Heart Disease Prevention - Is Low Heart Rate An Indication of Fitness?

For most healthy relaxed adults, a normal RHR is between 60 and 100 bpm. When one’s RHR falls below 60 bpm, a condition called bradycardia occurs. It is a common heart rhythm disturbance frequently found in older adults aged above 65. Find out more at:

https://www.howtopreventheartdisease.com/is-low-heart-rate-an-indication-of-fitness.html

Are Triathletes At Higher Risk Of Cardiac Events?

Being a multiple-stage competition involving the completion of 3 continuous and sequential endurance disciplines, triathlon usually involves swimming, cycling, and running over various distances. It began in 1970s and has become an increasingly popular endurance activity worldwide. A standard Olympic triathlon involves a 1.5 km (0.9 mile) swim, followed by a 40 km (24.8 mile) bike ride and a 10 km (6.2 mile) run.

Obviously, triathlon puts unusually high demands on the body, especially the heart. Does it mean that triathlon is a dangerous sport?

Recent study by German researchers reported that men who compete in triathlons could put their heart at risk. After examining 55 male triathletes averaged 44 years old, and 30 female triathletes averaged 43 years old, the researchers found that 18 percent of the men had a condition known as myocardial fibrosis, but not the female triathletes. Myocardial fibrosis is scarring of the heart, and it usually affects the pumping chambers and can progress to heart failure. The findings were presented at the Radiological Society of North America annual meeting between Nov 26 and Dec 1, 2017 in Chicago.

The clinical relevance of these scars is currently unclear but they might lead to future heart failure and arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat). The researchers explained that higher exercise-induced systolic blood pressure may result in greater myocardial mass and more exercise might expose the athlete to a higher risk of myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle. These factors, together with repeatedly increased stress of the left ventricular wall due to exercise, could injure the heart muscle. Meanwhile, the presence of testosterone may be one of other factors that explain the difference in myocardial fibrosis risk between male and female triathletes.

Findings presented at meetings should be considered preliminary because it has not been subjected to the scrutiny given to research published in medical journals. Previous studies have, however, found myocardial fibrosis in elite athletes.

Latest American data also indicated that triathletes may be more likely to die suddenly and suffer a fatal trauma or cardiac arrest than previously thought. A study of more than 9 million participants over 3 decades found that deaths and cardiac arrests struck 1.74 out of every 100,000 competitors. The findings were published October 17, 2017 in the ‘Annals of Internal Medicine’.

During the study period from 1985 to 2016, 135 people died suddenly or had a cardiac arrest. This included 107 sudden deaths and 13 race-related cardiac arrests that people survived because of prompt emergency medical attention. The victims were 47 years old on average, and 85 percent were male.

Autopsy data showed that clinically silent cardiovascular disease was present in an unexpected proportion of decedents. The incidence of cardiovascular events was much lower in female triathletes, 3.5-fold less than in men. Death risks also raised with age. Among men 60 and older, 19 participants died or suffered cardiac arrest out of every 100,000 competitors.

Hence, it is advisable for participants of triathlon or other sports to get medical checkup to see if they have any risk before participating. This is particularly important for middle-aged and older men.

Heart Disease Prevention - How Is Stroke Related To Heart Disease?

It is common for heart problems including heart attack, congestive heart failure, abnormal heart rhythms, and cardiac arrest to occur immediately after a stroke. These heart problems may be caused by the stroke itself, or by the same underlying process that induced the stroke, or the heart problem may occur first to cause the stroke. More details at:

Heart Disease Prevention - How Is Stroke Related To Heart Disease?

How To Save A Cardiac Arrest Victim?

Each year, there are between 300,000 and 400,000 deaths in the United States from cardiac arrest. Most cardiac arrest deaths occur outside the hospital. The current out-of-hospital survival rates are very low: between 1 and 5 percent.

Cardiac arrest usually occurs when the heart's electrical activity becomes disrupted and the heartbeat gets dangerously fast (ventricular tachycardia) or chaotic (ventricular fibrillation). As a result, irregular heart rhythm (arrhythmia) occurs and the heart stops beating effectively and cannot adequately pump blood. But if an electric shock from an AED can be delivered in time across the chest and through the heart, the fatal rhythm of ventricular fibrillation can be turned back to a normal rhythm.

