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FRIDAY, Feb. 7, 2020 (American Heart Association News) -- When she's not biking, hiking or swimming, Bev Pohlit can probably be found tending to the vegetables growing in her quarter-acre backyard in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania. "I take advantage of every little square inch," she said. "My vegetables are my morning snacks." But as Pohlit enjoyed this rather healthy lifestyle, she also had one vice: She smoked precisely seven cigarettes every day. Although she realized smoking could cause heart disease, it didn't seem to impact her health. Until it did. Four years ago, Pohlit and her husband, Stan, went out for their first bike ride of the season. They had only gone a couple of miles when she needed to stop and catch her breath. Her heart was pounding, and she didn't feel well....

FRIDAY, Feb. 7, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Nearly half of antibiotic prescriptions for Medicaid patients appear to be inappropriate, new research suggests. That kind of overprescribing raises risks for everyone, experts say, as bacteria gain more chances to mutate around the life-saving drugs. For the study, researchers analyzed 298 million antibiotic prescriptions filled by 53 million Medicaid patients between 2004 and 2013. They found that 45% were ordered without any clear rationale. Specifically, 17% were prescribed at an office visit in which the patient wasn't diagnosed with a bacterial infection, and 28% were prescribed without an office visit. "Indiscriminate use of antibiotics is increasing the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and rendering them ineffective," said...

FRIDAY, Feb. 7, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Gastrointestinal bleeding in patients taking blood thinners for an irregular heartbeat should prompt doctors to check for colon cancer, a new study advises. Researchers looked at more than 125,000 patients in Denmark with the heart rhythm disorder atrial fibrillation (a-fib). They reported that those with gastrointestinal bleeding were 11 to 24 times more likely than others to be diagnosed with colon cancer. The study was published Feb. 7 in the European Heart Journal. Between 4% and 8% of a-fib patients who had bleeding in the lower GI tract were diagnosed with colon cancer, compared to less than 1% of those without bleeding, said study leader Peter Vibe Rasmussen of the Department of Cardiology at Herlev-Gentofte University Hospital, part...

FRIDAY, Feb. 7, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Folks fretting about the coronavirus are forgetting there's another virus already running rampant in the United States, one that's killed nearly 20 times as many people in this country alone. Influenza has already taken the lives of 10,000 Americans this season, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 19 million have caught the flu, and an estimated 180,000 became so ill they landed in the hospital. By comparison, there are 12 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the United States, and just over 31,000 confirmed cases in mainland China, where the virus first emerged. More than 3,800 cases in China are critical, and 636 people there have died from complications of coronavirus infection. "Influenza is easier to...