The bottom line regarding alcohol is that it may have heart and other health benefits when consumed in moderation.

How does the medical community define moderation? According to the Mayo Clinic website, moderate drinking is defined as two drinks a day if you’re a male 65 and younger, or one drink a day if you’re a female or a male 66 and older. A drink is defined as 12 ounces (355 milliliters) of beer, 5 ounces (148 milliliters) of wine or 1.5 ounces (44 milliliters) of 80-proof distilled spirits. While most of the experts agree that moderate consumption may have benefits they clearly to not recommend anyone begins drinking alcohol to treat or prevent diseases.

Benefits often associated with moderate alcohol include:

• Reduce your risk of developing heart disease, peripheral vascular disease and intermittent claudication
• Reduce your risk of dying of a heart attack
• Possibly reduce your risk of strokes, particularly ischemic strokes
• Lower your risk of gallstones
• Possibly reduce your risk of diabetes

Red wine may not be alone in its benefits. According to UC Davis beer is beneficial.

The ancient Egyptians found a number of uses for beer as a mouthwash, an enema and a wound healer. While not necessarily endorsing these medicinal applications, UC Davis brewing scientist Charles Bamforth suggests that beer may possess many nutritional qualities that make the beverage part of an overall healthy and balanced diet.

“It appears that beer is at least on par with wine in terms of potential health benefits,” says Bamforth, who published a review article on the nutritional qualities of beer in the January-February issue of the online scientific journal Nutrition Research

So, you can enjoy that beer or glass of wine guilt free.

• Pain, pressure or a squeezing sensation in the chest
• Pain in one or both arms, jaw or between the shoulder blades
• Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
• Nausea
• Sweating
• Pain in the stomach
• Lightheaded or dizziness

Signs of a Stroke

• Severe Headache
• Numbness and/or weakness on one side of the body
• Difficulty moving one side of the body
• Facial droop or weakness on one side of the face
• Slurred speech, difficulty speaking or understanding
• Difficulty seeing in one or both eyes
• Confusion
• Dizziness or loss of balance
• Nausea or vomiting

Research by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) indicates that women often experience new or different physical symptoms as long as a month or more before experiencing heart attacks.

Among the 515 women studied, 95-percent said they knew their symptoms were new or different a month or more before experiencing their heart attack, or Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI). The symptoms most commonly reported were unusual fatigue (70.6-percent), sleep disturbance (47.8-percent), and shortness of breath (42.1-percent).

Many women never had chest pains Surprisingly, fewer than 30% reported having chest pain or discomfort prior to their heart attacks, and 43% reported have no chest pain during any phase of the attack. Most doctors, however, continue to consider chest pain as the most important heart attack symptom in both women and men.

Prompt treatment for these conditions in the emergency room may reduce the severity of damage to the brain or heart. Do not delay seeking help. It is not uncommon for people to deny they may be having a Heart Attack or Stroke and delay treatment.

It is important to understand the signs and symptoms of both a Heart Attack and a Stroke. Victims that are awake and responsive with the above symptoms should sit or lie down in a comfortable position. 911 or EMS should be called immediately and retrieve the AED and first aid kit. Both of these conditions are extremely serious and must be treated in an emergency room.

If a victim becomes unresponsive you must begin the steps of CPR and use an AED if one is available.

Although Heart Attacks and Strokes are more common in people over forty, they may occur in all age groups. Do not ignore these symptoms.

The website www.WomenHeart.org is an invaluable source of information. Join their mailing list, the newsletter is full of useful articles and recipes.

WomenHeart was founded by three women who had heart attacks while in their 40s.  In addition to being faced with many obstacles, including misdiagnosis and social isolation, they were each amazed how little information about or services for women with heart disease were available and how the issue seemed invisible within the women’s health community. But in March 1999 everything changed.

Photo courtesy of WomenHeart.

“Go Red For Women celebrates the energy, passion and power we have as women to band together to wipe out heart disease and stroke.”

