Bypassing bypass surgery by growing new arteries

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 86 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

The human body is endlessly fascinating, isn’t it? Consider how humans get started in the first place – only after one tiny sperm, one of hundreds of millions, has somehow negotiated its way past the lethal acid coating the vagina and made its long journey up to the waiting egg.  The odds are stupefyingly against that one brave little sperm. How did any of us even get born?

Also, consider the heart.

Before my heart attack, I had never heard of the heart’s little collateral arteries. These are small, normally closed arteries that, in times of dire need (like a blocked coronary artery that can lead to a heart attack) can “wake up” and enlarge enough to form a kind of detour around the blockage, thus providing an alternate route of blood supply to feed the oxygen-starved heart muscle. Do-it-yourself bypass surgery! Continue reading “Bypassing bypass surgery by growing new arteries” →

Chocolate-covered bacon, and other ways to alter your brain chemistry

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 4 Comments

chocolate bacon

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

I am not making this up.  There is such a thing as chocolate-covered bacon. It’s apparently been around for years, featured at the Wisconsin State Fair and other fine culinary gatherings. Chocolate-covered bacon is the holy trinity of junk food: salt, fat and sugar, all in one divine morsel.  A heart attack on a plate.

The appeal of this concoction would be no surpise to Dr. David Kessler. The Harvard-trained doctor, lawyer, former Yale Medical School dean and commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration believes that this junk food combo – salt-fat-sugar – actually stimulates our brain to crave more.

Dr. Kessler’s book, The End of Over-eating, claims that foods high in salt, fat and sugar actually alter the brain’s chemistry in ways that compel people to over-eat. He told the Washington Post:

“Much of the scientific research around over-eating has been physiology – what’s going on in our body. The real question is what’s going on in our brain?” Continue reading “Chocolate-covered bacon, and other ways to alter your brain chemistry” →

Why are heart patients who smoke leaving hospital still smoking?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 37 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥   @HeartSisters

If you ever needed a swift smack upside the head to convince you to finally stop smoking once and for all, you’d think that a heart attack would do it.

Hospitalized survivors, shocked and traumatized, are already lying there in the cardiac ward unable to light up, and certainly prohibited from smoking anywhere inside the hospital buildings. In my town, smoking is banned on all hospital grounds, thus requiring a long walk clear across the street to huddle near the bus stop – if the patient is mobile enough – with the attractive hospital gown flapping in the wind behind. These smokers are already well underway, whether they’d planned it or not, to quitting cold turkey. So why are they starting up again by the time they get home?

What many non-smokers may not understand about this question is that smokers generally LOVE their smokes. They love the longstanding associations between a cigarette and their daily routines. They love that first early morning cigarette. Or coffee breaks with workmates. On the phone. At parties. That last smoke of the day out on a quiet porch.

Smokers on the cardiac ward already know that smoking is likely what landed them in that cardiac ward in the first place. Just in case, here’s why smoking is so damaging to the heart: Continue reading “Why are heart patients who smoke leaving hospital still smoking?” →

How does it really feel to have a heart attack? Women survivors answer that question

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 93 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥   @HeartSisters

Having a heart attack felt nothing like I thought it would feel.   For one thing, unlike sudden cardiac arrest, in which the heart stops beating and you stop breathing, during my heart attack (myocardial infarction), my heart continued beating, and I was walking, talking and conscious throughout despite horrific symptoms – so how could I possibly be having a heart attack?

Like most women, I’d never really thought about my heart – except maybe when running up that killer Quadra Street hill with my running group. Yet heart disease kills six times more women than breast cancer each year (in fact, it kills more women than all forms of cancer combined).

Women need to know all the potential symptoms of a heart attack – both typical and atypical. And by the way, I’ve stopped using the word “atypical“ to describe any non-chest pain symptom that women experience during a heart attack, because as paramedic and documentary filmmaker (“A Typical Heart“) Cristina D’Alessandro likes to say: 

“Why are our cardiac symptoms called ‘atypical’ when women are more than half the population?”

I asked some female survivors to share their very first symptoms. Their heart attack stories may surprise you. If you need help translating some of the heart jargon, visit my patient-friendly jargon-free glossary of cardiology terms and abbreviations.

Read their stories