posts here focus on a variety of topics all about the heart and how it works
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
After a bunch of top cardiologists got together in San Francisco recently for the annual American College of Cardiology scientific meetings, Debra Sherman and her team did a fine job summing up highlights for Reuters.* One of their first take-home messages: some cardiologists believe that drug prescribing has gotten out of hand. Continue reading “What your cardiologist (should have) learned last month”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
“Despite national campaigns to increase awareness and reduce cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality in women, CVD remains our leading cause of death, annually killing more women than men.”
That statement from experts meeting at the Minnesota Women’s Heart Summit should send chills down your spine. For a number of years we have known that women are under-diagnosed for heart disease – and then under-treated even when appropriately diagnosed – yet here are a bunch of world-class cardiologists and public health experts still puzzling on how to address the deadly issue that is our #1 killer. Or, to paraphrase heart attack survivor Laura Heywood-Cory‘s take on the state of women’s heart health:
“Sucks to be female. Better luck next life!” Continue reading “Heart disease: women’s #1 cause of untimely death”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
Put your hand on your heart right now. I’m guessing that your hand is likely in the correct general location (although if you’re like my American friends singing their national anthem, your hand is resting on your left chest area rather than over the heart’s actual central chest location, slightly tipped to the left). So go ahead and slide your hand a wee bit to the right where it belongs.
Now compare that little exercise to how well you’d know the location (or function) of your liver or your pancreas.
I’m pretty sure if we were playing Pin The Tail On the Major Organ, we’d lose on those two examples.
That’s why I loved Dr. Roxanne Sukol‘s creative and plain-English description of the heart. Dr. Sukol is the founder of Your Health Is On Your Plate, and has spent much of the past 15 years making complex medical information easy for the rest of us to understand. Here’s how she describes our hearts: Continue reading ““The heart is a house with four rooms””
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
Being asked to write a book review is tricky. Authors hope you will be kind, while you hope the book at best might tell you something that every other book for heart patients hasn’t already told you. A review copy of the book Your Personal Guide: Angioplasty (Allen Jeremias, Susan S. Bartell)* sat on my coffee table for weeks, until one day, I finally got tired of looking at this latest addition to my living room decor and decided to give it a go. And within a very few pages, I learned some fascinating things I didn’t know before. Continue reading “10 things I didn’t know about angioplasty until I read this book”
Heart Sisters 