An AED (automated external defibrillator) is a device that can be attached to a person’s chest. It can sense the heart's rhythm during cardiac arrest and in some cases, deliver an electric shock to get the heart beating again. The device, when used together with CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) by trained persons offers the best chance of survival for a person who suffers a sudden cardiac arrest. CPR can keep some blood flowing to the heart and brain for a short time.

People who has a cardiac arrest will suddenly lose consciousness. So when one sees someone pass out, the first thing he or she should do is to check whether the victim is unconscious and not breathing. Once confirmed the victim is unresponsive, an ambulance should be called immediately and an AED should be secured right away. AEDs are now commonly available in many public places including the shopping malls, office buildings, sports arenas, golf courses, schools, and airports and airplanes.

CPR should then be started on the victim until the AED arrives. Once the device is switched on, voice prompts will advise what to do. Sweat, if any, should be wiped from the chest of the victim before attaching the electrode pads to the bare chest. The first pad should be placed on the victim's upper right side, just below the collarbone, while the second pad is placed just below and to the left of the left nipple. The device will advise if shock is advised. If shock is required, the helper should make sure no one is touching the victim before pressing the button. The helper should continue to follow the voice prompts until the ambulance arrives.

Nevertheless, one should note that an AED can only for certain types of cardiac arrest that involves specific types of heart fibrillation, and it will not revive everyone in cardiac arrest.

Heart Disease Prevention - Would Bystanders’ CPR Raise Cardiac Arrest Survival?

Cardiac arrest might be reversed if someone nearby can perform CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and use a defibrillator to shock the heart in order to restore a normal heart rhythm within a few minutes. Hence, bystanders can make a difference when somebody collapses with cardiac arrest. Read the full article @

Heart Disease Prevention - Would Bystanders’ CPR Raise Cardiac Arrest Survival?

Heart Disease Prevention - How To Improve Survival Rate Of Cardiac Arrest?

Training people in CPR and having automated external defibrillators (AED) handy will certainly help to increase the survival rate. Meanwhile, emergency medical service personnel must be trained to respond swiftly and correctly. For instance, operators managing 911 calls can be trained to talk people through CPR while waiting an ambulance to come, and the emergency departments need smooth and coordinated responses. To find out more, please click the following link.

Heart Disease Prevention - How To Improve Survival Rate Of Cardiac Arrest?

Is There A Link Between Wildfire And Heart Disease?

A wildfire is an uncontrolled fire in an area of combustible vegetation occurring in the countryside area. Sometime, it is also called forest fire, bush fire or brush fire. It differs from other kinds of fire by its extensive size, the speed at which it can spread out from its original source, and its potential to alter the direction unexpectedly. 

Wildfires in Australia are a common occurrence because of the generally hot and dry climate. They can happen during all times of the year though mostly throughout the hotter months of summer and spring. In the United States, there are typically between 60,000 and 80,000 wildfires that occur each year, burning 3 million to 10 million acres (12,000 to 40,000 square kilometers) of land depending on the year.

Inhalation of smoke from a wildfire could pose some health risks. As reported by Australian researchers, air pollution from wildfire might trigger heart attack, cardiac arrest or other types of heart disease. The finer particulate matter, which is presented in extremely high concentration in wildfire, is small and easily inhaled making it harmful for the human body.

Smoke wildfires has long been linked to respiratory problems such as asthma. While some previous studies had already associated PM 2.5 (particulate matter that is 2.5 micrometers or smaller) with inflammation and heart disease, the evidence of the relationship between wildfire smoke exposure and heart disease has been inconsistent. 

Due to the climate, vegetation and protracted droughts, Victoria is particularly vulnerable to wildfires. In December 2006 and January 2007, Victoria experienced a long-running series of wildfires that burned about one million hectares (2.4 million acres) of land with smoke reaching cities situated far away from the source fires.

