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Increased incidence of cardiovascular diseases during holiday
Posted on January 8th, 2010 No commentsChristmas is one of the most magic moment during the year and New Year’s Eve is really exciting. Nevertheless, some studies reported in literature demonstrated a correlation between heart attack and winter holiday. It could sound strange because stressor elements that have an important role in heart failure should not be present during holiday.
Anyway, other stressor components can be listed during Christmas celebration such as forced relationship with relatives, financial efforts to purchase gifts, travelling expenses. In addition to these components, during holiday overindulgence in diet usually occurs: indeed, major intake of salt, fat and alcohol can contribute to cardiovascular problems. We must remember that the cold season itself determines an increase in cardiovascular diseases due to a natural increase of vascular resistance and probability to have thrombus formation and coronary spasm. Furthermore, a happy atmosphere could determine a delay in seeking medical attention that could resulted as fatal. In general, physicians try to instruct patients with high risk factors to recognize heart attack at the beginning in order to look for medical care as soon as possible. Relatives of patients must be informed about the increased likelihood to have cardiovascular problems during holiday. -
The role of Omega- 3 fatty acids in cardiovascular protection
Posted on December 22nd, 2009 No commentsCardiovascular protection is one of more challenging effort of current medicine. High mortality is associated with cardiovascular diseases and the incidence of stroke increases every year. In scientific literature, several papers report the benefits of a diet rich in omega- 3 fatty acids. This substance is contained in fish and its supplement such as oil fish; a healthy individual must eat at least 200/ 250 mg daily to obtain some advantages and to decrease the likelihood to be affected by cardiovascular problems.
Randomized trials involving thousands of patients with previously diagnosed morbidities, such as coronary artery disease or hyper-triglyceridemia, demonstrated the role of omega 3 fatty acids in prevention. Giving the high social costs of cardiovascular diseases in terms of treatment and human life, extraordinary campaigns have been done to favour fish uptake in every day diet. Indeed, rather than omega 3 fatty acids, fish contains also antioxidants, selenium and vitamin D, essential elements for our body. These components are not present in fish supplements or omega 3 capsules. At this point, some environmental concerns should arise because a rapid depletion of world fish stock is observed. Therefore, we need to identify alternative and sustainable omega 3 sources as soon as possible.
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