Here's something men are good at: dropping dead of heart disease. Every year, cardiovascular problems cause nearly half of U.S. male deaths--a third of them by complete surprise.
Don't follow that pack. Every year scientists discover new ways men can protect their hearts--from steps you can take to avoid problems, to drugs and gadgets that can help if you already have heart disease. We asked heart researchers to boil it down to 10 simple rules men can follow.
That's the highly sensitive C-reactive protein test, or HSCRP. A study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine found that this blood test is twice as effective as a standard cholesterol test in predicting heart attacks and strokes. It measures the levels of a specific blood protein that indicates that you have inflamed heart arteries--the kind that rupture and cause heart failure.
When researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston monitored 30,000 women for 3 years, they found that those with the highest levels of CRP suffered a much higher rate of heart attacks and strokes. And this result is perfectly applicable to men, says Paul Ridker, M.D., the lead study author.
"Since half of all heart-attack victims have normal cholesterol levels, the HSCRP test is a much better way to figure your true risk," he explains. Ask your doctor to perform the $15 HSCRP test (not the standard CRP test; that's important) along with your regular cholesterol test. "That gives you plenty of time to make some serious lifestyle changes to reduce the risk," concludes Dr. Ridker.
Over the past 4 decades, dozens of studies have shown that exercise is good for your heart. But here's the catch, according to a recent survey: You're only as strong as your last workout.
Doctors from the Framingham Heart Study in Massachusetts compared people who'd only recently started exercising with those who used to exercise regularly but stopped. Their finding: The cardiovascular mortality rate was 40 percent lower among the current exercisers.
"The benefits of exercise wear off quickly," says Scott Sherman, MD, of the UCLA school of medicine. Fortunately, the benefits of exercise also show up quickly, so if the only physical activity you ever have is moving pawn to knight six, you're not dead--yet. "The study shows that for sedentary patients, it's never too late to start being active," says Dr. Sherman.