Using the health data obtained during the period of December 2006 to January 2007, researchers from Monash University and associates examined the relationship between out‐of‐hospital cardiac arrests, ischemic heart disease, heart attack, and angina (hospital admissions and emergency department attendance) and PM2.5 concentrations.

The findings, which were published July 15, 2015 in the ‘Journal of the American Heart Association’, reported that there were 457 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, 2,106 emergency department visits and 3,274 hospital admissions for coronary artery disease during the fire period.

After taking into account of temperature and relative humidity, the researchers also found that as the concentration of fine particulates in the air increased over about a two-day period, the risk for cardiac arrest among men and people over age of 65 raised. The risk for emergency department visits due to coronary artery disease also rose, particularly among women.

During wildfire events, general pollution is advised to stay indoors, maintain medication, and if they are worried at any stage due to a health condition, they should seek help immediately. Taking note that elderly or people with preexisting conditions are at the highest risk.

Heart Disease Prevention - Smartphone App Can Save Cardiac Arrest Victims!

PulsePoint is a smartphone app created to alerts users when someone is in cardiac arrest nearby. On May 9, 2014, a victim who had collapsed outside a gym used the app to alert a bystander who later performed CPR to him and saved his life. Click the following link to know more!

Heart Disease Prevention - Smartphone App Can Save Cardiac Arrest Victims!

Simple CPR Could Have Long-Term Benefit!

CPR (Cardiopulmonary resuscitation) is an emergency procedure for a person who has cardiac arrest. Its purpose is to preserve intact brain function until further measures to restore spontaneous blood circulation and breathing. A standard CPR normally involves chest compression together mouth-to-mouth or mouth-to-nose resuscitation.

However, researchers from Descartes University in Paris, France and other institutions from Seattle (USA) and Sweden reported that people suffering cardiac arrest were less likely to die in subsequent years when bystanders performed simple CPR with chest compressions only. The findings were published online on December 10, 2012 in the journal ‘Circulation’.

This was more or less in line with the recommendation by the American Heart Association (AHA): a simpler form of CPR from bystanders is better than no aid at all. However, such recommendation does not apply to CPR performed in hospital or in community by medical personnel or people who are proficient in rescue breathing. Such recommendation also applies only to adult victims.

Data from 2 randomized trials that were reported in the ‘New England Journal of Medicine’ in 2010 were examined. More than 3,200 adults were involved. These victims had cardiac arrest likely due to heart disease problems rather than trauma, suffocating or drowning. Bystanders were instructed by dispatchers via phone to use either the standard or compression only form of CPR.

The researchers were able to follow 78 percent of the participants on longer-term outcomes. The one-year survival rate was found to be about 12 percent for chest compression alone and about 10 percent for standard CPR. Mortality was 9 percent lower in the compression-only group than in the standard CPR group, after adjusting for different factors. The survival benefit persisted over 5 years.

Nevertheless, the study only tracked survival and it could not assess patients’ function level or quality of life. Moreover, the original trials employed in the study were not meant for tracking long-term outcomes.

While there are concerns that victims who collapse of non-cardiac causes might not get the oxygen they need with the compression-only approach, the researchers confirmed they did not observe evidence of harm among those for whom oxygenation and ventilation might in theory be more important.

Victims would require fresh oxygen through mouth-to-mouth resuscitation only if they have been down for a longer or unknown period of time, according to other health experts. The majority of cardiac arrest events are likely caused by heart disease problems. It is most probably that some oxygen still remains in the blood when the victim’s heart has stopped for a short period of time. So proceeding with chest compression only should be beneficial for most circumstances.

Should Heart Disease Patients Have Intense Workout?

Intense workout has been found to have greater cardioprotective effects than moderate level of exercise, and higher levels of physical activity is believed to be effective in lowering cardiovascular events. But it is also known that intense exercise could raise the risk of sudden cardiac arrest and myocardial infarction (heart attack) in some persons.

So when a person recovers from heart attack or heart surgery, he or she is usually asked to do moderate level of exercise. However, a new study, carried out by researchers from Norway, found that high intensity workout might be a safe option, too. Their findings were published online in journal ‘Circulation’ on August 9, 2012.

