Mental Attitude: A Broken Heart?
Patients with broken heart syndrome, also known as apical ballooning syndrome (ABS), have blood vessels that don't react normally to stress. ABS affects mainly postmenopausal women. Symptoms mimic a heart attack, but heart arteries show no blockages and no permanent damage. In ABS patients, rather than blood vessels getting bigger to provide more blood during mental stress, blood vessels get smaller and prevent blood from going where it's needed. ABS is associated with severe mental or emotional stress, like death of a spouse or family member, divorce, and claustrophobia. For most, heart function returns to normal in a few weeks.
Journal of the American College of Cardiology, November 2010
Health Alert: Deceptive Food Labels.
Current FDA labeling protocol prevents the public from knowing the true amount of trans fat in their food products. This may cause individuals to exceed the daily recommended value of 1.11 grams of trans fat from processed foods and lead to adverse long-term health side effects. Current law requires that fat content of more than five grams be listed in one gram increments, less than five grams be listed in .5 gram increments, and lower than .5 grams as containing zero grams. So, if a product has .49 grams of trans fat, the label can list the trans fat content as zero! Despite what seems to be a small amount of trans fat to ingest, increasing daily trans fat consumption from .9% - 2.1%, or from 2 grams to 4.67 grams, increases the risk of cardiovascular disease by 30%.
American Journal of Health Promotion, January 2011
Diet: Get Your Vitamin D.
Vitamin D deficiency could be linked to the development and severity of certain autoimmune lung diseases, (lupus and type 1 diabetes). Those with connective tissue disease-related interstitial lung disease (ILD) were more likely to have vitamin D deficiency - 52% vs 20%.
Chest, January 2011
Exercise: Exercise Combats Chronic Diseases.
Regular activity can help prevent or manage high blood pressure, boosts HDL or "good" cholesterol while decreasing triglycerides (this lowers plaque build-up in arteries), and can help prevent type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis and some cancers.
Mayo Clinic
Chiropractic: What Is Double Crush?
If there is irritation of a nerve root in the neck, as that nerve passes into the arm, it passes through several muscles and joints before it enters the hand. If the already irritated nerve then has a "secondary stress", there may be regional symptoms at that location. That second insult to the nerve is the "double crush" phenomenon. When a chiropractor adjusts the neck and the nerve root becomes less irritated, the secondary symptoms can resolve. This is true for entrapment syndromes (developed from associated muscle adhesions or "trigger points").
Wellness/Prevention: Lower Your Risk.
Consistent exercise (30-minute walk every day) lowers the risk of colon cancer, heart disease, diabetes and other cancers. Those who exercised consistently for at least 10 years had the lowest risk of all.
Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, December 2010
