End-Stage Cardiopulmonary ConferenceFish help fight Atherosclerosis!What's on in Heart Health Month?


ANATOMY & PHYSIOLOGY
HEART DISEASE
HEARTZINE
INTRO
LABORATORY
NEWS

Heart Disease

Smoking and Heart Disease

Monday 17th April 2006 You just got back from work and slump on the couch. There is a cigarette pack on the coffee table and you reach for it. You believe that smoking a cigarette will help you forget the troubles at work. Have you ever stopped to think about the side effects of smoking? Of course, it is highly associated with lung cancer and breathing difficulties. In addition to that, smoking is also a major factor of heart disease.
 
You may think a puff of smoke is nothing. Do you know that tobacco smoke contains more than 4,000 chemicals? Apart from that, the chemicals inside the tobacco are also poisons. Blood pressure increases due to the nicotine in a cigarette. Coupled with carbon monoxide, the heart has to work harder since it replaces oxygen that is much needed for your body. The most deadly component in a cigarette might be tar as it is an active agent for cancer. Imagine taking puff after puff of smoke; imagine how congested the blood flow will be.
 
Approximately 30 percent of United Sta…
 

Exercise and the Heart

Monday 17th April 2006: Heart is actually a muscle. When a muscle is left at dormant state for a long time, its performance will degrade and becomes weak. This is also applicable to our heart. It needs regular workout so that it will become stronger and work efficiently. Although there have been no evidence that exercise could prevent heart disease, it appears to be reducing other factors that may contribute to heart diseases. Stress and high blood pressure is closely related to heart disease. By exercising, we are able to reduce heart rate. This is because our heart is working while we are exercising and enhances its performance to pump blood throughout the body. Apart from that, blood pressure is reduced, the amount of fat going through your body is eliminated and you will have toned body.
 
Exercise has a wide meaning. To increase the performance of the heart, special type of exercise is needed. To have good results, one needs to undergo aerobic exercise. Continuous and rhythmic, aerobic exercises …
 

What are ACE inhibitors?

Monday 17th April 2006: ACE is the acronym for angiotensin converting enzyme. ACE inhibitors are a kind of medication that slows the activity of ACE. When the production of ACE is tampered with, the body will produce less angiotensin II. Angiotensin II is a very powerful prescription that contracts the muscle surrounding blood vessels. As a result, the pressure inside the blood vessels increases and this may lead to high blood pressure.
 
As it has been stated above, ACE is given to people with problems such as high blood pressure, treatment of heart diseases and to avoid kidney damage for people with hypertension and diabetes. ACE inhibitors is in fact one of the most powerful medications that could prevent people from dying from heart failures and high blood pressure problems. In fact, research shows that people taking ACE inhibitors managed to live longer despite the fact that they are suffering from heart failure and high blood pressure. However, certain individuals show no reaction towards ACE inhibit…
 

Congenital Heart Diseases

Monday 27th February 2006 : Congenital heart diseases are heart defects present at birth; they are the result of abnormal heart development before birth. In the beginning, the heart is nothing more than a simple pulsatile tube, which has to rotate, cavitate, form valves, in order to become the complex organ it is at birth. So, during the embryonic development, there are many chances for disorders to occur.
 
These disorders may appear in the form of abnormal holes between the chambers, incorrect connections between chambers and vessels, valves which do not function or open correctly, and others. Congenital heart diseases affect a bit less than 1% of all children (about 8 of every 1,000 infants).
 
The causes are rather difficult to determine and are still under investigation by doctors and scientists. So far, doctors have been able to determine some conditions and factors that put a child at risk of developing some form of congenital heart defect.
 
Among these, there are factors that can be controlled, such as the…
 

Diet and High Blood Pressure

Saturday 25th February 2006 : High blood pressure or hypertension is known as the “silent killer” because it leads to a greatly increased risk of heart attack, stroke and other serious illnesses, while the patient may not even be aware of it. Elevated blood pressure, high cholesterol and smoking are the most serious causes of atherosclerosis or hardening of the arteries. Thus, keeping blood pressure under control is essential for cardiovascular health.
 
Diet and lifestyle changes may be sufficient to control it, if it is not as high as to necessitate antihypertensive medication. If you are overweight, losing weight will help lower your diastolic blood pressure by about one point for every pound you lose. Increasing the level of physical activity will help you both lose weight and lower your blood pressure independently of weight loss.
 
