The BEST Resolutions for 2012

If you are already finding it tough to keep your New Year’s resolutions perhaps it is time to re-evaluate and make resolutions that are achievable. These suggestions from the National Heart and Lung Blood Alliance has some GREAT tips for how to make resolutions that are reasonable AND how to keep them. Sometimes baby steps are the key. Here’s to a healthier 2012 – one small step at a time!

                      

3 Simple Steps To Make Healthy Resolutions You’ll Keep

While it’s easy to make New Year’s resolutions such as “lose weight” or “get more sleep,” it can be hard to keep them. This year try designing a series of simple and achievable resolutions that you can focus on over the course of the entire year.

To craft successful resolutions, make sure they have three simple characteristics.

Make sure they are:

• Specific
• Attainable (doable)
• Forgiving (less than perfect)

For example, “be more physically active” is a great resolution. But it’s not specific.

• “Walk 5 miles every day” is specific and measurable. But it may not be doable if you’re just starting out.
• “Walk 30 minutes every day.” This resolution is specific and it’s more doable. But what happens if you’re held up at work one day and there’s a thunderstorm during your walking time another day? Thus this resolution is not forgiving.
• “Walk 30 minutes, 3 or more days each week.” This resolution is specific, doable, and forgiving. In short, it’s just right!

6 New Year’s Resolutions To Try

Here are examples of healthy resolutions that are specific, attainable, and forgiving. Choose from this list, or make your own resolutions. Remember, the best New Year’s resolutions are the ones you will keep!

1. Have a meatless dinner 1 day a week.

2. Try a new grain once a month.

3. Go to bed 15 minutes earlier 2 nights a week.Try a new heart healthy substitution each week.

4. Make one substitution.

Substitution suggestions:

• Low-fat or fat-free milk instead of whole milk.
• Plain, low-fat yogurt or fat-free sour cream instead of regular sour cream.
• Reduced- or low-fat cheese instead of regular cheese.
• Whole-grain pasta instead of regular pasta.
• Brown rice instead of white rice.
• 100 percent whole-grain bread instead of white bread.
• A hearty bean soup instead of stew.
• Broiled or baked fish instead of other meats.
• Extra-lean ground beef or ground turkey instead of regular ground beef.

5. Take a family walk after dinner 1 day a week.

6. Turn off the TV during meals 3 days a week.

Dr. Le-Bert Improving Scope of Cardiac Care in Nassau Cty

In keeping with our commitment to provide the highest quality of cardiology care to the communities of Northeast Florida, Southern Heart Group is working hard to improve the scope of services available to Nassau County and surrounding areas. Beginning this week, transesophageal echocardiogram (also known as TEE), an important diagnostic test used to better visualize deep cardiac structures, will be available in Nassau County for the first time.

Southern Heart Group’s own Dr. George Le-Bert, a cardiologist board certified in both transesophageal and transthoracic echocardiography, will be performing the diagnostic procedure at Baptist Medical Center Nassau in Fernandina Beach. Previously, patients needing this advanced cardiac imaging were required to travel well outside of Nassau County to have the test performed. Says Dr. Le-Bert, “We now have the ability to evaluate and manage a variety of complex cardiac conditions that traditionally have required transfer to other institutions.”

An echocardiogram, often referred to in the medical community as simply an ECHO, is a sonogram of the heart. Also known as a cardiac ultrasound, it uses standard ultrasound techniques to image two-dimensional or sometimes three-dimensional slices of the heart. A standard echo is obtained by applying a transducer to the front of the chest. The ultrasound beam travels through the chest wall (skin, muscle, bone, tissue) and lungs to reach the heart. At times, certain physical traits of the patient such as closely positioned ribs may create technical difficulties by limiting the transmission of the ultrasound beams to and from the heart. In such cases, your physician may elect to get a transesophageal echo, where the echo transducer is placed in the esophagus or food pipe that connects the mouth to the stomach. Since the esophagus sits behind the heart, the echo beam does not have to travel through the front of the chest, avoiding any obstacles such as the one described above. Therefore, TEE offers a much clearer image of the heart, particularly, the back structures, such as the left atrium, which may not be seen as well by a standard echo taken from the front of the heart.

TEE is a relatively common procedure that is extremely useful in diagnosing a variety of heart problems. The ability to offer this important diagnostic tool and offer advanced cardiac imaging to Nassau County residents in the community in which they live will improve patient care and convenience dramatically.

As a Southern Heart Group physician, Dr.Le-Bert is part of a distinguished team of multi-disciplined cardiovascular specialists dedicated to providing superior care and service. Dr. Le-Bert practices full time at our Fernandina Beach location and is currently accepting new patients. For more information on TEE or on Dr. Le-Bert, please contact us at (904) 885-6646.

Myosin-Activating Agent Boosts Systolic Function, but Please Don’t Call it an “Inotrope”

www.theheart.org (read the full article)
September 26, 2008 | Steve Stiles

Toronto, ON – Would that which is called an inotrope, by any other name, be safer in heart failure? A small dose-ranging study in patients with stable heart failure supports animal research suggesting that an obscure drug, a selective activator of cardiac myosin, can amplify contractile function without increasing myocardial oxygen demand [1]. Investigators hope that CK-1827452 (Cytokinetics), as it’s called for now, will offer the benefits of conventional inotropic agents without the effects that can ultimately harm patients taking them.

They also don’t want the myosin activator, still technically a positive inotropic agent, to carry the drug class’s stigma by being lumped with 1-adrenergic agonists like dobutamine or phosphodiesterase-3 inhibitors like milrinone. Those drugs strengthen myocardial contractions and are used sparingly for short-term symptom relief in some high-risk populations, but at a high metabolic cost and increased arrhythmic and mortality risk.

Read full article…

Fish Oil Cut Heart Failure Morbidity, Death in GISSI-HF

In same study, statin showed no benefit.

Cardiology News (read full article)
Volume 6, Issue 9, Page 1 (September 2008)
BRUCE JANCIN (Denver Bureau)

MUNICH — Supplementation with a single daily low-dose fish oil capsule in patients with chronic heart failure resulted in modest but clinically meaningful reductions in mortality and cardiovascular hospitalization in a nearly 7,000-patient randomized trial presented at the annual congress of the European Society of Cardiology.

In a surprise finding, the same Italian study, known as GISSI-HF, concluded that rosuvastatin at 10 mg/day had no effect on mortality or hospital admission for cardiovascular events, suggesting that patients with chronic heart failure should not be started on statins. (See story on p. 9.)

In GISSI-HF, 6,975 patients with New York Heart Association class II-IV chronic heart failure were randomized in double-blind fashion to 1 g/day of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFA) in the form of eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid or to placebo. The participants were on standard background therapy with the agents of proven efficacy in heart failure.

All-cause mortality after a median 3.9 years of follow-up was 27% in the n-3 PUFA group and 29% in controls, for a significant adjusted 9% relative risk reduction in the n-3 PUFA group, reported Dr. Luigi Tavazzi, chair of the GISSI-HF steering committee and professor of cardiology at the University of Pavia (Italy).

The co-primary end point in GISSI-HF was death or cardiovascular hospitalization, which occurred in 57% of the n-3 PUFA cohort and in 59% of those on placebo, for an 8% relative risk reduction that did not reach statistical significance.

In all, 44 patients needed to be treated with n-3 PUFA for 3.9 years in order to prevent one additional death or cardiovascular hospitalization, whereas 56 patients needed to be treated in order to prevent one death. Those are fairly high numbers, but it’s a trouble-free therapy, according to Dr. Tavazzi.

Read the full article…