December 28th, 2011 by Howard LeWine, M.D. in Health Tips, Research
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When you sit quietly, your heart slips into the slower, steady pace known as your resting heart rate. A new study suggests that an increase in this rate over time may be a signal of heart trouble ahead.
Your heart rate changes from minute to minute. It depends on whether you are standing up or lying down, moving around or sitting still, stressed or relaxed. Your resting heart rate, though, tends to be stable from day to day. The usual range for resting heart rate is anywhere between 60 and 90 beats per minute. Above 90 is considered high.
Many factors influence resting heart rate. Genes play a role. Aging tends to speed it up. Regular exercise tends to slow it down. (In his prime, champion cyclist Lance Armstrong had a resting heart rate of just 32 beats per minute.) Stress, medications, and medical conditions also influence the heart rate.
In today’s Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers from Norway report Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*
December 18th, 2011 by John Mandrola, M.D. in Research
4 Comments »
Dear Endurance Athletes,
Accept an apology in advance. You have endured so much from me.
Sorry.
Let’s at least start by agreeing that I can’t control the data.
Yes, you guessed it. There is unfortunately more bad news pertaining to the deleterious effects of endurance exercise on the human heart.
Again, I am sorry. Maybe re-phrasing the previous sentence will soften the blow. How about this: “Yet another study on endurance athletes suggests that exercise, like everything else in life, has an upper limit.”
Here goes, buckle up. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*
December 9th, 2011 by HarvardHealth in Health Tips, Research
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These days, most adults are overweight, not active, or both. If you could change just one—become active or lose weight—which would be better?
At least for men, being more fit may have a bigger health payoff than losing weight, according to a new study of more than 14,000 well-off middle-aged men who are participating in the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study. Researchers followed their health, weight, and exercise habits for 11 years. They estimated how physically fit the men were by calculating their metabolic equivalents (METs) from a treadmill test.
Compared with men whose fitness declined over the course of the study, those who maintained their fitness levels reduced their odds of dying from cardiovascular disease or any other cause by about 30%, even if they didn’t lose any excess weight. Those who improved their fitness levels saw a 40% reduction.
Body-mass index (BMI), a measurement that takes weight and height into account, was not associated with mortality. The results were published in the journal Circulation.
What is “fitness”
Fitness is a measure of Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*
December 5th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in News, Research
2 Comments »
Too much vitamin D can lead to 2.5 times the risk of atrial fibrillation, researchers found.
To determine if there is a correlation between too much vitamin D and increased heart risk, researchers examined blood tests from 132,000 patients in the Intermountain Healthcare Center database. Results were presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in November, and appeared at the Intermountain website.
Patients did not have any known history of atrial fibrillation, and all had previously received a vitamin D assessment as part of their routine care. Patients were then placed into categories to compare levels of vitamin D: low (less than 20 ng/dL), low/normal (21-40 ng/dL), normal (41-80 ng/dL), high/normal (81-100 ng/dL), and excess (more than 100 ng/dL).
Patients with low, low-normal, normal and high-normal levels of vitamin D had no increased risk of atrial fibrillation. However, atrial fibrillation risk Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*
December 1st, 2011 by John Mandrola, M.D. in Health Tips, Research
1 Comment »
There was important news this month on statin drugs. As one of the world’s most effective and commonly used medications, statins provide great writing topics. Lots of people have high cholesterol–including cyclists. Lots of people are interested in avoiding our mostly deadly disease.
I’d like to tell you about a recently-published (Lancet) landmark study that should quell safety concerns over statin drugs.
The punch line after I tell you the study’s results are short and sweet. Scroll down if you wish. But first, statin drugs are misunderstood enough to warrant a little blog-like simplicity. Let’s start with some background.
A brief statin review:
Statin drugs are best known for their cholesterol-lowering properties. The notion is simple: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*
