While searching Nova my husband came across a very interesting article, I thought I would share it with you.
In the article you will find facts such as, the human heart beats 100,000 times per day.
The human body contains 6 quarts of blood, which circulates throughout the human body 3 times per minute. In one day alone the blood in your body travels 4 times the distance across the United States, or a total of 12,000 miles.
Your blood starts and stops as it moves throughout the arteries, this movement is known as a pulse. Adults pulse rate on average is 70 …read more

In today’s fast pace, fast food world even our children have high cholesterol. It is more important than ever to know your cholesterol levels.
Good cholesterol HDL levels for men should be higher than 40 and 50 for women. When the levels are over 60 it lowers your risk factors for heart disease.
The HDL removes cholesterol from the arteries, taking it back to the liver where it passes from your body.
Bad cholesterol or LDL builds up in the walls of the arteries. The walls of your blood vessels will narrow over time, due to the build-up of the fatty deposits. The …read more

This question was ask of Dr. Gupta on CNN, is belly fat the worst type to have? The research that has been done in this area has proven that belly fat is the most dangerous type of fat. The fact is that belly fat is more biologically active, and causes build-up of calcium in the arteries.
You may be in a normal BMI range, but if you carry belly fat you are at a greater risk of cardiovascular disease. On average the risk factor is 17% for men and 13% for women regardless of their BMI.
We all know what our …read more

This is of great importance. Realizing the signs and symptoms of a stroke can make the difference between life an death and between resolving symptoms and forever disabilities.
tPA is only administered if the symptoms are within a 3 hour window at most ER’s. What happens if you present saying your symptoms started yesterday? Well, first of all you are not fast tracked and wait as a stage or grade 2 patient. Next, you are not eligible to receive any clot busting type medications.
Aldo of importance, how you arrive at the hospital. Yes, believe it or not it does make a …read more

Duke University bioengineers can compensate for the thickness of the skull to see in real-time the arteries within the brain that most often clog up and cause strokes using new 3-D ultrasound technology they designed. This is believed to be the first of its kind- to see past the skull and actually view the major arteries.
This could save many of lives, in emergent and routine situations. What are the real benefits?
The 3-D ultrasound has the benefit of being less expensive and faster than the traditional methods of assessing blood flow in the brain — MRI or CT scanning, Ivancevich said. …read more

Very interesting considering I have been a cardiac nurse for near 10 years and have always been told and observed that a cardiac catheterization is the only “real” way to visualize blockages in the heart…
A study by an international team of cardiac imaging specialists, led by researchers at Johns Hopkins, concludes that sophisticated computed tomography (CT) scans of the heart and its surrounding arteries are almost as reliable and accurate as more invasive procedures to check for blockages.
The 64 slice CT scan that the researcher’s are talking about was first introduced in the US in 2005 and was tested …read more

Do you take medication to help raise your “good” cholesterol, better known as HDL? New research warns that this could actually be harmful to you. The Cleveland Clinic has concluded that raising HDL is actually not a matter of quantity but quality.
The authors concluded that while efforts to lower low-density lipoprotein (LDL or “bad cholesterol”) “have consistently reduced cardiovascular disease risk, HDL-based approaches are much more complex and sometimes disappointing.” As a result, “the primary focus should be on LDL,” said review co-author Mehdi Shishehbor, D.O., of the Cleveland Clinic.
Yes, it is true that HDL aids in …read more

Scientists have long reported that deaths from lung diseases, heart attacks and strokes are significantly higher on days with high pollution levels, the newspaper said.
This was reported out of Los Angeles, imagine that. A US study has shown the exposure to diesel exhaust can cause heart disease in people with high cholesterol. Hmm… Can’t anything trigger a heart attack in people with extremely high cholesterol?
This is why you always have to take research with a grain of salt. True diesel exhaust has been linked to lung cancer and asthma attacks, as well as DNA damage, but this …read more

Thanks to more effective medicines and treatments, death among heart failure patients has halved over the last 6 years. Also, incidence of stroke and heart attack after discharge fell over the first half of this decade.
— The death rate for patients admitted with a severe heart attack, where the arteries are completely blocked, went down from 8.4 to 4.5 per cent.
– The risk of heart failure for severe heart attack patients also went down from 20 to 11 per cent.
– The death rate for patients admitted with a milder heart attack, where the arteries are only partially blocked, …read more