Chill out: If you are hot tempered or feel like hitting someone when you get angry or feel annoyed, cool it. You may be setting yourself up for a heart attack.
A study of nearly 13,000 people found that anger, even in the absence of high blood pressure, can increase a person's risk of a heart attack by more than 2 times, said Dr. Janice E. Williams of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Stress hormones released during anger may constrict blood vessels in the heart, or may promote clot formation, which can cause a heart attack, she reported in the journal Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
Stroke of bad luck: Older patients at high risk of stroke commonly don't get the medications that could ward off strokes, researchers in St. Louis report.
Frail, elderly patients with chronic atrial fibrillation aren't given blood thinners at the same rate as younger patients, the researchers conclude in a report that appeared in the journal Stroke this spring. Atrial fibrillation is the failure of the heart's upper chambers to beat effectively, a condition that allows blood to pool and form clots that can be transported to the brain where they may cause a stroke. Warfarin, a blood thinner, can prevent clots from forming, studies have shown, but researchers at Washington University found that elderly people who might benefit often don't get Warfarin.
"We found that Warfarin was underprescribed and that the most important predictor of underuse was advanced age," said Dr. Brian F. Gage, an assistant professor of medicine at Washington University. "We also found that Warfarin can decrease the risk of stroke in a real-world population of frail and very elderly patients."
The St. Louis findings were based on analyzing records of more than 21,000 patients admitted to Missouri hospitals. Median age of those patients was 80.
The researchers found that 45 percent of patients who were candidates for blood thinners didn't get them. It also found that those who did get Warfarin had fewer strokes and deaths from strokes than those who didn't.