Heart Disease

Whitney Houston officially died of accidental drowning, according to the Los Angeles Coroner's office, that was aggravated by heart disease and cocaine use. Houston had a pre-existing heart condition called atherosclerotic heart disease and the coroner's office found cocaine in the pop diva's system but refused to comment on the level. But the levels indicated that she was a chronic user of the drug. Houston was found underwater and unconscious in the bathtub of her room at the Beverly Hills Hilton on Feb. 11. Pictures obtained by TMZ also showed champagne, beer and prescription drugs in her hotel room but coroner's officials said they were not in excessive quantities.

LOS ANGELES - Whitney Houston was a chronic cocaine user who had the drug in her system when she drowned in a hotel bathtub, coroner's officials said Thursday after releasing autopsy findings that also noted that heart disease contributed to her death. The disclosure ended weeks of speculation about what killed the Grammy-winning singer Feb. 11, on the eve of the Grammy Awards. Houston was found submerged in the bathtub of her room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, and her death was ruled accidental.

Chronic constipation, heart disease and death Q: I had always believed that Elvis Presley died at 42 from a heart attack. However, I've recently read that his longtime physician George Nichopoulos believes Elvis died from chronic constipation. How does someone die from that? A: According to the autopsy report, hypertensive cardiovascular disease and a "colon problem" were the likely contributing factors to his premature death from a heart attack. It has been reported by his now-retired personal physician that Elvis suffered for years from chronic constipation and that his colon was markedly distended at autopsy.

IN THE END, Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua's death can't invoke nefarious comparisons to that not-quite-a-classic movie "The Godfather Part III. " Nor the real-life death of Pope John Paul I, who died 33 days into his papacy in 1978. In the 1990 flick, a newly elected pope is the victim of foul play - something Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman has wanted to rule out in the Bevilacqua case since the 88-year-old cardinal died Jan. 31 in Wynnewood. The late cardinal died of natural causes - heart disease, with prostate cancer as a contributing factor, coroner Walter I. Hofman announced at a news conference yesterday.

By Karen Stabiner Paula Deen came out last week. The cookbook author and television personality, known for her enthusiasm for high-fat and fried foods, has been a closet diabetic for three years. And for the moment, she's the chef we love to hate, having seduced us with unhealthful recipes on the one hand while she checked her blood sugar with the other. But she's also a distraction, and the media storm surrounding the news of her illness is exactly the sort of publicity bonanza the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk must have dreamed of when it hired Deen to be the spokeswoman for its new marketing campaign.

Albert Einstein is reputed to have said that "everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. " The current debate about the global epidemic of non-communicable diseases - chronic conditions such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer - has ignored this advice. Policymakers have oversimplified the challenge by focusing on the growing prevalence of non-communicable diseases - the sheer number of people with these diseases - which is not really the problem. True, almost all regions of the world are experiencing an increase in the prevalence of these diseases, partly because as deaths from acute infectious diseases and injuries decline, people live long enough to develop them.

Conn. fire shows dangers of ashes HARTFORD, Conn. - Fire-safety officials warned homeowners about the dangers of fireplace ashes after a blaze Christmas morning killed five people in Connecticut. Authorities say the fire in Stamford was caused by a bag of fireplace ashes left near the back of the home. Three sisters - twins, 7, and a 10-year-old - and their grandparents died. The Connecticut medical examiner's office said the victims died of smoke inhalation. Their mother, Madonna Badger, and friend Michael Borcina escaped the blaze after failed attempts to rescue the girls.

FORMER NBA GUARD Cuttino Mobley filed a lawsuit against Madison Square Garden yesterday, accusing the New York Knicks of pressuring him to retire as a way to save approximately $19 million. Mobley, a Philadelphia native and graduate of Cardinal Dougherty, retired because of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a heart disease, shortly after the Knicks acquired him from the Los Angeles Clippers on Nov. 21, 2008. It is the same disease that felled another Philadelphia star, Hank Gathers, in 1990.

Vitamin D deficiency has been linked in recent years to dozens of conditions, from heart disease to psoriasis, and supplement sales have increased so fast you'd think they were magic pills. But too much of anything can be problematic, a point made Wednesday by researchers who have also found big benefits from the "sunshine vitamin. " For their study, which was presented at the American Heart Association conference in Orlando, Fla., researchers at the Intermountain Medical Center in Utah examined the records of more than 132,000 cardiology patients.

More children should be screened for high cholesterol before puberty, beyond those with a family history of problems, according to wide-ranging new guidelines expected from government-appointed experts who seek to prevent heart disease later in life. The new advice will be presented Sunday at an American Heart Association conference by some members of a panel for the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. Any call for wider screening is likely to raise concern about overdiagnosing a condition that might not cause problems for decades, if ever.