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Doctors can use the 'Viagra visit' to screen men for heart: "By Tara Parker-Pope, The Wall Street Journal

If you're thinking about trying Viagra or another erectile-dysfunction drug to boost your sex life, chances are you should be talking to your doctor about your heart health as well.
There's a growing push in the medical community to use the 'Viagra visit' -- the time when a man asks his doctor for an erectile-dysfunction drug -- as a way to better screen men for heart disease. That's because studies increasingly show that an unhealthy vascular system is one of the main reasons men develop problems achieving and maintaining erections. And many doctors now believe that just as they check a man's cholesterol and blood pressure during the annual physical, they should also be asking detailed questions about a man's erectile function to better gauge his overall cardiovascular health and risk for heart attack.
While erectile dysfunction has long been treated as a lifestyle issue, erection problems appear to be a very early warning sign of looming heart troubles. An Italian study showed that in two-thirds of patients who had known coronary-artery disease as well as erectile dysfunction, the erection problems showed up, on average, three years before other symptoms, such as the chest pain caused by angina.
'It looks like erectile function is one of the first things to go long before someone has a heart attack or stroke,' says Steven A. Grover, professor of medicine at McGill University in Montreal. 'It's one of the first early warnings that something is wrong with the vascular system.'
While this may sound ominous, it also means men with erectile dysfunction are warned soon enough that they still have time to reverse heart disease by exercising, losing weight, and lowering cholesterol and high blood pressure. Doctors say men often are more motivated to make lifestyle changes once ED sets in. And studies show that in addition to lowering heart-attack risk, exercise and weight loss also can improve a man's erectile function.
'It's hard to catch a man's interest when you say 10 years from now you'll have a heart attack,' says Richard Sadovsky, associate professor of family medicine at the State University of New York-Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn. 'But it's a very good teachable moment -- men are a little more willing to listen to lifestyle changes and clinical recommendation when it has to do with erections......'"

10 New Ways To Protect Your Heart:
"Here's something men are good at: dropping dead of heart disease. Every year, cardiovascular problems cause nearly half of U.S. male deaths--a third of them by complete surprise.Don't follow that pack. Every year scientists discover new ways men can protect their hearts--from steps you can take to avoid problems, to drugs and gadgets that can help if you already have heart disease. We asked heart researchers to boil it down to 10 simple rules men can follow.

Get the Latest, Greatest TestThat's the highly sensitive C-reactive protein test, or HSCRP. A study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine found that this blood test is twice as effective as a standard cholesterol test in predicting heart attacks and strokes. It measures the levels of a specific blood protein that indicates that you have inflamed heart arteries--the kind that rupture and cause heart failure. When researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston monitored 30,000 women for 3 years, they found that those with the highest levels of CRP suffered a much higher rate of heart attacks and strokes. And this result is perfectly applicable to men, says Paul Ridker, M.D., the lead study author. 'Since half of all heart-attack victims have normal cholesterol levels, the HSCRP test is a much better way to figure your true risk,' he explains. Ask your doctor to perform the $15 HSCRP test (not the standard CRP test; that's important) along with your regular cholesterol test. 'That gives you plenty of time to make some serious lifestyle changes to reduce the risk,' concludes Dr. Ridker.

Keep up With Your Exercise......"

Psychology Today: Are You What You Eat?:
"...it's tempting to dwell on relationships between a particular food and a corresponding mental benefit or mood boost. But it's an overall healthy eating pattern that yields results, not any one food, warns Larry Lindner, executive editor of Tufts University's Health and Nutrition Newsletter. A diet rich in fruits, vegetables and dairy, for example, can blunt cognitive deficits in most people. But to those who say that eating a piece of bread raises serotonin levels and makes you happy, Lindner responds, "If carbohydrates caused happiness, ours would be the happiest nation in the world."

Each of us processes food in a unique way, too. "Some people have different metabolic rates," says neuroscientist Chandan Prasad, editor-in-chief of the journal Nutritional Neuroscience. "Even rats show individual effects in food studies." He points to the burgeoning field of genomics, where scientists are searching for links between genetic makeup and varieties of response to diet.

With these caveats in mind:"[more]

Stroke caregivers get little help
Family caregivers, who give the bulk of care for U.S. stroke patients at an estimated $6.1 billion a year, get little preparation, information or help.

Lead author Carol Levine, director of the Families and Health Care Project at the United Hospital Fund, interviewed 99 family caregivers of stroke and brain-injury patients in New York City while they received care from a certified home health agency and after these services were stopped. Even during the time when formal care was being given, patients received three-quarters of their care from family members.

"They are doing most of the work but are not really ready to take on all of the care themselves, and certainly do not get enough advice on where to get assistance," said Levine. "We really have to reframe our whole long-term care system to assess the needs of family caregivers as well as the patient."

Family caregivers are often not kept informed by healthcare agencies, which are geared to dealing with the patient only, according to the study published in the Milbank Quarterly.........

Calcium...The best heart test? - :
"As doctors become more adept at predicting heart attacks, they're paying increasing attention to calcium, whose presence can signal trouble long before a patient feels sick. Atherosclerosis, the most common form of heart disease, occurs when plaque accumulates in the walls of the coronary arteries.
Calcium, more than bones and teeth

Plaque can restrict blood flow, leading to chest pain, shortness of breath, and heart attacks. And calcium is a marker for plaque. 'The problem with cholesterol is that it indirectly measures health risks - you're looking at someone's blood to see what their arteries are doing,' says Dr. Shelton Thomas of Virginia Cardiovascular Specialists in Richmond. 'Thirty percent of people who have heart attacks have normal cholesterol. But if you have normal cholesterol and a high calcium score, then we know that you're putting plaque in your arteries. It's the plaque that can kill you.....'"

Genes Raise Risk of Heart Disease After Treatment for Childhood Cancer:
Gene variations may raise the risk that survivors of childhood cancer will suffer congestive heart failure as a complication of drugs they received during cancer treatment.

Richard Aplenc, M.D., a pediatric oncologist at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, reported on a study of childhood cancer survivors in a presentation today at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting in Atlanta. He led the research, drawing on data from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study, a long-term national study sponsored by the National Cancer Institute.