Getting pregnant and having a baby is a wonderful and magical experience, but it can also be a little stressful as expecting parents worry about living healthy lifestyles and making sure the growing baby is going to be born healthy. But the American Heart Association has made things a little simpler by releasing these 4 tips to help avoid congenital heart defects:

• Talk with your doctor preconception. Prospective mothers can be checked for any number of health conditions, like diabetes and influenza, and helped to get it under control before getting pregnant.
• Women should take a daily multivitamin with at least 400 micrograms of folic acid, as this is important for the normal growth of the fetus and has been shown to help prevent heart defects.
• Review the proper use of both prescription and over-the-counter medications with your doctor.
• Avoid people with the flu or any illness with a fever. Women with a fever-associated illness during the first trimester have twice the risk of giving birth to a baby with heart problems.

By taking steps before you conceive and early in the pregnancy, you can greatly increase your chances of avoiding congenital heart defects and giving birth to a beautiful, happy, healthy baby!

Flu season just got a little more serious. Aside from running the risk of catching the debilitating sickness and finding yourself bedridden for several days, there may be more serious, heart-related consequences of influenza.

An estimated 10 to 20-percent of people living in the US catch the flu each year. On top of that, only about 60-percent of people who should get the flu vaccine actually get it (and even less people get it in Europe). Personally, I haven't had a flu shot administered since my junior year of college, so I'm not faring any better in that regard. But, maybe we should all think again about getting one next year.

It turns out that the flu may be a trigger of some sort for heart attack. Recent research, published in the European Heart Journal, suggests that influenza epidemics are associated with an increased number of deaths resulting from heart disease and, perhaps even scarier, is that flu can actually trigger the heart attacks that result in death.

The science of it breaks down like this, according to the researchers from the Texas Heart Institute: Flu can cause acute and severe inflammation in the body. In some people, this may lead to a destabilization of atherosclerotic plaque in coronary arteries, thereby causing heart attacks.

One doctor associated with the study went as far as to say that because "between 10 and 20% of people catch flu every year, I have estimated that we can prevent up to 90,000 coronary deaths a year in the USA if every high risk patient received an annual flu vaccination."

If he's right, which he very well may be, I think the next flu season may be the one where I get back in line for my shot.

Nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain are symptoms of many conditions. During this flu season, don't just disregard your stomach illness as the flu and don't just pass it off as bad food that you ate. A lesson that I learned first hand from my doctor after my flu like symptoms kept coming and going. Conversations with my doctor about personal and family medical history, stress, and ongoing symptoms prompted her to order tests I thought were a little abnormal since I thought I had the flu. These upcoming tests opened my eyes and curiosity to hop on the Internet to do more research. I personally have battled cancer and my whole family has a large history of cancer, heart disease and diabetes. So with this in mind, my doctor has ordered up several tests to determine nothing else is wrong besides the nasty flu bug. With my personal cancer and lupus medical history and my family heart disease and diabetes medical history, the tests make more sense to me now.

The obvious diagnosis of most nausea and vomiting is food poisoning. Nausea or vomiting one to eight hours after a meal may indicate food poisoning. However, certain food born bacteria, such as salmonella, can take longer to produce symptoms. If you are a woman and are pregnant, you experience nausea and vomiting. A viral infection such as the flu can induce vomiting and another well known cause for vomiting is ulcers.

Now a little awareness for the not so obvious reasons for vomiting and nausea. Heart attacks, gastroparesis (most common in diabetics), and certain cancers. Coronary artery disease is the leading cause of death and disability in women after menopause and symptoms of a heart attack at times can be vague and mild in women and include nausea and vomiting. Gastroparesis means paralysis of the muscles of the stomach. Gastroparesis results in delayed emptying of food from the stomach into the small intestine and can cause one to have extreme nausea and vomiting. Certain types of cancers like stomach cancer can cause nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain.

So if you have persistent indigestion, nausea and vomiting off and on, don't just take it for granted that you have food poisoning or the stomach flu. Talk to your doctor about ongoing symptoms that you are experiencing so that they can get to the root of the problem better and give you a more thorough diagnosis.