Researchers tracked 4,846 patients with coronary heart disease at 4 Norwegian cardiac rehabilitation centers. The cardiac rehab involves follow-up medical and lifestyle care to help people recover from a heart attack, heart failure or a heart surgery. All patients in the study participated in moderate-intensity training and organized high-intensity interval exercise training.

The moderate-intensity workout included one hour of walking or other exercise that resulted in exertion at about 60-70 percent of people's maximum heart rate.

For intense workout, people trained with repeated 4-minute intervals: 4 minutes of high impact exercise, such as cycling, jogging or cross country skiing, to get the heart rate up to 85-95 percent of maximum exertion, followed by 4 minutes of a more relaxed activity, such as walking.

It was found that a total of 129,456 hours were spent on working out at moderate intensity with one person died from cardiac arrest and 46,364 hours at high intensity with 2 cardiac arrests but survived.

Apparently, the findings indicated that the risk of a cardiovascular event is low after both high-intensity exercise and moderate-intensity exercise in a cardiovascular rehabilitation setting.

Nevertheless, the differences in the number of cardiac arrests during moderate and intense exercise were too small to conclude that the intense workout is as safe as the moderate workout.

As such, it is not recommended for cardiologists to broadly prescribe intense workout for heart disease patients. People should still stick to their prevailing guidelines by doing moderate workout until more data showing that intense workout are safe.

Would Glucose Stop Heart Attack?

Heart attack is something that people cannot take it lightly. If a person having a heart attack does not receive medical care within the shortest period, the person might experience severe damage to heart tissue or in some serious cases, even end up dead. Unfortunately, timely medical help does not always available to save a heart attack victim.

According to the many studies carried out previously on acute cardiac care in emergency departments and hospitals, more people die of heart attack outside the hospital than inside the hospital.

Laboratory studies had suggested that in the setting of cardiac ischemia, immediate intravenous a mixture of glucose, insulin and potassium (GIK) could reduce ischemia-related arrhythmias and myocardial injury. The potential benefit of GIK is supposed to be related to timeliness of administration after cardiac ischemia begins, especially to prevent cardiac arrest. The risk for cardiac arrest is believed to be the highest during the first hour of acute coronary syndromes (ACS).

In order to test out-of hospital emergency medical service (EMS) administration of GIK in the first hours of suspected ACS, researchers from Tufts Medical Center started a study on 911 patients in 13 United States cities, between December 2006 and July 31, 2011 involving trained paramedics, who used electrocardiograph (ECG)-based instruments to determine if a patient was likely having a heart attack.

The findings showed that GIK given to patients showing heart attack symptoms had not reduced their risk of progressing to a heart attack and no improve 30-day survival though GIK was associated with lower rate of cardiac arrests or in-hospital deaths.

Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the study was presented in March 2012 at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Chicago, and was subsequently published on May 9, 2012 in ‘The Journal of the American Medical Association’ (JAMA).

Researchers felt that there is a need to carry out further studies to assess out-of-hospital use of GIK as therapy for patients with ACS.

Gene Mutation Can Harm The Heart Too!

Researchers from the Baylor College of Medicine reported on April 13, 2010 in the Journal of Neuroscience that a gene mutation in the brain of people with epilepsy can create trouble for their hearts and even make them victims of sudden death.

Their findings explained why epileptics (people with epilepsy) who are otherwise healthy can have irregular heartbeat and their likelihood to die suddenly and unexpectedly are more than 10 times than that of the general population. The findings might also help identify people who are likely to have sudden cardiac and provide improved treatment.

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines epilepsy as “any of various disorders marked by abnormal electrical discharges in the brain and typically manifested by sudden brief episodes of altered or diminished consciousness, involuntary movements, or convulsion.”

You will be surprised to learn that there are a substantial number of epileptics, about 50 million, around the world. Almost 90 percent of them are in developing countries. Though such disorder is more likely to be found among young children or people older than 65 years old, it can occur at any time.

