Do you exercise a lot? Have you been at it for years? Are you the type that rides around the neighborhood to make a 98-mile ride into a century? Do you get squeamish if you can’t exercise for 24 hours? Are you curious about that beautiful machine in your chest? You know, the rhythmic coordinated […]
Category: inflammation
Hey Everyone, I recently returned from the Heart Rhythm Society meeting in San Francisco. I attended the meeting as both a physician-journalist-columnist for theHeart.org and as a practicing electrophysiologist. As it so often is with international meetings, I returned energized and rejuvenated about the practice of medicine. Medical meetings are great this way. It’s quite […]
Earlier this month I promised to put together teaching points from the Rich Peverley story. His was an interesting case of sudden collapse that likely occurred as a result of atrial fibrillation therapy rather than atrial fibrillation itself. This was my original report: Important lessons from the collapse of NHL player Rich Peverley (BTW: It […]
It happened while I was leaving a grocery store in the southeastern United States. The young girl who asked me if I wanted to buy Girl Scout cookies was strikingly perfect. She was thin, happy, and well spoken. So were her colleagues. The moms, too, were of healthy weight and cheer. It was as if […]
Here are 13 things I tell AF patients. I am sorry that you have AF. Welcome to the club, there are many members. (Three million Americans and counting.) I know how it feels. Your fatigue, shortness of breath and uneasiness in the chest are most likely related to your AF. AF may pass without treatment. […]
Atrial fibrillation is a mysterious disease. We know a lot but surely not enough. We look at AF but are we really seeing it? I believe there are hard truths to this disease. Hard in a way that neither patients nor doctors like. More on that later. First to some news on a major AF […]
Now that the ‘healthiness’ of products sold at CVS stores is a matter of public discourse, it seems a perfect time to mention the common pain relievers known as Non-Steroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs). It just so happens that two FDA advisory committees are meeting today and tomorrow to discuss the cardiovascular risks of NSAIDs. The […]
Dr. Larry Creswell, of the Athlete’s heart blog, just posted an interesting debate from the Journal of Physiology. The question of whether longterm endurance exercise leads to heart damage is a hotly contested issue in cardiology. For those who are curious about this intriguing topic, his links lead to very readable prose. Larry suggests paying […]
A recent study on healthy lifestyle changes got me thinking about why heart disease remains the most deadly human disease. A small study of just a few motivated men with low-risk prostate cancer garnered attention because it contained two important key words: Ornish and Telomeres. Everyone knows Dr. Dean Ornish. And most of us know […]
Okay, I’m getting the hang of this. The Monday morning and evening commute in Amsterdam is something special. You talk about focus. It requires laser-like focus. You’ve got bikes, narrow lanes, buses, trams, pedestrians and tourists. Still though, traveling 6k by bike took 15 minutes; a cab from the convention center, more than 30. I […]
There were many good questions raised on my last post. Thanks. One particularly relevant theme concerned the relationship of atrial fibrillation (AF) and coronary artery disease (CAD). There’s a great deal of misunderstanding out there on how these two common disease relate to each other. I thought a few paragraphs might be useful. On the […]