Category: Women's cardiac risk factors

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

What other diagnosis doubles your risk of having a heart attack?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 3 Comments

arthritis.jennifer_mason

Jennifer Mason grew up wanting to be a musician. But while only in her mid-twenties and in the midst of completing her second musical degree, everything suddenly changed when the university student began to experience terrible  joint pain and debilitating fatigue. She was diagnosed with severe rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

RA is a disease that causes painful swelling of joints and can damage cartilage, bone, tendons, and ligaments. Until the use of MRI technology, no one knew that irreparable damage occurred in joints even before it showed up on x-rays. Jennifer’s flares came and went, worsening over time until both her hands and feet were severely deformed, ending her ability to play musical instruments.

As if this painful and debilitating condition is not bad enough all by itself, researchers now report that within the first 10 years of being diagnosed with RA, your risk of having a heart attack almost doubles compared to those who don’t have the diagnosis. Researchers are not sure why those with RA have a greater risk of heart attack. They do know that, just as in rheumatoid arthritis, inflammation is linked with heart disease and the risk of heart attack.

According to the American College of Rheumatology, the inflammation with RA may cause higher levels of inflammation throughout the rest of the body. This inflammation can trigger plaque in the coronary arteries to form blood clots. Over time, this plaque can build up, rupture, and block blood flow to the heart. This is called coronary artery disease, which increases the chance of heart attack, stroke, and sudden cardiac death. This sobering reality may be countered, however with the news that a heart-healthy lifestyle and certain medications may help protect the hearts of RA patients, no matter how long they’ve had the diagnosis.

Find out more about rheumatoid arthritis.

NEWS UPDATE: August 15, 2011 –  Arthritis Sufferers’ Increased Risk of Heart Disease Due to Disease-Related Inflammation  – A new five-year Swedish study* published in the journal Arthritis Research & Therapy showed that the risk of cardiovascular disease for people with RA is due to disease-related inflammation as well as the risk factors which affect the general population. Treatment of arthritis with disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) helped to reduce a patient’s risk of heart disease.

Dr Solveig Wållberg-Jonsson from University Hospital, Umeå, in Sweden said:

“Inflammation associated with rheumatoid arthritis increases patients’ risk of heart disease and other cardiovascular events. However, it is possible to reduce this risk in a two-pronged attack by treating both the inflammation and traditional risk factors for heart disease.”

* Lena Innala, Bozena Möller, Lotta Ljung, Staffan Magnusson, Torgny Smedby, Anna Södergren, Marie-Louise Öhman, Solbritt Rantapää-Dahlqvist and Solveig Wållberg-Jonsson. Cardiovascular events in early rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are a result of inflammatory burden and traditional risk factors: a five year prospective study. Arthritis Research & Therapy, 2011

One-minute quiz: women at risk for heart disease

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 2 Comments

smoking old lady

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

Are you a ticking time bomb when it comes to your risks of having a heart attack? Tick away here instead – tick all statements in the quiz below that apply to you.   Continue reading “One-minute quiz: women at risk for heart disease” →

Doctors should start screening teenagers for heart disease risks

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ Leave a comment

 

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I didn’t have a heart attack last year because I had one stressful morning at work, or ate one piece of bacon. In fact, at Mayo Clinic, we learned that most cardiovascular disease is actually 20-30 years in the making. So why are we waiting decades for cardiac symptoms to become severe enough to be noticed?

About one third of young people ages 10-19  in North America have LDL (bad) cholesterol levels that are too high (considered by many to be a risk factor for developing heart disease).  In some cases, high cholesterol runs in families. This is called familial hypercholesterolemia. About 1% to 2% of children have this condition, and they should have their cholesterol levels checked before they are 5 years old.

When the bodies of young soldiers (many just in their teens) who died in the Korean and Vietnam wars were autopsied, most had coronary arteries that were already showing signs of dangerous plaque deposits. Several studies have shown that fatty plaque buildup begins in children as young as 10, and progresses slowly into adulthood. This disease process is called atherosclerosis, which leads directly to heart disease.  Continue reading “Doctors should start screening teenagers for heart disease risks” →

Public smoking bans mean lower heart attack rates

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 2 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas

Have you seen them?  Vehicles with children trapped in the back seats, and the parents up front smoking?  If it were up to me – and it never is! – those moronic parents would be pulled over, beaten about the head for a while, and charged with child abuse for deliberately forcing their defenseless kidlets to inhale deadly secondhand smoke.  But until I get to make the rules around here, I’m counting on scientists.  I know they are sounding alarms that might change what my daughter Larissa would describe as this “dumb-ass behaviour”.

The more we learn about the dangers of secondhand smoke (a mix of the smoke that comes from the burning end of a lit cigarette, pipe or cigar plus the smoke blown into the air by the person smoking), the more non-smokers are demanding protection.  Did you know, for example, that if you live with a smoker and are exposed to that secondhand smoke on a regular basis, you have a 30% higher risk of developing both lung cancer and heart disease?  Secondhand smoke has twice as much nicotine and tar as the smoke that smokers inhale, and five times more carbon monoxide, a deadly gas that starves your body of oxygen.  Poisonous secondhand smoke, in fact, can be more dangerous than smoking. Smokers inhale their chemical cocktail through a filter; secondhand smokers aren’t so lucky.

Because of this reality, more and more jurisdictions worldwide are implementing bans on smoking in public places. This ban has resulted in some very good news for our heart health. A new study has found that heart attack rates associated with breathing secondhand smoke dropped rapidly and continued to decrease over time after smoking was banned in public spaces in North American and European communities. Continue reading “Public smoking bans mean lower heart attack rates” →