their walking speed and duration. This was followed by yearly questionnaires that included checking for a diagnosis of high blood pressure.