View their website:

http://www.goredforwomen.org/about_the_movement.aspx

http://www.azhearthospital.com

Your Heart By the Numbers

• Your heart beats 101,000 times a day. During your lifetime it will beat about 3 billion times and pump about 800 million pints of blood or about 1 million barrels —that’s enough to fill more than 3 super tankers.
• Blood takes about 20 seconds to circulate throughout the entire vascular system.
• The adult heart pumps about 5 quarts of blood each minute - approximately 2,000 gallons of blood each day - throughout the body.
• A typical athlete’s heart churns out up to 8 gallons of blood per minute.
• Hold out your hand and make a fist. If you’re a kid, your heart is about the same size as your fist, and if you’re an adult, it’s about the same size as two fists.
• Your body has about 5.6 liters (6 quarts) of blood circulates through the body three times every minute. In one day, the blood travels a total of 12,000 miles —which is roughly four times the distance across the US from coast to coast.
• Your system of blood vessels - arteries, veins and capillaries - is over 60,000 miles long. That’s long enough to go around the world more than twice!
• An adult woman’s heart weighs about 8 ounces, a man’s about 10 ounces

How Your Heart Measures Up

• Put your hand on your heart. Did you place your hand on the left side of your chest? Many people do, but the heart is actually located almost in the center of the chest, between the lungs. It’s tipped slightly so that a part of it sticks out and taps against the left side of the chest, which is what makes it seem as though it is located there.
• Give a tennis ball a good, hard squeeze. You’re using about the same amount of force your heart uses to pump blood out to the body. Even at rest, the muscles of the heart work hard—twice as hard as the leg muscles of a person sprinting.
• Feel your pulse by placing two fingers at pulse points on your neck or wrists. The pulse you feel is blood stopping and starting as it moves through your arteries. As a kid, your resting pulse might range from 90 to 120 beats per minute. As an adult, your pulse rate slows to an average of 72 beats per minute.
• The aorta, the largest artery in the body, is almost the diameter of a garden hose. Capillaries, on the other hand, are so small that it takes ten of them to equal the thickness of a human hair.
• The structure of the heart was first described in 1706, by Raymond de Viessens, a French anatomy professor.
• The electrocardiograph (ECG) was invented in 1902 by Dutch physiologist Willem Einthoven. This test is still used to evaluate the heart’s rate and rhythm.
• The first heart specialists emerged after World War I.

Key Points:

• Recommended for adult cardiac arrest victims when you witness them collapse.
• Appropriate to be used when mouth-to-mouth protective equipment such as a CPR shield or mask is not available.
• Bystanders may be more likely to provide care.

Steps for providing care:

1. Check for Responsiveness
2. Call EMS/911 or have a bystander call EMS/911
3. Check for normal breathing (if the victim is gasping this is not normal)
4. Begin compressions at a rate of 100 per minute, push hard and fast in the middle of the chest.

Music from Vividity song title: Hearts are in rhythm. Podsafe music from http://music.PodShow.com.

Infant CPR Podcast - review the steps to take during an emergency. This podcast is for informational purposes and should not be used to replace training with an instructor and hands-on practice using a manikin. Music from Vividity song title: Hearts are in rhythm. Podsafe music from http://music.PodShow.com.

Visit our website at www.actionedu.com.

Music from Vividity song title: Hearts are in rhythm. Podsafe music from http://music.PodShow.com.

There is a second story with this that is interesting because it is about the “save” of a worker at Medtronic ERS, a manufacturer of AEDs or defibrillators.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-12-10-body-cooling-cover_x.htm?csp=34

If you are alone and have symptoms of a heart attack you should:

1. Stop whatever activity you are doing.
2. Call 911 or the emergency response number for your area.
3. If you are driving, pull over, after calling EMS, try to flag down a motorist to assist you.
4. Remain calm. Help is on the way.

CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) is the first aid for an unresponsive victim, that is not breathing and their heart is not pumping. You can not perform CPR on yourself.

Below is a statement from the UK Resuscitation Council. This is the general consensus  from resuscitation organizations around the world.

UK Resuscitaiton Council on Cough CPR (self CPR).

The BLS/AED Subcommittee has received a number of enquiries from people who have been informed about “cough CPR” and “How to survive a heart attack when alone”. Advice has been put on the Internet that someone who thinks he or she is suffering a heart attack should repeatedly cough and go at once to a hospital, by car if necessary.

This advice is based (very loosely) on published case reports of people being able to maintain some sort of cardiac output during cardiac arrest by vigorous coughing - so-called “cough CPR”. The scenario has usually been of a patient developing ventricular fibrillation whilst being monitored, often whilst undergoing cardiac catheterisation. The patient has been encouraged to cough and a measurable circulation has been recorded. This anecdotal evidence supports the theory that chest compressions during CPR are successful because they increase intrathoracic pressure and result in a flow of blood. The collapsed veins and patent arteries at the thoracic inlet result in this flow being in a forward direction. Coughing produces the same effect.

The BLS/AED Subcommittee knows of no evidence that, even if a lone patient knew that cardiac arrest had occurred, he or she would be able to maintain sufficient circulation to allow activity, let alone driving to the hospital.