Signs of heart disease are more likely to be blamed on stress when the patient is a woman, new research shows. When a case study involving heart symptoms like chest pain, shortness of breath, irregular heart beat, there was no difference in a doctors diagnosis for a man or a woman. When stress was included as a symptom, gender differences emerged. The presence of stress changed the way doctors interpreted a women’s symptoms, leading them to suggest psychological factors rather than a physical cause. The presence of stress did not change the way doctors assessed men.

When stress is listed as a symptom, 15 percent of doctors diagnosed heart disease in women, compared to 56 percent for men. Only 30 percent of doctors referred women to a cardiologist, compared to 62 percent for men. Medication was suggested 13 percent for women and 47 percent for men.

These findings where presented at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics scientific symposium. These finding can explain why there is a delay in assessing heart disease in women. With the body of knowledge available, why is this happening?

Health Tip: Control Overeating

Suggestions to limit how much you eat

(HealthDay News) — Although most people realize when they’ve had enough and should stop eating, it’s still often difficult to maintain portion control.

The Cleveland Clinic offers these suggestions to help prevent overeating:

• Use a smaller dish, so that it looks like your plate is more full.
• Serve up an appropriate portion, and don’t tempt yourself with seconds.
• Put away leftovers quickly after dinner, and store them in portion-controlled containers. Freeze whatever you don’t want right away.
• Never eat right out of the bag, box or takeout container.
• Put bowls or platters of food away or out of sight during dinner.

30 Ways to Live to be 100

(TheDallasMorningNews) So you want to live to be 100? Join the party. And quite a party it’s getting to be.

An estimated 73,674 Americans were 100 or older in 2004, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s the most recent year the agency has estimated the number of centenarians.

And that’s a whole lot more than there used to be and whole lot fewer than there are likely to be. There were about 3,000 centenarians in the U.S. in 1950, and 37,306 in 1990, according to the Census Bureau. It estimates that in 2050 there will be 1.1 million.

Live right, and you might be one. Although many people think longevity is all about the genes, it’s really one-quarter about the genes and three-quarters about lifestyle, says Steven Austad, one of the country’s foremost experts on aging and author of the book Why We Age (Wiley, $16.95).

He believes the person is alive today who will be the first human to live to 150. The record so far is Jeanne Calment of France, a wealthy woman who never had to work. She died in 1997 at 122 years, 5 months and 14 days.

Her advice? “Always keep your smile.”

Read on for tips on how to live to 100, including some from those already at the party.

1) Be positive. Cheerful, optimistic people decrease their risk of early death and poor health by 50 percent over sourpusses, according to researchers at the Mayo Clinic.

2) Learn to manage your stress. Stress can damage your health, from your heart to your digestive system. Figure out the best way to manage it, be it exercise, yoga, meditation or eliminating the causes of stress.

3) Learn to say no. If you don’t want to do it, if it’s going to stress you out, then just say no. You can’t do everything, and you can’t always make everyone happy. Look out for No. 1 (without being a jerk, of course).

4) Dance, sing. Find something that makes you feel euphoric, and then do it, and keep on doing it. Dancing is great exercise, too.

5) Find passion for the little things in life. Love for the theater or gardening or art or reading keeps the mind active and can give you joy and a sense of purpose in life.

6) Be smart about what and how much you eat. We’ll keep saying it until you die. Eat more fruits and vegetables and less red meat and fries. And when you’re full, stop eating.

7) Exercise. If you can’t manage 30 minutes a day of aerobic exercise, then do what you can. Just start, then work to make it regular.

Exercise your brain. It needs exercise just as your body does. Solve puzzles, take classes, play chess or bridge, learn to play an instrument. Retain your curiosity. Never stop learning.

9) Stay active. Get out of that chair and off the couch. Go for a walk, go to the mall. Work in the garden, mow your lawn.

10) Stay connected. Maintain a network of friends. Be friendly with your neighbors. Isolation leads to depression.

11) Read a newspaper. This may seem self-serving, coming from us, but there’s no better, easier way of finding out what’s going on, of staying interested and involved, than the newspaper.