If you have elevated blood pressure, it is important to switch to low-fat, low-sodium, high-fiber foods such as fruit, vegetables and plant foods. Keep in m…
 

Thrombosis

Saturday 18th February 2006: Thrombosis can manifest as sudden death, acute coronary syndromes (ACS), secondary effects to coronary atherosclerosis, postoperative deep vein thrombosis (DVT), activated protein C deficiency and malignancy among others disorders (Gurm & Bhatt 2005). Because of this central role that thrombosis plays in cardiovascular disease, the need to develop thrombin inhibitors is integral as anti-thrombotic pharmacotherapy.
 
When the endothelial lining of veins or arteries are injured, subendothelial matrix proteins such as collagen and von Willebrand factor are released making them vulnerable to platelets. These combination will be activated to produce vasoactive and procoagulant substances which then aggregates. These simultaneous activation intiates the coagulation cascade that will derive thrombin from the cleavage of prothrombin (Gurm & Bhatt 2005). The sequence is repeated as thrombin is a potent vasoconstrictor and platelet aggregant, encouraging more platelets to the site …
 

All About Atheroma

Saturday 18th February 2006: Definition Webster's Dictionary defines Atheroma as "An encysted tumour containing curdy matter. A disease characterised by thickening and fatty degeneration of the inner coat of the arteries." An encysted tumour containing curdy matter. [quote]A disease characterised by thickening and fatty degeneration of the inner coat of the arteries.:Webster's Dictionary[/quote] This disease is the largest cause of death in western countries and hence one of the most important topics in such societies. It causes death from heart diease, cerebral infarction, and ischaemia of the lower limbs, acting by narrowing of the lumen within arteries. It features lesions on the wall of arteries, which are luminal thickenings due to the depositino of lipids and formation of fibrous tissue, hence athere (porridge, i.e. soft lipid rich part) with sclerotic (hard, i.e. fibrous component. Apperance In childhood these are present as fatty streaks, yellowigh spots in the lumina serface. In time these…
 

Stress Mechanism in Coronary Heart Disease

Saturday 18th February 2006: Although the direct role of stress in disease is still not known, a number of important factors have linked stress to the emergence of various diseases.
 
The stress response known as the ‘fight or flight’ mechanism is integral in helping an individual to deal with everyday activities. When a person faces a stressor which is the internal or external demands on the body, the A1/A2 noadrenergic neurons in the medulla oblongata of the brain is activated (Pezzone et al 1993). These two neurons act as intermediates for stress signals in the central nervous system (Gaillet S 1993) Noradrenaline (NA) and PRL-releasing peptide (PrRP) that are produced by these neurons (Morales et al 2000) will stimulate the release of ACTH from the anterior pituitari through the CRH hypothalamic neurons (Maruyama et al., 2001). ACTH will control the release of corticosteroids from the medulla adrenal through endocrinal action (Owens & Nemeroff, 1991…
 

Risk Factors for Atherosclerosis

Saturday 4th June 2005 : Atherosclerotic disease develops through non-modifiable and modifiable risk factors. Age, gender and genetic predisposition are all factors that cannot be changed. Environmental factors are related to diet, physical activity and behavior. The main external factors affecting both men and women include hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, glucose intolerance and obesity. Men are also affected by cigarette smoking and left ventricular hypertrophy.
 
The Framingham study found smoking to be an independent factor. The effect of smoking was only evident in men ages 45 to 64 but not for older men and women. The Nutrition Canada Survey found high cardiovascular mortality among 47% of men who smoked and only 10% among women who smoked.
 
Risk factors related to diet include increased concentration of serum cholesterol, lower HDL level cholesterol, hypertension and high blood sugar levels (Goto 1990). Those with diabetes mellitus were 3 times more likely to develop atheroscle…
 

Treatment of Mycardial Infarction

Saturday 4th June 2005 : YOCARDIAL INFACRCTION-ANGIOPLASTY AND BYPASS SURGERY
 
MYOCARDIAL INFACRCTION-ANGIOPLASTY AND BYPASS SURGERY
 
Ischemia is the leading cause of death worldwide and myocardial infarction (MI) causes well over 12 million deaths per year internationally. However, with better detection and treatments, morbidity and mortality of this disease has been lessened.  This article provides a sweeping overview of treatment options.
 
Early treatment include clot bursting drugs and ballooning the arteries open. Medication used for treatment for angina pain includes nitrates, beta-blockers and calcium channel blockers. These drugs are either to increase or decrease the amount of blood that gets to the heart. Nitroglycerin, a type of nitrate is not only used for patients that has suffered a myocardial infarction within the first 24 hours, but also prescribed for certain cases of ischemic angina, uncontrolled hypertension…
 

Science Spotlight

Stress Mechanism in Coronary Heart Disease

Stem Cells can Repair Damaged Heart

Hypertension

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