Author: Carolyn Thomas

A year in review: Top 10 Heart Sisters posts in 2014

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 10 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

2014It’s that time again, when navel-gazing pundits everywhere compile their Best Of or Top 10 lists of movies, political stories, books or bloopers for the year that’s just about to slip away. Same here at Heart Sisters.  So let’s take a nostalgic look backwards today at 2014, at what I like to describe as “cardiac rehab for my brain”. This blog was viewed about 900,000 times in 2014. My WordPress helper monkeys behind the scenes tell me that if this were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 39 days for that many people to see it!  Grand total of Heart Sisters views is over 2 million from readers in 190 countries since I launched this site back in 2009.   Continue reading “A year in review: Top 10 Heart Sisters posts in 2014” →

Size matters – but not in coronary artery blockages

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 5 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥   @HeartSisters

It’s not about your cholesterol numbers, and it’s not even about big fat blockages clogging up your coronary arteries. Did you know that inflammation is likely the culprit in most heart attacks? As cardiologist Dr. John Mandrola neatly describes it:

“Heart disease is about inflammation.  The same mechanisms that cause the throat to swell from an infection, the skin to redden after an insect bite, and a scar to form after a cut are what cause heart problems.”

Studies continue to show demonstrable links between heart disease and other inflammatory conditions.
 Continue reading “Size matters – but not in coronary artery blockages” →

Women and statins: evidence-based medicine or wishful thinking?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 11 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

Are you:

A.  a healthy woman who’s never had any issues with your heart, but . . .

B.  you know heart disease is the #1 killer of women, so . . .

C.  you’re wondering what you can do to help prevent B from happening to you?

Warding off a first heart attack for a person with no history of heart disease is what physicians call primary prevention.  Warding off another heart attack for a person who already lives with heart disease is called secondary prevention.  It’s also what respected cardiologists representing both the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology are now telling us can be effectively accomplished by taking one of the cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins.

But it turns out that many other equally-respected cardiologists don’t believe that taking a powerful drug every day for the rest of your natural life for a disease you don’t even have is appropriate for primary prevention – particularly in women.  Continue reading “Women and statins: evidence-based medicine or wishful thinking?” →

Failure to refer: why are doctors ignoring cardiac rehab?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 25 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters

Anne-Marie felt nervous after she was discharged from hospital following triple bypass surgery. She had only her immediate family to help her at home. And as she described:

“I felt like I fell through the cracks. When I left the hospital, my husband was given a sick woman in a wheelchair and a big bag of pills. I had heard about cardiac rehabilitation, so I followed up to see if I could join a program as I thought this could help me get back on my feet.

“But I was told they would get back to me. When they finally did – 15 weeks after my operation – I was already back at work, so couldn’t attend. I wasn’t offered any other alternative.”

When the British Heart Foundation’s National Audit of Cardiac Rehabilitation report was published, a blunt analysis by their auditors concluded that “cardiac rehabilitation remains a Cinderella service.” 

But the grim reality is hardly less Cinderella-ish on this side of the pond. And the reason so many freshly-diagnosed heart patients like Anne-Marie are falling through the cracks lies squarely with the doctors who are failing to refer their patients to cardiac rehab. Continue reading “Failure to refer: why are doctors ignoring cardiac rehab?” →