Range of heart tests
If heart disease runs in your family, it would be wise to check on your own heart health, no matter how good you feel. A detailed report in the April issue of the Ladies' Home Journal discusses several tests available to assess your risks as well as available treatments and what to expect in the near future.
The article has detailed information on the more commonly used treadmill stress test, blood testing for the C-reactive protein, or CRP, indicating inflammation; as well as the newer electron beam computed tomography heart scan.
The latter test shows whether the calcium deposits in your blood vessels indicate possible presence of soft plaque, which can rupture and cause a heart attack.
Within the next year, doctors may look for heart disease risk by measuring a protein called placental growth factor. A German study in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that this may be a more effective way of predicting heart disease than CRP.
In addition, the Cleveland Clinic is looking at an enzyme in white blood cells called myeloperoxidase, which helps predict imminent heart attack or death in the next 30 days to six months. Widespread use, however, is several years away.
Also found is another blood protein, Cp-HSP60, which spikes during heart attacks and unstable angina, then drops after the heart is stabilized. A test to detect its presence someday may help pinpoint people at risk of heart disease.
Finally, the Cleveland Clinic has located a gene called MEF2A, which is one of several responsible for family heart disease and heart attack risk. Families with four or five relatives with heart disease can contact the Cleveland Clinic for possible testing.
Skin the KFC
You want your kids to eat healthy. They want fast food. There is a way to compromise, if you make wise choices, say nutrition experts in the April Redbook.
Going to McDonald's? Have the kids choose hamburgers over nuggets. Burgers have more iron and zinc. The shake is OK, too, because it offers calcium and protein, says Keith Ayoob, associate professor of pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York.
At Burger King, look to the lean Chicken Whopper Junior, without mayo. At Pizza Hut, order the Fit 'N Delicious pizza, which has half the cheese and more sauce. At KFC, go for the Original Recipe, but remove the skin to eliminate almost all of the fat. Also good is the Honey BBQ Chicken Sandwich, with only 6 grams of fat and 300 calories.
Detect kidney disease
Some 40 million Americans either are at risk for kidney disease or have it, yet they don't know it. For that reason, the National Kidney Foundation recently developed new guidelines to help detect and treat chronic kidney disease, notes a special report in the March Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter.
Testing is important because this disease usually can't be felt in its early and middle stages.
Those at higher risk of kidney disease are people of Hispanic, African, Native American or Pacific Island descent as well as those at least age 60.
Others at risk are people who have diabetes or high blood pressure or those with a family history of heart attack, stroke or kidney disease.
If you fall into any of those groups, ask your doctor to check the urine for a protein called albumin and have your blood checked for creatinine, a waste product of muscle metabolism. Both are signs of chronic kidney disease. When kidney disease is identified and treated early, its progression can be slowed through medication and lifestyle changes.