12) Quit smoking. Just stop. Please.

13) Drink in moderation. Studies have shown that a glass of red wine or ale every day reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease.

14) Get, or stay thin. Researchers ave extended the lives of laboratory animals by drastically reducing calorie intact. They say that thinner is better if you want to live to 100.

15) Limit exposure to the sun. The sun will not only wrinkle your skin, but it also can cause skin cancer, and that can kill you.

16) Find a good doctor and get regular checkups. Preventive medicine is your best bet for catching potential fatal diseases in their early, and treatable, stages.

17) Keep track of your medications and take them. If you’re having trouble keeping them straight, then let someone help you.

18) Control blood pressure early because as you age, your vascular health can worsen. Controlling hypertension helps slow the aging of your blood vessels.

19) Don’t be complacent about high-normal blood pressure because that’s increasingly seen as pre-hypertension. Your risk of developing hypertension increases with a blood pressure higher than 115 over 75. Anything you can do to reduce your risk of hypertension can add years to your life.

20) Keep the medications simple. The more medications you add, the more it costs, the more side effects may increase and the more complex it will be to keep track of them. There are more than 100 medications to treat hypertension, but the average number of medications needed for any one patient is 3.5.

21) Don’t let mental illness go untreated. Depression and other psychological conditions can contribute to poor quality of life, and may compromise the body’s ability to recover from injury and illness.

22) Establish healthy habits early in life. Exercise and eat a balanced diet when you’re young. Overweight children most often become overweight adults and that carries with it a host of risk factors for heart disease, diabetes and other serious medical conditions.

23) Get your blood pressure and cholesterol checked regularly. They’re treatable risk factors for cardiovascular disease, which causes heart attacks, strokes and other deadly conditions. The tests are quick and easy, and medical treatments are effective.

24) Don’t ride motorcycles. This actually doesn’t affect heart health, but he’s noticed over the years that motorcycles send a lot of patients to the emergency room.

25) Take to the water. The best exercise for the elderly is water aerobics because it is an exercise that does not put a burden on weight-bearing joints such as the knees.

26) Dump the dead wood. Hang out with cheerful people; grouches bring you down.

27) Cultivate a support system. Whether it’s that gentle nagging by your partner to get your annual physical or it’s a concerned friend reminding you to take your blood-pressure medicine, the benefits of a support system are numerous.

28) Get a pet. Pets keep you smiling and can keep you active. They’re good company, too. But don’t forgo the human contact.

29) Learn how to use a computer. Web sites such as AARP’s ( www.aarp.org) are loaded with information about health, fitness, money and food. Just don’t sit too long in front of the computer.

30) Remember: It’s never too late. No matter how old you are, you can benefit from a healthier lifestyle.

According to researchers from The Miriam Hospital and brown University, people who manage to lose pounds and keep it off have a lot in common with each other. At a meeting of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, researchers distinguished between” long term weight lose maintainers” and the” treatment seeking obese.” Those who shed the pounds have five common traits:

•  Self-monitoring
• High-intensity physical activity
• Lowered fat intake
• Little time spent watching television
• Few meals eaten in  restaurants

A heart expert at John’s Hopkins is calling all women measuring more than 35 inches to get a annual check up and a comprehensive exam for cardiovascular disease. Excess abdominal fat, leads to a third of American women to underestimate their lifetime risk factor of having a heart attack, stroke, or angina. Erin Michos M.D. recommendation is based on a national screening of over 8,000 women from 35 to 63 years of age. The screening discovered a high number of over weight women had an underestimation of heart disease risk using traditional tools. When waistlines of 35 inches or more where factored in to the heart risk assessment, 55 percent of the women where found to be at risk for developing heart disease.

The results of this study emphasize the growing epidemic of obesity in America. Even if women are not experiencing heart problems they can soon be in trouble. Obesity leads to the development of risk factors such as cardiovascular problems, blood sugar imbalances, and a increase in blood lipids.

Researchers at John’s Hopkins School of medicine state it is time for doctors and patients to pull out their tape measure and start shedding some pounds.

