Category: Women's cardiac risk factors

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

Heart Attack Grill: “Over 350 Pounds? – Eat Free!”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 2 Comments

food bypass burger menu

Warning!  Reading this may induce squirming, revulsion and a strong urge to eat a raw carrot.

Consider the brilliant marketing strategy behind the Heart Attack Grill, a diner in Arizona that has hit upon a gimic that’s garnered world-wide attention. Owner Jon Basso claims that he has never spent one penny on advertising “and never will”, yet he’s cashing in on what he calls the “nutritional pornography” of his diner. “Food So Bad For You, It’s Good” is a diner slogan, along with “Taste Worth Dying For”. Continue reading “Heart Attack Grill: “Over 350 Pounds? – Eat Free!”” →

Biology or bias? Women twice as likely to die after heart attack

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ Leave a comment

woman heart tattoo Image.0.0.1

The CBC (our Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) did a report this week about women and heart disease that included an interview with Dr. Beth Abramson, a Toronto cardiologist and spokesperson for the Heart and Stroke Foundation.  She was responding to results of a new study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that suggests women are almost twice as likely to die within 30 days of a heart attack compared with men. Dr. Abramson said:

“It’s sometimes hard to sort out if there is a difference in biology between men and women, or if there is a gender bias.“

The study’s lead author, Dr. Jeffrey Berger of New York University Medical Center, votes for biology.   Continue reading “Biology or bias? Women twice as likely to die after heart attack” →

Cardiologist’s plan: “Fat people need not apply for jobs at Cleveland Clinic”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 7 Comments

cleveland clinic

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

For the past two years, the Cleveland Clinic has refused to hire smokers.  This non-profit American research and treatment health centre (consistently rated as the #1 heart institute in North America) introduced this groundbreaking no-smoking hiring initiative as a way to walk the talk about the health and wellness of not only the 50,000 patients admitted each year, but of its 1,800 employees.

But now the head of the Cleveland Clinic says he wants to take this bold hiring policy one step further – and some are saying this would be going too far.  Dr. Delos (Toby) Cosgrove, the heart surgeon who is the Clinic’s CEO, told the New York Times that if it were up to him, he would not only stop hiring smokers. He would also stop hiring overweight people. Continue reading “Cardiologist’s plan: “Fat people need not apply for jobs at Cleveland Clinic”” →

Could ‘goodism’ and self-sacrifice be linked to women’s heart disease outcomes?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 9 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

These days, whenever I tell my audiences about the hours leading up to my hospitalization for a heart attack last year, I ask them to guess what I would have done had those horrific cardiac symptoms been happening to my daughter (or my next-door neighbour, or even a perfect stranger) during that endless cross-country flight back home to the West Coast. Would I have patted her grim, sweaty face and whispered:

“Just try to hang on, honey. We’ll be home in nine hours…”

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No, my Heart Sisters, I would have been screaming bloody murder for the Air Canada crew to get help immediately, even if it meant turning the damned plane around.  But since these attacks were happening to me, and not to somebody else, I chose instead the unwise and potentially fatal option of just slinking down in my seat, very still, hour after hour, trying not to die. Continue reading “Could ‘goodism’ and self-sacrifice be linked to women’s heart disease outcomes?” →