harvardhealth_news_UNDEFINED
The right diet may help reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia. Eating foods included in the DASH and Mediterranean diets helps maintain brain health by keeping blood flowing efficiently and reducing the damaging effects of inflammation. Some good foods to add to your diet are fatty fish, berries, plant oils, nuts, and coffee.
There is insufficient evidence that a regimen of low-dose aspirin can prevent breast cancer, and it poses risks, including severe bleeding episodes. So, unless more evidence comes to light, experts say it’s too early to recommend the use of low-dose aspirin for this purpose. Until a few years ago it seemed that low-dose aspirin therapy held potential for breast cancer prevention, but three major studies that came out in 2018 changed that picture. Studies have also suggested against the use of aspirin therapy for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease because of bleeding risks.
Strengthening your core using plank exercises can help ease back pain. The plank position is essentially the high part of a push-up. People who can’t hold this position can try a modified version by bending their knees and resting them on the ground. Build strength by practicing holding a plank for as long as you can, and then progressively working to hold it for longer each time.
A recent study found that on average women were sedentary 20 minutes more each day after they retired than they were before—an unhealthy pattern that can lead to a higher risk for cardiovascular disease.
People who sleep too much or too little at night may be at higher risk for cognitive decline.
Eating a pro-inflammatory diet may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Exercise can help lower a person’s resting heart rate, which ranges between 60 and 100 beats per minute for most adults. But using an estimated target heart rate to gauge exercise intensity is not necessarily reliable. Instead of trying to reach an arbitrary number, people should exercise based on their perceived effort. Another metric to consider checking is heart rate recovery, which assesses how quickly the heart rate drops or recovers after intense exercise.
A myocardial bridge refers to a coronary artery that dives into the heart’s muscle and comes back out again. The condition is usually harmless but can cause angina when the heart’s contractions squeeze the segment of the vessel.
The trillions of bacteria in a person’s intestines, called the gut microbiota, may mediate some of the risk factors that affect cardiovascular health. Some bacteria break down cholesterol. Others create compounds that regulate blood pressure, affect hormones involved in diabetes, and dampen inflammation. But the feasibility of changing a person’s microbiome remains unclear, which means any potential microbiome-based therapies for heart disease are still years away.
Contrary to widespread belief, aggressive blood pressure treatment does not seem to increase the likelihood of orthostatic hypotension. Defined as large drop in blood pressure when standing up, orthostatic hypotension can lead to dizziness and lightheadedness as well as fainting and falls. People with well-controlled blood pressure may actually be less likely to have orthostatic hypotension because a lower blood pressure keeps the entire cardiovascular system functioning well.