Cardiologists say that men should exercise regularly, eat properly and stop smoking to help prevent heart disease and erectile dysfunction

Heart disease, a potentially lethal and often debilitating affliction, can affect much more than just the heart. The most common cause of heart disease, a hardening of the arteries known as atherosclerosis, often causes erectile dysfunction in men, says a cardiologist from the University of Michigan Health System. Indeed, he says, erectile dysfunction can be a sign that someone has heart disease and can be a predictor of the leading cause of death in the United States.

Since the risk factors for heart disease also can lead to the artery problems that cause erectile dysfunction, Rubenfire recommends that men take action to prevent both conditions with changes in diet and exercise. 

Doctors have long asserted that controlling your blood pressure may lengthen life and keep heart disease away. Now, researchers are driving the message home.

Men and women with normal blood pressure at age 50 lived five more years than those with higher blood pressure. They also avoided heart disease for a longer time.

About one in three U.S. adults has high blood pressure. But nearly a third of them don't know it, says the American Heart Association.

Blacks are especially hit hard. More than 40 percent of black U.S. adults have high blood pressure. It often starts younger and is more severe for them compared with other races, says the AHA.

People with type 1 diabetes often develop kidney failure and, when it's available, a combined kidney and pancreas transplant offers the prospect of curing both problems. Now Italian researchers report that a pancreas transplant alone has a lasting beneficial effect on kidney impairment related to diabetes.

Dr. Piero Marchetti of the University of Pisa and colleagues note that pancreas transplantation greatly helps people with diabetes by restoring insulin production, but the long-term effects on diabetes-related complications such as kidney impairment are not well defined.

The transplant restored normal blood sugar levels without the need for insulin injections, Marchetti's group reports in the medical journal Diabetes Care. It also reduced cholesterol levels and significantly decreased blood pressure levels.

A readily available test that screens for signs of inflammation in the blood may provide valuable new information about heart disease risks among the elderly.

A new study shows that older men and women with elevated levels of the inflammatory marker known as C-reactive protein (CRP) had a higher risk of heart attack or death due to heart disease over the next 10 years. This association was shown regardless of other traditional risk factors, such as high cholesterol or blood pressure levels. Inflammation plays a key role in atherosclerosis -- plaque in blood vessel walls that reduces blood flow.

Rheumatoid-arthritis sufferers are at an increased risk of death if they also suffer from coronary artery disease, U.S. researchers have found.

In a report to be published in the June 29 issue of the journal Arthritis Research and Therapy, the researchers said patients who suffer from rheumatoid arthritis in combination with multi-vessel coronary artery disease show an increased risk of death from heart disease compared to those who do not have both conditions.

The research, based on analysis of medical records obtained through the clinic, compared patients who had sought treatment from 1985 to 1998 in Olmsted County, Minn., and who were diagnosed with coronary artery disease with patients who had rheumatoid arthritis in combination with coronary heart disease.

I now have justification for raiding the frig late at night. Turns out if you have trouble drifting off, the right bedtime snack may help promote a more restful night's sleep.

In a study, a tryptophan-enriched (an enriched amino acid) snack before bed helped study participants sleep better and promoted morning alertness. Foods that provide a dose of tryptophan include bananas, dairy, nuts, eggs, soybeans, tuna, and chicken.

Don't overdo it though. Keep the serving size small and have your snack about an hour before bed. 

When we think of childhood obesity, we often attach it to the prevalence of type 2 diabetes among kids. However, the American Heart Association is also expressing great concern about how obesity among children will affect their cardio vascular health.

The AHA website has a section focused on helping kids overcome this growing epidemic. They've taken a unique approach to education in my opinion, through the use of age-appropriate games, songs and worksheets.

Some of the titles include: Big News! Straight From the Heart, "Be Like The Animals" Poem, Hearts On Parade, Break The Heart Code, Inside Fun & Fitness, Follow the Blood (yuck!), and "Take a Look Inside You."

The American Heart Association offers a program online called Cholesterol Low Down, sponsored by Pfizer. The goal of the program is to help build awareness of the dangers of high cholesterol and heart disease.

The program offers a monthly e-newsletter, and you can download daily Cholesterol Tips to your desktop. The program has been going on since 1998, and over 141,000 people have signed up. 

The program even has a spokesperson, the "Fonz" Henry Winkler, so you know it has to be cool! 