The American Heart Association released the results of the first study to show the adverse effects of secondhand smoke on peripheral artery disease in women. Women exposed to second hand smoke at home or in the work place had a 67 percent increased risk of PAD compared to women who where not exposed. The researchers examined 1,209 Chinese women 60 years of age or older who never smoked. Secondary smoke exposure increased coronary heart disease by 69 percent and ischemic stroke by 56 percent.

The study defined secondhand smoke exposure as exposure to smoke for at least 15 minutes daily more than one day a week for at least two years in the last ten years.Amoung the women in the study there where 271 cases of PAD, 431 cases of coronary heart disease, and 172 cases of stroke, 109 were ischemic stroke.

These findings were published in the journal Circulation.

Diet and exercise as breast cancer prevention strategies

Among the easiest things to control are what you eat and drink and how active you are. Here are some strategies that may help you decrease your risk of breast cancer:

• Limit alcohol. A strong link exists between alcohol consumption and breast cancer. The type of alcohol consumed — wine, beer or mixed drinks — seems to make no difference. To help protect against breast cancer, limit alcohol to less than one drink a day or avoid alcohol completely.
• Maintain a healthy weight. There’s a clear link between obesity — weighing more than is appropriate for your age and height — and breast cancer. This is especially true if you gain the weight later in life, particularly after menopause. Excess fatty tissue is a source of circulating estrogen in your body. And breast cancer risk is linked to how much estrogen you’re exposed to during your lifetime.
• Stay physically active. Regular exercise can help you maintain a healthy weight and, as a consequence, may aid in lowering your risk of breast cancer. Aim for at least 30 minutes of exercise on most days of the week. If you haven’t been particularly active in the past, start your exercise program slowly and gradually work up to a greater intensity. Try to include weight-bearing exercises such as walking, jogging or aerobics. These have the added benefit of keeping your bones strong.
• Consider limiting fat in your diet. Results from the most definitive study of dietary fat and breast cancer risk to date suggest a slight decrease in risk of invasive breast cancer for women who eat a low-fat diet. But the effect is modest at best. However, by reducing the amount of fat in your diet, you may decrease your risk of other diseases, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and stroke. And a low-fat diet may protect against breast cancer in another way if it helps you maintain a healthy weight — another factor in breast cancer risk. For a protective benefit, limit fat intake to less than 35 percent of your daily calories and restrict foods high in saturated fat.

A Spud for Better Blood Sugar?

Not all potatoes are created equal — especially when it comes to controlling blood sugar. So what’s the superior choice for people hoping to sweep aside diabetes?

It’s the nutritious sweet potato, according to John La Puma, MD, author of ChefMD’s Big Book of Culinary Medicine. This spud may actually help stabilize blood sugar and lower insulin resistance.

Sweet and Steady
Unsteady blood sugar is a big-time risk factor for diabetes. And, because of their high glycemic index, white potatoes — be they russet or Idaho — can send blood sugar levels soaring and then crashing. Sweet potatoes, on the other hand? They have a lower glycemic index than white potatoes. And the carotenoids in sweet potatoes may help your body use insulin better — although further study is needed to confirm this. (Find out if white potatoes can have a place in a healthful diet.)

Balancing Act
Your choice of potato is only one small factor in the big picture of blood sugar control. Try these additional strategies for keeping it in check:

• Get moving — a little every day. Here’s how exercise benefits blood glucose.
• Eat your carbs with a bit of vinegar. Here’s how sour stuff steadies blood sugar.
• Load up on fiber. Both your waistline and your blood sugar will thank you.

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Vegetarian 101

When it comes to vegetarianism, the number one question on most meat-eaters’ minds is, “What do you eat?” The answer: Anything we want! There are vegetarian alternatives to almost any animal food, from soy sausages and “Fib Ribs” to Tofurky jerky and mock lobster. Vegetarian-friendly menus are sprouting up everywhere—even Burger King offers veggie burgers—and more and more eateries are focusing exclusively on vegetarian and vegan foods. There are fantastic alternatives to every dairy product you can imagine, including Soy Delicious ice cream, Silk chocolate soy milk, Tofutti cream cheese, and more.

