Eating as little as a quarter of an ounce of chocolate each day—an amount equal to about one small Easter egg—may lower your risk of experiencing a heart attack or stroke, a new study has found. For best results, the chocolate should be dark, experts say. “Dark chocolate exhibits the greatest effects, milk chocolate fewer, and white chocolate no effects,” says the lead author of the study, Brian Buijsse, a nutritional epidemiologist at t ... Jump to full article >>

Do you have a sunny outlook on life? If so, you have one more reason to be happy: You may be at less risk for heart disease. People with a joyful, positive, and enthusiastic disposition—what psychologists call “positive affect”—are less likely than their gloomier peers to have a heart attack, a new study has found. “This is the first study, to our knowledge, that has shown that clinically assessed positive emotions are protective of a ... Jump to full article >>

Dr. Ilan Wittstein, MD, a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital, in Baltimore, once had a middle-aged patient who discovered that her husband was cheating on her. Shortly after a heated argument over the infidelity, the woman began to experience shortness of breath and a crushing chest pain. Although it felt like a heart attack, it wasn’t. Quite literally, the woman was suffering from a broken heart. Officially known as takotsubo cardiomyopat ... Jump to full article >>

If asthma, lung cancer, and emphysema aren’t enough to scare you off, it turns out smokers are two to four times more likely to develop coronary artery disease (CAD) than nonsmokers. Cardiovascular disease—including CAD, heart failure, and heart attack—is the leading killer in the U.S., claiming more than 860,000 lives in 2005. Smoking ups your risk for heart disease by decreasing the flow of oxygen to the heart and raises your risk fo ... Jump to full article >>

Researchers are linking levels of a protein that indicates tissue inflammation in the body to future risk of heart attack, stroke, cancer and chronic lung disease. But the association may be the result of other risk factors related to heart disease, such as smoking, rather than the protein itself, researchers said. The molecule, known as C-reactive protein (CRP), is produced by the liver and indicates that tissues are inflamed because of injury. ... Jump to full article >>

Pushing smokers outside drives down hospitalizations for heart attacks by about 17 percent in the first year and 36 percent after three years, according to an analysis of 13 studies looking at heart-attack rates after smoking bans. The analysis strengthens the studies’ individual findings, said coauthor James M. Lightwood. It also provides further support for government-mandated elimination of smoking in bars, restaurants and other public ... Jump to full article >>

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Smoking bans in public places can significantly reduce the number of heart attacks, two U.S. research teams reported on Monday. One team found smoking bans in the United States, Canada and Europe had an immediate effect that increased over time, cutting heart attacks by 17 percent after the first year and as much as 36 percent after three years, they reported in the journal Circulation. A second team found such bans reduce ... Jump to full article >>