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MONDAY, Nov. 23, 2020 (American Heart Association News) -- Having a heart attack before your 50th birthday is bad enough. But new research shows if you also live in a poor neighborhood, your chances of dying within a decade of that heart attack are higher."This tells us that we need to focus not just on a patient's medical problems, but on the whole person, on where they live and the resources they have that will allow them to thrive," said the study's lead investigator, Dr. Adam Berman, a cardiology fellow at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School.Berman and his team divided 2,097 people who had heart attacks before age 50 into three groups based on where they lived. They ranked home addresses using the area deprivation index, a measure...

MONDAY, Nov. 23, 2020 (American Heart Association News) -- Women are less likely than men to receive CPR from a bystander. But why?The reluctance, new research suggests, may be fueled by worries of being accused of sexual assault or doing physical harm. Knowing people's secret fears is the first step to dispelling them, experts say.The insights come from a new survey of 520 men and women who were asked to rank potential reasons someone might not want to provide bystander CPR to a woman, based on the sex of the rescuer. The survey built upon previous findings from the same research team that had respondents use their own words to describe why someone might hesitate to provide lifesaving care to a stranger.The new survey compiled the open-ended responses into themes, which respondents...

MONDAY, Nov. 23, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Chew on this: Vegans face a 43% higher risk for bone fractures than meat eaters, a large British study warns.The rise in risk was not confined to vegans, who eat no meat, fish, dairy or eggs. The researchers also identified a notably higher risk for hip fractures among those who eat fish but no meat (pescatarians), and among vegetarians who swear off both meat and fish, but do consume dairy and/or eggs.The findings follow several decades spent tracking diet and fracture risk among roughly 55,000 Britons. All had enrolled in the EPIC-Oxford study between 1993 and 2001. (EPIC, or European Prospective Investigation Into Cancer and Nutrition, is one of the world's largest cohort studies.)For this look at diet and fracture risk, "we analyzed data...

MONDAY, Nov. 23, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- The Black Lives Matter movement put racism in the United States under the glare of the public spotlight in 2020. And at its recently concluded annual meeting, the American Heart Association pledged to fight racial disparities in heart health and boost the life expectancy of all Americans.The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that systemic racism plays a large role in the kind of health an American can expect to enjoy, AHA President-Elect Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones said during a recent HD Live! interview."Obviously, the events of 2020 with COVID have uncovered tremendous health disparities in this country -- communities of color, rural communities having much worse outcomes than the majority population," Lloyd-Jones said. "These things aren't new, but...