Going vegetarian has never been easier, and we’re here to help! From our fantastic recipes and list of favorite products and favorite vegetarian cookbooks to our free vegetarian starter kit and online shopping guide, PETA has all the information you need to adopt a healthy and humane vegetarian diet!

Every year in the U.S., more than 27 billion animals are slaughtered for food. Raising animals on factory farms is cruel and ecologically devastating. Eating animals is bad for our health, leading directly to many diseases and illnesses, including heart attacks, strokes, cancer, diabetes, and obesity. In response to animal welfare, health, and ecological concerns, compassionate people everywhere are adopting a vegetarian diet.

For Animals

Animals on factory farms are treated like meat, milk, and egg machines. Chickens have their sensitive beaks seared off with a hot blade, and male cattle and pigs are castrated without any painkillers. All farmed chickens, turkeys, and pigs spend their brief lives in dark and crowded warehouses, many of them so cramped that they can’t even turn around or spread a single wing. They are mired in their own waste, and the stench of ammonia fills the air. Animals raised for food are bred and drugged to grow as large as possible as quickly as possible—many are so heavy that they become crippled under their own weight and die within inches of their water supply.

Animals on factory farms do not see the sun or get a breath of fresh air until they are prodded and crammed onto trucks for a nightmarish ride to the slaughterhouse, often through weather extremes and always without food or water. Many die during transport, and others are too sick or weak to walk off the truck after they reach the slaughterhouse. The animals who survive this hellish ordeal are hung upside-down and their throats are slit, often while they’re completely conscious. Many are still alive while they are skinned, hacked into pieces, or scalded in the defeathering tanks. Learn more about the factory-farming industry. By switching to a vegetarian diet, you can save more than 100 animals a year from this misery.

One suggestion: If you plan to make the transition to a vegetarian diet gradually, the most important foods to cut out of your diet first are bird flesh and eggs. While many people think that “red meat” and dairy products should be the first to go, this isn’t the case. By cutting bird flesh from your diet, you’ll save many more animals. Because chickens are so small, the average meat-eater is responsible for the deaths of many more chickens than cows. Plus, chickens and turkeys exploited by the meat and egg industries are the most abused animals commonly used for food.

For Your Health

Some of the leading killers in America today, including heart disease, cancer, obesity, and strokes, are directly linked to meat-based diets. Heart disease is the number one cause of death in America today, and it is caused by the build-up of cholesterol and saturated fat from animal products in our arteries. The only two doctors in human history who have successfully reversed heart disease have included an exclusively vegetarian diet as a part of their programs. The average vegan cholesterol level is 133 (compared to 210 for meat-eaters); there are no documented cases of heart attacks in individuals with cholesterol under 150. Other health problems tied to clogged arteries, like poor circulation and atherosclerotic strokes, can be virtually eliminated with a vegan diet.

“Chew on This: 30 Reasons to Go Vegetarian”

Vegans are approximately one-ninth as likely to be obese as meat-eaters and have a cancer rate that is only 40 percent that of meat-eaters. People who consume animal products are also at increased risk for many other illnesses, including strokes, obesity, osteoporosis, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, multiple allergies, diabetes, and food poisoning. Learn more about the health benefits of a vegetarian diet.

For the Environment

America’s meat addiction is poisoning and depleting our potable water, arable land, and clean air. More than half of the water used in the United States today goes to animal agriculture, and since farmed animals produce 130 times more excrement than the human population, the run-off from their waste is fouling our waterways. Animal excrement emits gases, such as hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, that poison the air around farms, as well as methane and nitrous oxide, which are major contributors to global warming. Forests are being bulldozed to make more room for factory farms and feed crops to feed farmed animals, and this destruction causes soil erosion and contributes to species extinction and habitat loss. Raising animals for food also requires massive amounts of food and raw materials: Farmed animals consume 70 percent of the corn, wheat, and other grains that we grow, and one-third of all the raw materials and fossil fuels used in the U.S. go to raising animals for food. In short, our country’s meat addiction is wrecking the earth. Read more about factory farming and the environment.

Request a vegetarian starter kit to get started today!