While epilepsy can usually be controlled, it cannot be cured with medication. In some difficult cases, surgery might be an option. There are over 30 percent of epileptics do not have seizure control even with the help of the best available medications.

Researchers focused on abnormal ‘ion channels' in the brain that cause epilepsy as well as put individuals at risk for sudden unexplained death. An ion channel is a protein that allows charged particles leave or enter a cell to generate electrical signals, which is a basic process of nerve cell communication. These ion channels are also responsible for proper heart function, as pointed out in the study.

In the laboratory, electrical signals from the brains and hearts of mice bred to lack of the gene for the ion channel known as Kv1.1 were recorded. The results showed that the hearts of the mice had irregular heartbeat, signs of severe epilepsy and involuntary movement.

The heartbeats became even more erratic when the mice had epileptic seizures. This suggests that the signals from their brains to their hearts were disordered. After several episodes of cardiac arrest, the mice died.

Obstructive Sleep Apnea Could Be Fatal For Stroke Patients!

Sleep apnea is a condition in which a person’s breathing can briefly cease or become blocked numerous times during the night. Sleep apnea occurs frequently among patients with stroke, but whether it is an independent risk factor for mortality is still unknown.

In order to understand this relationship better, researchers from Umea University Hospital in Sweden examined long-term survival among 132 stroke patients admitted for in-hospital stroke rehabilitation between 1995 and 1997. All the participated patients underwent overnight sleep apnea recording about 3 weeks after their stroke, and they were followed for an average of 10 years.

Out of the 132 participants, 23 patients (17.4 percent) had obstructive sleep apnea and 28 patients (21.2 percent) had central sleep apnea during Cheyne-Stokes respiration. 2 patients who had both obstructive and central sleep apnea were excluded. A total of 79 patients served as controls.

Researchers found that 116 (88 percent) patients had died at follow-up. This included all patients with obstructive sleep apnea, 96 percent of those with central sleep apnea and 81 percent of patients without either form of sleep apnea. Obstructive sleep apnea is a condition in which breathing is blocked by collapsing airway tissues while central sleep apnea is one in which respiration controlled by the brain is interrupted.

The results showed that central sleep apnea was not associated with increased mortality. However, the mortality rates of patients with obstructive sleep apnea were 76 percent higher than those without apnea.

In the paper published on February 11, 2008 in the Archives of Internal Medicine, the researchers pointed out that it could be the drop in nighttime levels or oxygen in the bloodstream and an increased risk of cardiac arrest that might account for the increased mortality among stroke patients who have sleep apnea.

Can Heart Cells Be Replenished?

On the issue of whether a person’s heart cells can be replaced, most cardiologists believed that the cells are not replaceable. The recently released results of a Swedish study might well change their perspectives!

Swedish scientists from the Karolinska Institute showed that some of the human body’s cells are renewed each week while others are never replaced. Their findings, published on April 3, 2009 in the United States journal Science, confirmed that heart cells are replenished throughout life.

According to this group of researchers, the human cells undergo continual and slow replacement. For a 20-year-old person, one percent of the heart cells are renewed every year. However, the rate of renewal gradually declines over the years and it will reach 0.5 percent when this person reaches 75 years old.

People lose heart cells naturally with most of them are actually replaced. Heart can therefore be viewed as a patchwork of cells that have been there from birth and cells that have been formed later in life.

However, in the event of heart attack or heart disease, millions of cells will probably be lost. When such mishaps do occur, the very slow rate of renewal means that most heart cells can never be replaced.

In the study, the researchers used a unique method to determine how old the cells were. During the Cold War, nuclear tests produced a sharp increase in atmospheric concentrations of radioactive carbon-14, which is stored in the body's cells. As its levels have been varied over the past decades, they serve as an indicator of when the cells are formed.

The new findings no doubt can help doctors or health experts to find out new treatment methods to repair damaged heart cells caused by cardiac arrest or heart disease. On the other hand, such discovery would also motivate scientists to conduct further research into methods of stimulating the renewal mechanism.

How Does Bee Gees’ Song Relate to CPR?

