Health Information Center

Nobody enjoys going to get a flu shot, but we do expect that if we want one, getting in line for it should simply be a matter of showing up for the event. But what if that was not the case? What if you discovered that you were actually turned away from an inoculation center because you did not fit a predefined “profile” for who is eligible to receive a shot?

Ironically, in a year in which a pandemic strain is circling the globe, this is a very real possibility. Right now we know for certain that swine flu vaccines will be in short supply until sometime in 2010. That means not everyone can be vaccinated against the new pandemic virus. Continue reading ‘Will You Be Denied The Swine Flu Shot?’ »

Under the age of 50, your cholesterol level does not really make much difference to your risk of dying. However, if your cholesterol level starts falling, watch out. You are at a terrible risk – a 429 per cent increased risk of death per 1 mmol/l cholesterol drop, according to the Framingham Study.

After the age of 50, a low cholesterol degree is associated with a significantly greater overall mortality. The older you get, the more dangerous it is to have a low cholesterol level Does this mean that a low cholesterol level is, itself, deadly? No, I don’t think so. I do not believe that a low or a high cholesterol/ LDL level actually causes anything except, perhaps, hemorrhagic stroke, if the level is very low. I think it is mainly a disease ‘marker’ of a kind. Although, in general, it seems much more dangerous to have a low level than a high level low cholesterol levels are associated with increased mortality. Continue reading ‘Curious Facts on Cholesterol’ »

Does eating a high-fat diet, or a high saturated-fat diet, cause heart disease? I shall start by presenting all of the evidence in support of the dietheart hypothesis. This time I am actually not joking. Aside from Ancel Keys’s study – a study subject to accusations of selection bias – there is no evidence in support of the diet-heart hypothesis. I believe that the strongest backing for this somewhat bold statement comes from two different sources.

Firstly, the Surgeon General’s office in the USA. Secondly, from Professors Law and Wald, the high priests of heart-disease orthodoxy. Both of these sources were, and remain, utterly convinced of the diet-heart hypothesis. In 1988, the Surgeon General’s office decided to gather together all the evidence linking saturated fat to heart disease, and thus silence any remaining naysayers forever. Continue reading ‘Diet and Heart Disease’ »

The French, you see, eat more saturated fat than people do in the UK. They smoke more, take less exercise, have the same cholesterol/LDL levels, the same HDL levels. They also have the same average blood pressure and the same rate of obesity. And you know what? They have one quarter the rate of heart disease that we do. One-quarter!

In fact, the French consume more saturated fat than any other nation in Europe, and they have the lowest rate of heart disease. The only other nation that comes close to their super-low rate of heart disease is Switzerland, and the Swiss have the second highest consumption of saturated fat in Europe.I believe that I know what some of you are thinking right now. They, the French, are protected from heart disease by drinking red wine, eating freshly cooked vegetables (all those antioxidants, you see) and eating garlic. Continue reading ‘French Case’ »

When most people think about the prospect of a severe pandemic visiting their neck of the woods, it is the fear of becoming infected that scares them. In the case of a flu strain that kills as efficiently as the one that circled the world in 1918, the prospect is hardly a comforting one. In the case of blue collar workers it is believed that in some U.S. communities the mortality rate for those infected was as high as 10 percent. In more epidemiologically isolated communities, like the Inuit Eskimo tribes of Alaska, the mortality rate reached 90 percent and virtually wiped those communities off the map.

Less widely appreciated is that a pandemic need not even reach your door in order to be able to kill you or a family member. During a severe pandemic you could literally starve to death while never having come in close contact with the virus. This is just one of the conclusions I reached after reading which will have you rethinking just how much you really understand about your own place in the world. Because it turns out that we are a lot more delicately positioned than we like to believe. Continue reading ‘You Can Avoid Infection And A Pandemic Can Still Kill You’ »

How is it that as technology advances and new inventions are created to make life easier, more people in the developed world are dying of cancer, heart disease and stroke every year?

The key lies in a lack of Awareness and Action. More people need to know about the links between the lifestyles they lead and how these affect their bodies. But knowledge is nothing if it is not applied. There needs to be the additional effort of acting on the knowledge to make the tough but necessary lifestyle changes that will halt disease and put our overtaxed bodies back on the path to health and wellness.

Creating Awareness

Let’s talk about cholesterol. It is one of the fats in the blood and can lead to serious health problems such as heart disease and stroke. Yet how many people actually know this? We may vaguely “know of” good and bad cholesterol from what we read or hear about in the news, but not many of us will make the connection between what we are eating now on a daily basis and the disease that erupts years down the road. Even fewer will do something about this connection. Continue reading ‘How To Die Of Old Age, Not Disease’ »

A total lack of any supportive evidence does not necessarily prove that fat/saturated fat in the diet does not cause heart disease. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, let me now mention a few of the most powerful pieces of evidence that directly contradict the diet-heart hypothesis. But where to begin? There is just so much to choose from.

I think the best place to start is with the biggest trial on dietary modification ever done, and the biggest that will ever be done. Fifty million people were placed on a low saturated-fat diet for fourteen years. Sausages, eggs, cheese, bacon and milk were severely restricted. Fruit and fish, however, were freely available, those oh-so healthy foods. Continue reading ‘The French and Cholesterol Levels’ »

Those with aching leg pain should be very careful because it can signal a more serious health problem. When there is pain or tired legs it is a sign of often more serious health problems. The condition of the legs is a direct indication of the health of the heart. Often leg problems may be the only sign of a more serious problem. Aching leg pain has mean a coming heart failure in millions of people

It is critical to reverse leg heaviness and tired legs; this is because they are linked to the circulation of the heart. An EKG will often not reveal the true problems of circulation. The best warning sign is the legs themselves they are better that any heart test. Studies show that leg pain was the number one sign of arteries blockage in the heart and 25% of those with heavy legs had a heart attack within 5 years. This should scare you if you have leg pain. Continue reading ‘Aching leg pain: Why this is a silent killer’ »

Congestive heart disease affects about five million Americans, and several medical professionals believe that within five years time about half of those people will unfortunately die from their state. Congestive heart disease is marked by the heart’s inability to pump efficiently enough to supply the body with freshly oxygenated blood. It is the leading cause of hospitalization among senior citizens and accounted for nearly 20% of the hospitalization of this age group in 2003.
Since congestive heart disease is a state that warrants consideration, a brief conversation of several of the risk factors might be in order. While several of these factors cannot be helped, there are many things a person can adjust about their lives to decrease the risk.
Risk Factors That Cannot be Helped
Continue reading ‘A Conversation of the Risk Factors for Congestive Heart Disease’ »

It has been recognized for many years that women, generally, suffer much less heart disease than men – especially younger women. The difference is normally about 300 per cent. This is despite the fact that women have higher average cholesterol levels. The widest gap I found was in New Zealand in the 1970s.

Here, women aged 45-55 had onetenth the mortality rate of men. Now that is what I call a gap. Women, therefore, present a problem for the cholesterol hypothesis. Higher cholesterol levels than men, but much lower rates of heart disease. Many findings for women were discrepant from those for men. Of particular importance in women was considered to be the essentially flat relation of total cholesterol to total mortality, total cardiovascular, and total cancer mortality. Continue reading ‘Do women suffer much less heart disease than men?’ »