[From Time.com]

For decades, heart disease has had the dubious honor of being the leading killer of Americans. Most heart-related deaths happen among the elderly, by far the largest at-risk group for cardiovascular disease. But a new study finds that an alarming portion of heart failure cases are occurring in a much younger group – under age 50 – and overwhelmingly among African Americans.

In the first large-scale study to document the extent of the race gap in heart disease, researchers report that one in 100 black adults develop heart failure in their 30s and 40s – a rate 20 times higher than that of similarly aged white men and women. In fact, the heart failure rate among young black adults was more like that of white men and women in their 50s and 60s. “What these data point out is that it’s important to recognize that disease patterns differ in different populations,” says Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, one of the study’s authors and co-director of the Center for Vulnerable Populations at the University of California, San Francisco, and San Francisco General Hospital. “We would have completely missed this at-risk group had we only been looking at older age groups. We would have also missed them if we had not been studying African Americans in large numbers.”

The new report, published in the March 19 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, is a large government-funded survey that began in 1985. The aim of the study was to document the frequency of heart disease among young adults, so researchers recruited more than 5,000 volunteers from four cities and tracked them for 20 years, measuring their blood pressure, weight, cholesterol, fasting blood sugar and kidney function. These tests were repeated six times over the two-decade period.

The black adults who developed heart disease early had at least one of four risk factors – high blood pressure, being overweight, chronic kidney disease or low levels of “good” cholesterol (high-density cholesterol, or HDL). Blood pressure and heart risk rose in step: for each 10 mm increase in diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number of the ratio), the risk of having heart failure in their 40s doubled. For each 5.7 increase in body mass index (BMI), a ratio of weight and height, the risk of developing heart failure increased by 40%. And each 13.3 mg/dL drop in HDL levels also boosted the risk of heart disease by 40%.

But the largest risk factor for heart failure among this group was chronic kidney disease, a condition that is often triggered by untreated diabetes and obesity. Black adults with chronic kidney disease experienced a stunning 20-fold jump in their risk of heart failure, compared with black adults without kidney disease. “Here we have tangible evidence that heart failure in the young is a real dilemma,” says Dr. Clyde Yancy, president-elect of the American Heart Association.

To read the rest of this article, click here.

THESE make for a good way to keep your blood pressure down!

Heart disease is also the number one killer of African American women. Here are ways to help save your heart!

[From CNN Health]

Do you remember the scene in the movie “Something’s Gotta Give” where Jack Nicholson’s character lies about Viagra to a doctor in the emergency room?

He’d just had a heart attack after romancing a (much younger) woman, and the doctor is furiously calling out orders to give him aspirin, blood pressure drugs, and … nitroglycerine.

“Mr. Sanborn, did you take any Viagra today?” the doctor asks as the nurses load him up with the medicines.

“No. No Viagra,” he says.

“Okay, good. Just need to be sure. Because I put nitroglycerin into your drip. And if you’d taken Viagra, the combination could be fatal,” the doctor warns.

Cut to Nicholson, who rips the IV out of his arm.

Hollywood got it right: It can be deadly to lie to your doctor. Your doctor “must know everything about you, even if the discussion feels a bit uncomfortable,” says Dr. Bernard Kaminetsky, the medical director of MDVIP, a group of boutique medicine doctors with headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida. “What you omit may be the key to a diagnosis.”

Dr. Vicki Rackner says patients lie to their doctors for a variety of different reasons. Sometimes they don’t want to talk about intimate subjects — she calls them “the three P’s: peeing, pooping, and procreating.” Other times they want to seem like the ideal patient, one who eats right and exercises and follows the doctor’s orders 100 percent. “I think it’s a drive to be seen as a good patient. We all want to be seen as good boys and girls,” says Rackner, a general surgeon from Mercer Island, Washington, who writes and speaks about patient empowerment issues.

From finances to sex, bathroom habits to spousal relationships, herbs to illicit drugs, here are 10 things about which you should always be open with your doctor.

Don’t hide from your doctor the fact that you:

1. Smoke, drink excessively, do illegal drugs

No one’s proud of any of the above, but your doctor needs to know. He can’t accurately diagnose and treat your health problems if you hide your substance abuse. “Remember, there are strict privacy laws between patient and doctor, so the information is not going to be shared,” Kaminetsky says.

2. Have peeing or pooping issues

“I once had a patient who literally died of embarrassment,” Rackner says. “She had blood in her stool, but she was too embarrassed to tell her doctor. A year later she was in terrible abdominal pain, and did go see her doctor. It was colon cancer, and it had spread to other parts of her body.” The patient came to see Rackner, but it was too late to do surgery. She died six months later.

“As children, we’re taught ‘Don’t talk about poop. That’s potty talk.’ So on some level we don’t like to talk about these things,” Rackner says. “But if she’d brought up the blood in her stool to her doctor, [the cancer] would probably have been at an early stage and she could have been cured.”

3. Take herbs

You might feel like your doctor looks down on herbs and other forms of alternative medicine, and there’s a good chance you’re right; many M.D.’s are dismissive of alternative medicine. But even if you fear seeing your doctor’s eyes roll back in her head, tell her about the supplements you’re taking. Certain herbs don’t mix well with certain medications, so she needs to know.

4. See a chiropractor or an alternative healer

See above about the eye-roll you might get if you tell your doctor you’re seeing a chiropractor. But if you’re having neck pain, it would help your doctor to know that just a few days ago your chiropractor adjusted your neck.

5. Are having financial troubles

“Money is the ultimate taboo,” Rackner says. “We have no idea how to talk about money.” But talk about it we must, she says. For example, if your doctor recommends a procedure you can’t afford, just say so. You might be able to work something out with the doctor. “Patients can offer to set up payment plans for expensive procedures and pay over time rather than a lump sum,” says Dr. Lisa Forbess, assistant professor of cardiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, Texas.

What are five other things you shouldn’t keep from the doc? Click here to find out.

Click here to find out 10 dangerous lies WOMEN tell their doctors.

Always angry? Don’t be. Cause it can kill you.