Cardiac research: more fun facts

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 9 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥   @HeartSisters

Do you have a book in your life that you keep opening just for the pure delight of reading it again? I am that obsessed with the book called The Exquisite Machine:  The New Science of the Heart, published by MIT Press. In fact, I keep this book beside my favourite red chair so it’s always handy for re-reading random chapters. I’ve been doing this ever since veteran cardiac researcher Dr. Sian Harding wrote the book in 2022, and I can also say I haven’t felt this way about other books I love.  So I can’t resist sharing with you some fun facts about our hearts and the research I’ve learned about from Dr. Harding’s work:    . Continue reading “Cardiac research: more fun facts” →

Cold weather = worse angina symptoms!

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 12 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥   @HeartSisters

“Baby, it’s cold outside . .🎵”   Even here on the typically balmy west coast of Canada (where our brave daffodils valiantly poke through winter soil each January), we’ve had snow and freezing rain this month. But cold weather can feel even worse for those of us living with angina (from the Latin, “strangling in the chest”) which is the chest pain linked to coronary heart disease).  Here’s why:         .      Continue reading “Cold weather = worse angina symptoms!” →

“Did that go okay?” How to tell if your message is landing

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 4 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥   @HeartSisters

In the last half of the last century when I was working in corporate public relations, I was invited to speak at a marketing conference for female entrepreneurs in the city of Kamloops, B.C.

During my 45-minute presentation, the audience response was terrific – lots of nodding and smiling throughout, and several thoughtful questions at the end – all clues that signal a speaker’s messages are landing as planned.  On the plane heading home to Victoria from Kamloops after the conference, I pulled out the pile of audience feedback forms that I’d been given (old school: hand-written!) and I settled back in my seat to read them during my flight. One after another, the reviews were so nice. (One woman even wrote: “I want to marry Carolyn Thomas!”)  The last review I read, however, was one that stopped me cold:       .

Continue reading ““Did that go okay?” How to tell if your message is landing” →

How health journalists help “to make people who feel invisible feel seen”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 12 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥   @HeartSisters

I was late in discovering the writing of Ed Yong. The British-American journalist had already been a staff writer at The Atlantic for six years before I first read one of his articles, but it was his rare ability to make the most complex science make sense which convinced me to start reading everything he wrote. Here’s how Ed’s own editors described his series of articles on the COVID pandemic which won him the  Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting in 2021:  “Ed Yong anticipated the course of the coronavirus pandemic, clarified its dangers, and illuminated the government’s disastrous failure to curb it.”

One of the early issues that Ed Yong zeroed in on was that physicians seemed  remarkably dismissive of people who were suffering terribly with what’s now called Long-COVID. But Ed and a small spattering of other science writers were taking those patient reports seriously. And in his regular newsletter, Ed described the important role of journalism as helping “to make people who feel invisible feel seen”. 

Continue reading “How health journalists help “to make people who feel invisible feel seen”” →