Category: Women's cardiac risk factors

– posts here focus on how to address your risk factors to help prevent heart disease

Do you think too much? How ruminating hurts your heart

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 9 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

Before my heart attack, I was a champion ruminator. Give me an ugly little problem to worry about, and I’d thrash it to death before finally flinging it aside in a fit of exhaustion, usually after some sleepless nights, a few extra grey hairs, and incalculable damage to my poor coronary arteries.

The late Yale University professor Dr. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema’s research(1) has revealed some interesting facts about ruminating:

“When people ruminate about problems, they remember more negative things that have happened to them in the past, they interpret situations in their current lives more negatively, and they are more hopeless about the future.”

Research also links the habit of rumination with dangerously high levels of the body’s artery-damaging stress hormones like cortisol.      .       .
 Continue reading “Do you think too much? How ruminating hurts your heart” →

Too miserable outdoors to walk today? Take a heart-smart mall walk!

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 4 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas

Every Wednesday morning at 7:30, some friends and I lace up our running shoes and head outdoors to solve the problems of the world during our weekly walk and talk.

Here on the balmy Wet Coast of Canada, we generally walk rain or shine. Winter weather here usually means drizzly rain rather than icy snow, but on those very rare days when the weather is ugly (either too cold in winter or too hot in summer), we are glad to join the Mall Walkers at one of our local indoor shopping centres.  Continue reading “Too miserable outdoors to walk today? Take a heart-smart mall walk!” →

Is Daylight Saving Time hurting your heart?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 3 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas

It’s time once again, heart sisters, for the springtime ritual that welcomes something called Daylight Saving Time. This is not a good time of year if you love to sleep in. When that alarm clock buzzes you wide awake at 6 a.m., your body feels like it’s REALLY only 5 a.m. Ouch! Some studies suggest that the rates of acute myocardial infarction (heart attack) are significantly increased immediately after the transition to Daylight Saving Time every spring.

Good luck at successfully getting through that transition this year.

Continue reading “Is Daylight Saving Time hurting your heart?” →

Do you know what causes heart disease?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 6 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas

When I gently scolded Kentucky cardiologist Dr. John Mandrola recently over his cheeky criticism of diet soda (he’s a bike racer, what can I say?), we began a subsequent exchange of emails that led me to his blog.  There I found the simplest, clearest explanation of heart disease that I have yet discovered – particularly on the role that inflammation plays in causing our cardiac events. With the permission of this cardiac electrophysiologist (thanks, Dr. John), I’m reprinting his essay here, including his Primary Prevention Strategies, or “what regular people call healthy living”:   Continue reading “Do you know what causes heart disease?” →