Cancer Articles (Dr. S.N White)

It’s never too late to lower your risk of heart disease. The risk of heart disease rapidly decreases once you stop smoking. In the first twenty four hours after quitting, your blood pressure and pulse return to normal, as do the oxygen and carbon monoxide levels in your blood. This alone relieves some of the extra stress you have been imposing on your heart. Within three months after quitting, you will experience a sharpening of the senses of taste and smell. Your circulation will be improved and your lungs may work at up to 30 percent greater capacity. After a year, your risk of CHD will be about halfway between a smoker’s and a nonsmoker’s. Abnormality of blood clotting due to a higher level of fibrinogen (a component of blood that makes blood clotting, possible) and platelets (particles in the blood that by aggregation make the clots possible) related to smoking will disappear, but it takes longer to undo the damage to the arteries. If your smoking has contributed to plaque de...

I hear women have less risk of heart disease than men. Is this true?  The rate of heart disease in premenopausal women is approximately half that of men. However, following menopause women catch up to men within ten years and even have slightly higher rates after age seventy. The problem is that heart disease in women often goes undiagnosed in both younger and older women. The reason for this underdiagnosis stems from two sources: society in general, including women, has developed a false sense of security, believing that women are protected; and physicians and other health care professionals have habitually underestimated the extent of heart disease in women, although recent publicity has partly remedied this situation. Greater attention and publicity must be given to this problem.