The Checkup Archive: Cardiovascular Health
Wake up! It's sleep awareness week.
New data released by the CDC to coincide with National Sleep Awareness Week -- which begins today -- paint a less-than-ideal picture of Americans' relationship with sleep. More than 35 percent of nearly 74,571 people surveyed in 2009 reported getting less than 7 hours' sleep a night. (We're supposed to get 7 to 9 hours of sleep daily; children need 10 or 11 hours.) Almost 38 percent admitted to having unintentionally dozed off during the daytime during the 30 days before the survey. Worse yet: Nearly 5 percent of those surveyed had done so while driving.
By
Jennifer Huget
| March 7, 2011; 7:00 AM ET |
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Categories:
Cardiovascular Health, Chronic Conditions, Family Health, General Health, Sleep, Stress
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Study warns against energy drinks for kids, teens
A study in Monday's edition of the journal Pediatrics spells out everything you need to know about energy drinks, particularly the risks they pose to the young people who are most inclined to use them. Read it, and you'll never look at those drinks as benign products again.
By
Jennifer LaRue Huget
| February 15, 2011; 7:00 AM ET |
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Comments (4)
Categories:
Cardiovascular Health, Dietary supplements, Family Health, Kids' health, Nutrition and Fitness, Sleep, Teens, heart failure
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Is that right? Drinking diet soda increases stroke risk?
I don't typically report on research that's not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. But the provocative study about diet soda and stroke risk presented this week at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference in Los Angeles has generated enough confusion to warrant some attention here.
By
Jennifer LaRue Huget
| February 11, 2011; 7:00 AM ET |
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Comments (11)
Categories:
Cardiovascular Health, Is That Right?, Nutrition and Fitness, Sodium, Strokes
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Why is the whole world getting fatter?
At least the United States is not alone in getting fatter -- the entire world is gaining weight, too, according to a massive world weight project published yesterday and reported on by The Post's David Brown. "Our results show that overweight and obesity, high blood pressure and high cholesterol are...
By
Greg Linch
| February 4, 2011; 12:02 PM ET |
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Comments (13)
Categories:
Cardiovascular Health, Health News, Obesity
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Is that right? Shoveling snow boosts heart-attack risk
Snow shoveling (and other activities such as pushing cars and operating snowblowers) is the perfect setup for heart attack (when blood flow to a section of heart muscle becomes blocked) and sudden cardiac death (in which the heart suddenly and unexpectedly stops beating).
By
Jennifer LaRue Huget
| February 4, 2011; 7:00 AM ET |
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Comments (12)
Categories:
Cardiovascular Health, General Health, Snowmageddon
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Healthy adults getting unneeded heart screenings
But a report issued this morning by Consumer Reports shows that a whopping 44 percent of healthy adults (those who have no history of heart disease and who have normal blood pressure and cholesterol levels) have had heart-health screening procedures that they didn't really need. The report also notes that few of us question the need for screening, whether by blood-pressure check, EKG, or C-reactive protein test. And still fewer of us seem to care about the potential risks of such screenings, which include unneeded followup screenings, tests and treatments.
By
Jennifer LaRue Huget
| February 3, 2011; 6:00 AM ET |
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Comments (6)
Categories:
Cardiovascular Health, Chronic Conditions, medical costs, screening
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