Heart Disease
Cardiologist, author, and heart health expert Dr. Sarah Samaan offers advice on how to live a heart smart life.
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Apr 25 2011
Video Games and Weight Gain: Truth or Fantasy?
It’s no mystery that a sedentary lifestyle is a major contributor to obesity. Obesity, in turn, plays an important role in the development of heart disease and many other chronic conditions. In my February column for Healthline.com, I told you ...
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Apr 21 2011
Get a Little Nutty: Peanut Butter and Your Healthy Heart
When it comes to heart healthy eating, it’s easy to get discouraged and to fall into the rut of believing that anything that tastes good must be bad for you. Of course that is not true, as almost anyone who has tried a Mediterranean way of eati...
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Apr 18 2011
Working Overtime: Does Your Heart Pay the Price?
The economy and jobs situation being what it is, a lot of us are being asked to work longer hours and take on more responsibility. In fact, let’s be honest, sometimes we are not so much asked as told to stay late to get the work done. I see the ...
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Apr 14 2011
More Bad News for Smokers: Breast Cancer Risk Rises
I am always looking for new angles to use to help my patients to quit smoking. Each year, more than 430,000 Americans die from tobacco-related illness, including heart disease and stroke. Smoking even one cigarette each day raises the heart att...
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Apr 12 2011
Losing Weight With Your Smart Phone
As a cardiologist, I worry about my obese patients’ weight, and I feel strongly that it is my responsibility to help them find ways to lose it safely and permanently. Obesity affects more than one third of Americans, and at least 60 percent of ...
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Apr 07 2011
When the Heart Murmurs, What is it Saying?
Simply put, a heart murmur is an abnormal sound that your doctor hears when he or she listens to your heart. The sound is usually made by abnormal flow of blood across a heart valve, and may be due to either leakiness of the valve or restrictio...
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Apr 04 2011
Alcohol and Your Heart Health
Alcohol and heart health have an uneasy relationship. For years, heart patients were cautioned against drinking, since we know that excessive alcohol may cause irreversible weakening of the heart muscle, and can also contribute to heart rhythm ...
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Mar 31 2011
Diabetes and Your Heart Health
When we talk about diabetes, we’re not just talking about sugar. Heart disease and stroke are far and away the leading causes of mortality for diabetics, accounting for 65 percent of deaths. Put another way, diabetics have somewhere between two...
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Mar 28 2011
The Dangers of the HCG Diet: A Cardiologist’s Perspective
When I got the call from the emergency room that my patient Tom (not his real name) had just rolled in with a heart attack, it took me by surprise. Sure, Tom is overweight and has high blood pressure and high cholesterol. But he had recently lo...
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Mar 24 2011
Fish, Mercury, and Your Heart
Mercury Food Chain, CC BY 3.0Fish is an excellent source of lean protein, and the best way to get heart healthy omega-3 fats into our diet. It’s no wonder that doctors and dieticians recommend seafood to our patients. Unfortunately, pollution ...
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