Do you find it interesting? When I saw a report titled “CPR with Stayin’ Alive Tune”, I was very surprise and I bet you would too. How did these two different entities relate to each other? By the way, CPR stands for cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

Guess what, a small research conducted by the University of Illinois medical school found that doctors and students could maintain close to the ideal number of chest compressions when they did CPR and at same time listened to the song Stayin’ Alive.

Stayin’ Alive is a song by the Bee Gees, released as a single in 1977, and was considered as one of The Bee Gees' most popular and recognizable songs. It was played in the opening scene of the popular disco film, ‘Saturday Night Fever’.

According to announcement made by the researchers on October 16, 2008, the old disco song, at 103 beats per minute, has almost the perfect rhythm to help jump-start a stopped heart. This is very close to 100 chest compressions per minute, as recommended by The American Heart Association.

Although CPR can triple survival rates for cardiac arrest when performed properly, many people hesitate to do it because they either are not certain about or have difficulty maintaining the proper rhythm. Stayin' Alive, which has a way of being stuck in one’s head, can help with this.

15 students and doctors were involved in the study, which consisted of two parts. First, they did CPR on mannequins while listening to the song on iPods, and the chest compressions were timed with the song’s beat. 5 weeks later, they did the same drill without the music but they were asked to think of the song while performing the compressions. The average number of compressions recorded was 109 for the first and 113 for the second time.

This showed that the song actually helped people who already know how to perform CPR, and this should warrant larger, more definitive studies with real patients or untrained people, according to the researchers.

In fact, The American Heart Association has been using the song as a training tip for CPR instructors for about 2 years.

A 28-year-old medical resident who participated in the study said he has revived real patients by keeping the song in his head while doing CPR. He admitted that he was not really a disco fan and he has been told that he has a complete lack of rhythm. However, he was surprise the song worked for him.

Modified CPR Could Save More Life!

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a life-saving medical procedure that is useful in retrieving a victim who experiences certain life-threatening emergencies including heart attack, cardiac arrest, or respiratory arrest that cause the breathing or heartbeat to stop.

Standard CPR involves compressions of the chest, but the modified one involves pumping both the abdomen and the chest at the same time. It was found that such modified CPR could double the survival rate of victims who collapse with a heart attack

A 5-year study in Poland jointly conducted by Katowice's Silesian School of Medicine, Nowy Targ's City Hospital, and Dabrowa Gornicza's City Hospital has found that this modified form of CPR revived 38 percent of patients, compared to 16 percent saved by the standard CPR. Meanwhile, the rate of those discharged from hospital after a sudden-collapse was also improved from 10 percent to 24 percent.

These results were presented in September 2007 at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Vienna, which had more than 25,000 attendees.

In the study, the modified method had been performed on the 207 patients with an average age of 71, who had suddenly collapsed and become unconscious from 2002 to 2006. Then results were compared with that of a group of 138 similar patients, with an average age of 69 on whom standard CPR had been used in 2000 and 2001.

Standard CPR is no doubt a resuscitative procedure to treat those experiencing sudden cardiac arrest, however, it is effective in only 5 to 10 percent of patients due to insufficient arterial pressure generated by chest compressions alone. In view of this, the researchers introduced simultaneous abdominal compressions.

According to the study, the modified method not just raised the survival rate, but also caused fewer complications than standard CPR. Hence, they recommended that it should be made an element of training courses in resuscitation.

One should also note that CPR is unlikely to restart the heart. Its purpose is to maintain a flow of oxygenated blood to the brain and the heart so that tissue death could be delayed and chances for a successful resuscitation without permanent brain damage could be extended.

What Is The Risk Factor For Sudden Death in Patients With Myotonic Dystrophy?

When we talk about muscular dystrophy (MD), we refer it to a group of more than 30 genetic diseases characterized by progressive weakness and degeneration of the skeletal muscles that control movement.

Myotonic muscular dystrophy or in short myotonic dystrophy, being the most common form of MD, will cause a person prolonged muscle spasms, cataracts, cardiac abnormalities, and endocrine disturbances. Patients with myotonic dystrophy have long, thin faces, drooping eyelids, and a swan-like neck.

