Other than potentially high mercury levels, there doesn't seem to be anything bad about eating fish. A study coming out of France recently has found that regular fish in the diet not only raises Omega-3 fatty acid levels, raises good HDL cholesterol levels, and lowers blood pressure, but it also slows down the heart rate. And the more fish a person eats the slower the heart goes (in a healthy way, not to the point of going too slow or stopping).

I really wish mercury weren't such an issue, because it sounds like fish really is a wonder food. Do you think we'll start hearing bad news soon? It seems like that's always the way it goes!

When you're working out, do you ever notice those hard-core gym fanatics seem to all have heart-rate monitors on? No? Maybe it's just my gym. But I see them so much that I've started to wonder whether I need one.

Heart rate monitors aren't a bad investment, but as fitsugar points out, they're usually more for keeping track of your workout than your heart. You know those heart-rate charts they have all over the gym? Well, in a nutshell, they're telling you what your heart rate should be at depending on what you're aiming for. For cardio-vascular conditioning, your heart-rate should be a bit higher than if, say, you're trying to burn fat. So the heart rate monitor helps you monitor that, and it's a heck of a lot easier than trying to count your pulse while your running on the treadmill.

I don't think I'll be buying one anytime soon, since all the machines seem to have one anyway. What about you?

It seems like pacemakers and other implanted devices like ICD's have been in the news a lot lately, for different reasons. Here is some good news that is somewhat related, and may mean that in the future some people will get to avoid surgery: scientists have discovered an enzyme that works to put the brakes on a racing heartbeat. A person's heart rate is set by a single cell within the heart, called the pacemaker cell, and a naturally occurring enzyme called Pak 1 has been found to interact specifically with that cell -- telling it to slow things down.

This discovery will obviously have a potentially huge effect on treatments, drugs, and the lives of people living with heart disease.