healthy life 1

The multicentre trial coordinated by the Research Centre of Applied and Preventive Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Turku, Finland, shows that lower socioeconomic status in childhood is associated with arterial stiffness in adulthood. The socioeconomic gap in cardiovascular disease is a major health problem that has not narrowed but widened. Previous studies have shown that the development of atherosclerosis begins already early in childhood and that childhood socioeconomic status predicts the risk of cardiovascular diseases far into adulthood. - One of the indicators for cardiovascular health and arterial function is arterial stiffness which has been detected to predict the incidence of arterial events, such as heart attacks and strokes. However, the impact of childhood socioeconomic status on arterial stiffness in adulthood has not been previously studied with longitudinal data, notes Doctoral Candidate Elina Puolakka who is conducting her doctoral dissertation on...

The taller you are, the more likely you may be to develop blood clots in the veins, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal  Circulation: Cardiovascular Genetics. In a study of more than two million Swedish siblings, researchers found that the risk of venous thromboembolism -- a type of blood clot that starts in a vein -- was associated with height, with the lowest risk being in shorter participants. They also found: For men shorter than 5'3," the risk for venous thromboembolism dropped 65 percent when compared to the men 6'2" or taller. For women, shorter than 5'1" who were pregnant for the first time, the risk for venous thromboembolism dropped 69 percent, compared to women that were 6 feet or taller. "Height is not something we can do anything about," said lead researcher Bengt Zöller, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor at Lund University and Malmö University Hospital in Malmö, Sweden. "However, the heig...