Statistics showed that approximately 1 of every 8,000 people in the United States was affected by myotonic dystrophy. The heart muscle of the people with such disease is adversely affected.

Over the period of 10 years, neurologists and cardiologists at 23 clinics studied 406 adults with myotonic dystrophy. During that period, 20 percent of the patients enrolled in the study died, one-third of them in sudden death were likely due to cardiac arrhythmia.

Cardiac arrhythmia (also known as dysrhythmia) is a condition in which abnormal electrical activity occurred in the heart. The heartbeat, either regular or irregular, may become too fast or too slow. Some arrhythmias are life threatening, which can cause cardiac arrest and sudden death. Sudden death means death occurs in a stable patient within 1 hour of the onset of symptoms.

The study carried out by the Indiana University School of Medicine found that adults having myotonic dystrophy and abnormal electrocardiograms are more than 3 times more likely to die suddenly than patients who have normal ECG, while those with atrial (upper) chamber arrthymias had a 5 times higher risk.

The researchers had identified the risk factors that predict a high risk of sudden death in people with myotonic dystrophy and their findings were published in the June 19, 2008 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The report also revealed that pacemakers, commonly used to treat some forms of arrhythmia, did not help these patients prevent sudden death. However, using electrophysiological studies or by surgically implanting a cardioverter-defibrillator, doctors can guard against sudden death in patients showing this risk factor.

Can Watching Football Match Really Lead to Heart Attack?

During the 2006 World Cup, researchers at the Munich University Clinic in southern Germany found that cardiac arrests and palpitations among men in the greater Munich area were more than tripled compared to the same period over 3 preceding areas. For women, the rate was double.

The researchers also found that “the more important the game, the greater the risk”. The number of heart attack cases actually surged when Germany played in the quarterfinals against Argentina (Germany won), and in the semifinal against Italy (Germany lost). Both games were decided after extra time and penalty shootout, which has already been found as a risk by previous research.

As the figures are so alarming, some experts urge patients with potential risk to take stress-receptor blockers, aspirin and statins, or even consider behavior therapy to calm them down before sitting down the soda to watch the football matches. The health experts even advise those patients who had a heart attack or who are considered to have a high cardiac risk to avoid watching important matches.

In fact, researchers at the University of Birmingham, in central England, already discovered that the number of heart attacks in Britain rose by 25 percent on the day England lost to Argentina on kicks in the 1998 World Cup. As such, they had suggested that penalty shootouts should be scrapped “on public health grounds”.

Then, there are the longer-term health problems for the football fans: they tended to develop into couch-potato lifestyle: non-stop boozing and snacking on starchy, fatty, salty or sweet foods. Such unhealthy lifestyle is partly responsible for major health problems like obesity, diabetes and heart disease found in Europe. Some health experts even blame the match organizations for advertising unhealthy products. They believe such act will do no good for the public health, and instead help the football spectators cultivate their unhealthy lifestyle.

Besides cardiac arrests, the reported number of emergency calls, wife beatings, depression, drunken driving, self-harm and even suicide is rising during major football sessions.

Can you imagine, a football fan would eventually be led to such a disaster by just watching football matches!

Heart Rate Can Be Lower By Eating Fish!

Increased heart rate is a risk factor for sudden death. Sudden death also known as cardiac arrest, and it occurs when the heart stops abruptly.

According to a study on 9,758 men, aged 50 to 59 from Lille, France and Belfast, Ireland, healthy men who ate fish regularly had lower average heart rates as compared to those who did not.

The men in the study were divided into 4 groups according to their fish intake: less than once per week (27.3 percent), once per week (46.9 percent), twice per week (20.1 percent), and more than twice per week (5.7 percent).

The adjusted heart rate ranged from 67.5 beats per minute (bpm) in men who ate fish less than once a week to 65.6 bpm for those consuming fish more than twice per week.

Omega-3 fatty acid may prevent sudden death and fatal cardiovascular events by regulating heartbeat and preventing irregular cardiac rhythms associated with sudden death. Cold-water fish such as salmon, tuna, and mackerel are good sources of omega-3 fatty acids.