Battling Heart and Stroke

In the recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, several articles discuss different aspects of heart transplantation. One interesting aspect is about reversing the irreversible - donating hearts after cardiac death.

It used to be that organ donation can only occur after cardiac death, e.g. after a donor’s heart has completely stopped. Organs such as kidneys can then be transplanted from the donor to the recipient. However, this posed a challenge for heart transplant since the donor’s heart is dead and has irreversibly stopped, and is therefore not viable for transplantation anymore.

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When I was growing up in an Asian country in the Pacific, the daily fare was rice, fresh fish, vegetables, and fruit. That was before the fast food invasion. Several decades, the daily diet has drastically changed - burgers, pizza, fries galore.

This is happening all over as globalization proceeds in a very fast pace. With lifestyle changes come changes in diet and physical exercise with consequences on our health. Below are some examples of how lifestyle changes are adversely affecting the cardiovascular health of once primarily healthy populations. More →

Stroke in babies? No. that can’t be. When we think of stroke, we know the risk factors involved: excess weight, bad nutrition, excessive alcohol consumption, lack of exercise, and cigarette smoking. So how can babies suffer from stroke?

Apparently, stroke in children is not that common but not that rare, either. The risk of stroke from birth till the18th year of life is 10.7 per 100,000 children per year.

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The heart and physical exercise

What happens to the heart during exercise? A lot of things go faster - breathing rate, heart rate, blood flow. Now, imagine an endurance athlete such as a marathon runner, a Tour de France cyclist, an Iron Man triathelete. Their body and their heart perform faster - for hours and hours almost non-stop.

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Another weekend to look forward to. Relax, enjoy and happy reading!

CVD TV watch

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How much did you weigh at birth? Your baby/babies? Does it matter?

A new study by British researchers published in the European Heart Journal shows that there is a link between low birth weight and predisposition to hypertension later in life. More →

Let’s continue with our Olympics special this week and look at what exercise can do for you.

If you want to stay active and live longer, running seems to be the sports for you. A study showing the health benefits of running is being published this month in the Archives of Internal Medicine, a journal of the American Medical Association.

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Many of us look to up to successful sports people and we can’t really imagine that some of them may also be fighting against heart disease like the rest of us. After all, physical exercise is supposedly the key to cardiovascular health.

Yet, there have been sudden deaths in past sports competition. According to Dr. Barry J. Maron of the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation, “about 125 athletes under 35 involved in organized sports die of sudden death in the United States each year…” The institute keeps a national registry of such fatalities and the majority of cases recorded were due to cardiac-related events.

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Enjoying your summer? Here’s some new items to read over the weekend.

CVD nutrition watch

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Cervical cancer is a cancer that affects the tissue of the cervix, the funnel-shaped organ located between the uterus and the vagina. According to estimates by the National Cancer Institute, about 11,000 new cases of cervical cancer have been diagnosed in the US in 2008, and 3,870 cases have resulted in death.

One of the most common forms of intervention for cervical cancer is hysterectomy which is the surgical removal of a woman’s uterus. According to MedicineNet, about 600,000 hysterectomies are performed in the US each year and about 50% of these also include bilateral oophorectomy, which is the removal of the 2 ovaries. The reason for removing the ovaries is to prevent the development of ovarian cancer.

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