Heart Disease

LOS ANGELES - The gap in life expectancy between black and white Americans is smaller than it has ever been, thanks largely to a decline in the number of deaths resulting from heart disease and HIV infection, a new analysis has found. The bad news is that the gap is still large: A black baby boy born today can expect to live 5.4 fewer years, on average, than his white counterpart, and a black baby girl will die 3.7 years earlier, on average, than her white counterpart. What's more, the narrowing of the gap between 2003 and 2008 is due in part to a troubling development among whites: They are more likely than in the past to die from overdoses of prescription medications like OxyContin and Vicodin, along with other unintentional poisonings.

Ellen Weiss of Warminster grabs it once a week when she goes out to breakfast with friends. For Pam Learned of Chestnut Hill, it comes in a slow walk at a nearby arboretum. And Carissa Snyder of Macungie gets up at 3 a.m. to have it, when everyone else in her house is asleep. They are the rare moments, alone or with friends, when the women who are caring for husbands with ALS have time to themselves. But every now and then, the pangs of guilt intrude even though the wives have given up much of their lives to help bathe, feed, and dress the beloved husbands who were once physically strong and independent.

MILWAUKEE - One of life's simple pleasures just got a little sweeter. After years of waffling research on coffee and health, even some fear that java might raise the risk of heart disease, a large study finds the opposite: Coffee drinkers are a little more likely to live longer. Regular or decaf doesn't matter. The study of 400,000 people is the largest ever on the issue, and the results should reassure any coffee lovers who think it's a guilty pleasure that may do harm. "Our study suggests that's really not the case," said lead researcher Neal Freedman of the National Cancer Institute.

The blood-pressure-lowering drugs known as ACE inhibitors are a mainstay of treatment for many diseases. But with growing use of these heart-helping medications, more and more patients are winding up in emergency rooms with a rare side effect that most have not been warned about: swelling around the face and neck. In the worst cases, the patient's tongue and throat become hugely bloated, closing the airway. No medications can slow or reverse this swelling, called angioedema.

Please floss and brush, by all means. It's still good for your teeth and gums. But don't imagine that you're going to ward off heart disease in the process. That's the message of a new "scientific statement" from an expert committee of the American Heart Association, which analyzed more than 500 papers and articles on the topic. The idea that periodontal disease might impair the cardiovascular system dates back more than a century, according to the statement, published in the journal Circulation, and the hypothesis had a resurgence beginning about 20 years ago. Indeed, people with bad gums are more likely to have strokes, heart attacks, and hardening of the arteries.

Question: My triglyceride level was 419 and my doctor recommended that I take the drug Tricor to lower it. Since I feel fine, do I need to take it? Why is an elevated triglyceride level bad? What raises the triglycerides? Answer: Triglycerides are a part of the total cholesterol in your blood. For years, we weren't quite sure whether or not treating triglycerides made a difference in preventing heart disease. High levels over 400 usually got treated, while numbers between 200 and 400 were treated at the doctor's discretion.

WASHINGTON - Be happy - it seems to be good for your heart. Scientists have long known that Type A personalities and people who are chronically angry, anxious, or depressed have a higher risk of heart attacks. Now a Harvard review of the flip side of that psychology concludes that being upbeat and optimistic just might help protect against heart disease. Rather than focusing only on how to lessen heart risks, "it might also be useful to focus on how we might bolster the positive side of things," said lead researcher Julia Boehm of the Harvard School of Public Health.

WASHINGTON - More people pull the night shift. Teens text past midnight and stumble to class at dawn. Travelers pack red-eye flights. Nodding off behind the wheel isn't the only threat from a lack of shut-eye. There's growing evidence that people who regularly sleep too little and at the wrong time suffer long-lasting consequences that a nap won't cure: An increased risk of diabetes, heart disease and other health problems. "We have a societal conspiracy for sleep deprivation," says Russell Sanna of Harvard Medical School's sleep medicine division.

A noninvasive scan that looks inside cardiac arteries can rapidly and reliably rule out the possibility of a heart attack among many emergency-room patients complaining of chest pain, according to a study led by University of Pennsylvania researchers. The findings provide the strongest evidence to date that "CT angiography" could relieve a diagnostic dilemma - how to efficiently distinguish patients who can safely be sent home from those who should stay in the hospital. About eight million annual ER visits are for chest pain.

Question: For the last six months, I've had two attacks of small bowel obstruction caused by adhesions. I've been told that there's nothing I can do to prevent future attacks. Can you elaborate on this subject? Answer: Unfortunately, there's not much you can do to prevent the recurrence of those painful, pesky, periodic obstructions to one or more loops of bowel that make up the small intestine. Adhesions are areas of tough, fibrous scar tissue that develop in the abdomen as a result of prior surgery like an appendectomy or gall bladder removal.