You would think that a nurse who worked with the legendary heart transplant surgeon Dr. Christian Barnard would know better. But, Evelyn Dytche still missed the symptoms of the heart disease which almost killed her.

The former nurse is proof that even professionals with long experience of coronary illness can be oblivious to their own failing organ. When at last Evelyn had her own heart transplant, doctors told her that scarring showed that she had had no fewer than eight heart attacks.

The former nurse believes she is typical of women who ignore the danger signs, even though one in three women are killed by heart and circulatory disease and coronary heart disease kills four times as many women than breast cancer.

Put it this way, if an expert in the field can miss it, don't you think you can too? Beware of the danger signs. Heart disease is the nation's number one killer of women.

A controversial new heart disease drug designed solely for African-American patients has been approved by the FDA. BiDil was given the go ahead after tests revealed it could significantly improve the quality of life for those identifying themselves as black, and cut the chance of dying by 43%

It is the first time a medication has been targeted at a specific racial group. The Food and Drug Administration said the move marked “a step toward the promise of personalised medicine.” Opponents contend that it amounts to little more than stigmatizing a particular race.

Doctors in Europe are saying that guidelines that set lower thresholds for "normal" blood pressure and cholesterol levels mean that 90% of people over age 50 could be labeled as sick.

Patients who are found to have above normal blood pressure and high cholesterol are often prescribed drug treatments to help prevent heart disease, as well as being given lifestyle advice.

But doctors are now raising concerns about the threshold at which they are being advised to start treatment, both due to the cost but also the possible side effects of the drugs. 

Writing in the British Medical Journal they said the latest European guidelines on the prevention of cardiovascular disease suggested blood pressure above 140/90mmHg and cholesterol above 5mmol/l were the appropriate thresholds for being labeled at risk. 

I love IHOP as much as the next person. Denny's is even better, but we don't have one of those in my town. We do have a Cracker Barrel, so that makes up for it. Breakfast is one of my favorite meals and I'll eat breakfast foods anytime day or night.  

But, could eating a big country-style breakfast of eggs, ham, bacon, biscuits, etc. cause a heart attack? That's the questions that is asked in this article at HeartZine.com.

The article is written by a physician in very medically-oriented, scientific tones so I had a difficult time understanding drawing conclusions. However, one statement does seems to indicate that, yes, a big breakfast does serve as a trigger for a cardiac event: "Clinical studies have reported an increased incidence of attacks, sudden death and poor blood supply to heart, during first quarter of the day."

Let me just encourage you to read the article and draw your own conclusions, which you are free to comment on here. 

Stroke survivors who had difficulty speaking, finding the right words or even understanding language, showed improvement in communication skills through short-term, intense language retraining, according to research published in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.

The improvement occurred regardless of the survivor’s age or the severity or duration of the language impairment, known as aphasia, the partial or total loss of the ability to articulate ideas or comprehend spoken or written language.

About 38 percent of stroke survivors have aphasia after suffering a stroke on the left side of their brain, said lead author Marcus Meinzer, Ph.D., of the Unversität Konstanz in Konstanz, Germany.  Many survivors improve spontaneously during the first six months after stroke.

As Americans fire up their barbecue grills this Fourth of July, chances are good that baked beans will appear alongside whatever is cooking on the grill. Eating baked beans may also offer a bunch of health benefits.

July is National Baked Bean Month and the folks at the American Dry Bean Board (Yes, there is such as thing.) recently made the claim that "diets including beans may reduce your risk of heart disease and certain cancers."

Well, there's probably truth to that. Beans provide a great deal of nutritional value. They are naturally low in total fat, contain no saturated fat or cholesterol and provide important nutrients such as fiber, protein, calcium, iron, folic acid and potassium. The health benefits of beans are consistent with many existing FDA-approved health claims, specifically those related to heart disease and cancer.

Apparently, drinking lots of beer, eating a fat-laden diet, and smoking heavily is not the only thing that causes heart disease in the citizens of Scotland. Researchers say it also comes from their genes.

Edinburgh University findings are that an unidentified genetic factor may well be at play in causing the much elevated risk of heart disease in the region. Researchers reported that even after accounting for the other environmental factors, there still remained a marked difference in the heart disease probabilities.

Dr. Richard Mitchell, principal investigator, acknowledged that Scottish persons are far more likely to smoke, drink, and not exercise. However, he stated that these factors alone do not account for the near twofold increase in heart disease risk in the country.