heart disease

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Particle-based ambient air pollution causes more than 4 million premature deaths each year globally, according to the World Health Organization. The tiniest particles—2.5 microns or smaller, known as PM2.5—pose the greatest health risk because they can travel deep into the lungs and may even get into the bloodstream.Although total PM2.5 levels have decreased 42 percent in the U.S. since 2000 as a result of clean air regulations, scientists are concerned about the health impacts of even low levels of such pollution. The…

January 10, 20243min readA model heart made from living tissue fused with robotic muscles could help researchers see how the organ works on the insideBy Payal Dhar From artificial heart valves to cellular transplants, new treatments for cardiovascular ailments are being developed every day. To model how they work, researchers need a reliable way to observe the heart in action. Animal studies, computer models and various laboratory simulators made with dead heart tissue can all provide different views, but these…

A common refrain in the doctor’s office is to eat less salt to improve your blood pressure. But that advice might be doing more for our cardiovascular health than previously thought. Cutting about one teaspoon of daily table salt from your diet could reduce your blood pressure by about the same amount as taking a prescription antihypertension medication, according to a recent study.The idea that cutting dietary salt (aka sodium chloride) also slashes blood pressure is pretty well-established science. “There have been…

Every year more than 300,000 people in the U.S. die from an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, making it a leading cause of death. Improved access to cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and defibrillators—devices that use an electric shock to restore a person’s heartbeat—have helped increase survival rates somewhat, but about 90 percent of cases are still fatal. Recent studies have found that combining traditional CPR with a process called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), which helps deliver oxygen to the brain…

This story is part of CBC Health's Second Opinion, a weekly analysis of health and medical science news emailed to subscribers on Saturday mornings. If you haven't subscribed yet, you can do that by clicking here.Shift workers sleeping at erratic hours. Students pulling all-nighters. Menopausal women tossing and turning in bed from hot flashes.There are a host of reasons why people have periods of poor sleep. And anyone who's endured back-to-back nights of sub-par slumber likely knows the result: Feelings of brain fog,…

The drug semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, is already known to treat diabetes, aid rapid weight loss, and possibly even curb drug and alcohol addictions. Now a new trial by the drug’s manufacturer, Novo Nordisk, has shown that it can collectively lower the risk of heart attack, stroke and death from cardiovascular disease by 20 percent.Semaglutide is one of a class of drugs known as GLP-1 receptor agonists, which regulate appetite hormones by lowering blood sugar and slowing the stomach’s rate of…

The term BMI is all over health care. The abbreviation stands for body mass index, a simple number that has evolved into a ubiquitous medical tool for obesity screening. For example, a BMI from 18.5 to 24.9 indicates a “normal” weight status, according to the World Health Organization, while a BMI of 30 or higher signifies obesity, a condition that raises your likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, various cancers and other illnesses. The metric has become a catchall proxy for body fat…

Skies have been stained a sickly brown in the U.S. Northeast this week. Smoke from numerous wildfires in Canada has circulated hundreds of miles down the East Coast, as far south as South Carolina. The dense plumes triggered unhealthy air quality alerts in 18 states as of 6 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time on Wednesday. “Fires see no boundaries. There’s actually no safe distance from wildfire smoke,” says Kari Nadeau, chair of the department of environmental health at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and a member…

Eighty-two million years—that’s how much lifetime the U.S.’s Black population lost because of premature deaths between 1999 and 2020, a new study shows. The numbers are an alarming reminder of concerning gaps in health care—and they are not entirely surprising, according to experts on racial health disparity. The study’s authors say their findings should be a “call to action” for policymakers. “There’s no biological, intrinsic reason why people with darker skin should have shorter life spans,” says Harlan Krumholz, a…