Tag: Dr. Noel Bairey Merz

This is your heart (my Heart Month interview)

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 9 Comments

cropped-background-quilt21.jpg

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

Heart Month (aka February) typically means a flurry of once-a-year media attention to the important subject of women’s heart health, so I like to take advantage of as many interview requests as I can every February.  Strike while the iron’s hot!  Make hay while the sun shines! Drink the glass of wine while it’s sitting right in front of you!  Okay, that last rule I just made up…

One such interview request this year was from Media Planet’s 2016 Cardiovascular Health Campaign launched by Canada’s National Post newspaper and online. Here’s the text of that interview with Taylor Mihail of Media Planet. Continue reading “This is your heart (my Heart Month interview)” →

“I rang the bell again. No one came.”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 21 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

There are a number of issues that leaped out at me about the hospital story you’re about to read.  Let’s see how many of them you observe, too – and how many could have been prevented.  This story is told by Ann, an Australian heart patient whose cardiac journey began in 2007 when she was 51 years old. But over the years since then, she has continued to suffer debilitating cardiac symptoms almost every day.

Her symptoms include not just chest pain, but pain throughout her upper back, jaw, shoulder, neck or arm, occasionally with severe shortness of breath. Despite taking a fistful of daily heart meds and wearing a nitro patch to help manage pain, Ann is rarely able to sleep through an entire night without being awoken by these symptoms. And here’s why . . .
Continue reading ““I rang the bell again. No one came.”” →

Women and statins: evidence-based medicine or wishful thinking?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 11 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

Are you:

A.  a healthy woman who’s never had any issues with your heart, but . . .

B.  you know heart disease is the #1 killer of women, so . . .

C.  you’re wondering what you can do to help prevent B from happening to you?

Warding off a first heart attack for a person with no history of heart disease is what physicians call primary prevention.  Warding off another heart attack for a person who already lives with heart disease is called secondary prevention.  It’s also what respected cardiologists representing both the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology are now telling us can be effectively accomplished by taking one of the cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins.

But it turns out that many other equally-respected cardiologists don’t believe that taking a powerful drug every day for the rest of your natural life for a disease you don’t even have is appropriate for primary prevention – particularly in women.  Continue reading “Women and statins: evidence-based medicine or wishful thinking?” →

Heart attacks: “Men explode, but women erode”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 8 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

heart-460546_1280Los Angeles cardiologist Dr. Noel Bairey Merz believes that the biggest issue facing women heart patients is that as a society we have been programmed to think of heart disease as a man’s problem. During a presentation in Australia last year, she told her audience:

“The fatty build-up of plaque in a coronary artery causing a heart attack will usually rupture or ‘explode’ in men.

“But in women, it will often be a much smaller, more subtle event, caused by ‘erosion’, not explosion. 

“Often their symptoms may throw doctors off track to the wrong diagnosis, and in many cases, women won’t even know they have had a heart attack until it’s too late.”   .

Continue reading “Heart attacks: “Men explode, but women erode”” →