Dr. Chet’s Health Memos
If it’s in the health news today, I’ll be writing about it as soon as I read the research, both old and new. With my email Health Memos, you’ll know more about making lifestyle choices that will help you get and keep good health. These free, concise updates on health are emailed to subscribers twice a week. Subscribe today and get a free MP3, in English or Spanish, of Dr. Chet’s Top Ten Tips—Small Changes for a Healthier Life.
Who Are You Cheating?
Let’s begin with how I found the excerpt I let you ponder for two days. While I listened to a podcast with Seth Godin, he recommended The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. I hope you’ve already bought it. If you have any angst about why you’re not doing what you want with your life, you have to read it.
The excerpt I included on Tuesday called me out. I’ve upped the volume of work I’m doing. The way I . . .
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Do It or Don’t Do It
Something a little different this week. Ponder this excerpt from The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.
“Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action.
“Do it or don’t do it.
“It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or . . .
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Your Heart and Tone
If you live to 80, your heart will beat an average of three billion times. That’s right: billion with a b. Faster when you exercise, slower when you’re at rest, it does its job 24 hours a day, seven days a week. What’s even more amazing is how your heart rate is controlled by the nervous system. I’ve always found it fascinating and here’s why.
The pacemaker of the heart we talked about on Thursday gets signals from nerves that tell it . . .
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Your Heart and Autorhythmicity
Your heart can beat over 200 times per minute during maximal exercise—give or take, depending on your age. Yet every beat is a succinct event made up of many steps with every one of those beats controlled by the electrical system of your heart. While that’s incredible in and of itself, the real story is one of the most amazing features of your heart called autorhythmicity.
Your heart has a special area in one chamber that stimulates it to beat; it’s called the sino-atrial node or the pacemaker. Think of that as . . .
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Your Heart and Syncytium
We’re finishing American Heart Month with some things you probably didn’t know about your heart. Your heart is unique in many ways and this week, you’re going to learn a few of them.
The heart muscle is similar to skeletal muscle in the way it contracts, but that’s where the similarity ends. While skeletal muscles are laid out in parallel fashion and independent of one another, the heart muscle splits and connects to other fibers. In that way, every heart muscle cell connects to every other heart muscle cell. That allows signals to be transferred very . . .
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Why I Believe SAD Is Real
Let’s take a closer look at the study on seasonal affective disorder (SAD). The questions this study raises are two-fold:
- Were the research methods used appropriate to answer the question?
- Were the conclusions the researchers made warranted?
Without getting too technical, there are several problems. First, all the researchers could do is see if each of the events were correlated—the Depression Survey, the weather and latitude, and the season of the year. That’s all. Correlation does not mean cause and effect. It’s puzzling that experienced researchers would say there . . .
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How SAD Was Measured
Let’s take a look at the study that concluded SAD was folklore. The researchers used data from the 2006 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System questionnaire (BRFSS 2006). This is a telephone survey conducted every year in the US. In 2006, over 34,000 people responded to the phone survey. The survey varies from 199 questions for the short version and up to 373 questions for the full survey. The phone numbers are generated at random and reflect the population distribution of the US.
Because the survey is given throughout the year, all areas in the U.S. will be . . .
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Is Seasonal Affective Disorder Real?
Not according to a recently published study. At least, that’s what the headlines about the study suggested. While not exactly using these words, a group of psychologists said, “We’ve proven that SAD is just a big scam so that pharmaceutical companies can sell more drugs. It has no place in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It’s folklore and should be removed!”
There is a whole lot in those statements, and I’ll break down this study this week to see if what they said is real or not. To me, SAD is real based . . .
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You’ve Got the Ball
Two emails. Two men. Two deaths. In each case, the men likely didn’t know what they didn’t know. If they had known they had coronary artery disease or hypertension, they probably would have done something about it. Or maybe like many people, they wouldn’t have—“that couldn’t happen to me” syndrome or simply ignoring the facts. As I said on Thursday, this is American Heart Month. I’m going to give you three things you should do to reduce your risk of sudden death, the most extreme symptom of heart disease.
Graded Exercise Test . . .
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The Silent Killer
On Tuesday, I told you about an article sent to me by a long-time reader. Today’s message is about an email sent to me the same day as the other, but it’s quite different.
In the second email, a woman let me know that her husband had passed away in his sleep several months ago. He was not overweight and seemed healthy. When the medical university nearby did an autopsy, they found he had an enlarged heart, most likely due to high blood pressure. That’s one of the reasons hypertension is called the silent killer.
I . . .
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