Cardiovascular Disease

WASHINGTON -- When Napoleon said war is one of two occupations (the other, he said, is prostitution) in which amateurs often perform better than professionals, he meant that normal intuitions are sometimes more useful than technical expertise. Recently, White House and State Department sophisticates are giving professionalism a bad name, not least in thinking about Russia in ways that reasonable amateurs recognize as unrealistic.By encouraging Russia to act as NATO's mediator with Yugoslavia, and by worrying lest NATO's actions rekindle Cold War tensions with Russia, the Clinton administration seems eager to resuscitate Russia as a great power.

As we approach the millennium, our emphasis on how we view food is undergoing a sea change: Rather than thinking about what we can't have, we're excited about all we can have. Of course, we've been eating fruits, vegetables and whole grains all along. Yet only recently have scientific studies shown just how healthful and healing these everyday foods are. And when they're eaten in combination, the results are even more impressive. It appears these foods provide disease-fighting substances that we are now only beginning to discover.

Joanna Cook Moore, 63, an actress who had roles in several Alfred Hitchcock television shows and was the mother of Oscar-winning actress Tatum O'Neal, died Saturday in Indian Wells, Calif.Robert Lewis, 88, an actor, director and acting coach whose star pupils included Marlon Brando, Meryl Streep and Faye Dunaway, died Sunday in New York.Nate Landsberg, 83, the Los Angeles Police Department's oldest active reserve officer, died of kidney cancer Monday in CulverCity, Calif.Onzy D. Matthews, 67, a noted jazz and big-band arranger who worked with Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and other musical greats, died in Dallas of cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Carl Gottschalk,75, a medical school professor and a leading researcher on kidney disease, died Wednesday in Chapel Hill, N.C. He used micropuncture techniques to better understand kidney function and disease.Dr. Edgar Haber,65, a cardiovascular researcher and Harvard Medical School professor, died Monday of multiple myeloma in Boston. He directed the division of biological sciences at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he founded the Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease.

Due to an editing error, an article about a speech by Dr. Rita Colwell in some editions of the Sunday Sun incorrectly explained how women in Bangladesh can use the fabric of their saris to prevent cholera, which is spread by organisms in water. Four layers of the fabric are used to filter drinking water.The Sun regrets the errors.Carrying her young son in her arms, the woman is rushing into a hospital. There, doctors look at his shrunken, wrinkled abdomen. They diagnose him with cholera.Rita R. Colwell showed slides of this boy last night as she warned her fellow scientists that environmental factors are also implicated in the spread of the devastating disease, which is traditionally linked with the man-made problem of raw sewage mixing with drinking water.

Fifteen years ago, at 10: 53 on a February evening, the people of Athens, Greece, were jolted by an earthquake that measured 6.7 on the Richter scale. Within an hour of the quake and for three days afterward, terrified Athenians were dropping dead at more than twice the normal rate.This suggested, at least to Harvard School of Public Health epidemiologist Dimitrios Trichopoulos, that mental stress had triggered the increased deaths, most of them from heart attacks.Back in 1983, when Trichopoulos published his findings in a medical journal, the notion that strong emotions could trigger a nearly-instant heart attack was anathema to many doctors, though lay people were often inclined to believe it.Although it had been popular since the mid-'70s to think that people with hard-driving, "Type A" personalities were more prone to heart attacks than others, these early attempts to link emotions to heart disease had looked mainly at lifelong traits, not at a person's mood right before a heart attack.

A cheap and painless set of tests developed in leading medical centers around the country promises to predict heart disease and stroke, and pinpoint the patients who really need aggressive therapy, far more accurately than do the traditional risk factors.The new method includes a simple measurement of the difference in blood pressure between arms and ankles, and a noninvasive acoustic test that measures narrowing of the carotid arteries that carry blood to the brain.Many patients with high cholesterol levels do not in fact develop heart disease.

WARSAW, Poland -- In the 5 1/2 years since Poland became the first Soviet bloc nation to reject communism, the death rate in Eastern and Central Europe has skyrocketed.The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), in the midst of a long-term study of nine former Communist countries, recently reported an "excess mortality" accumulation of 800,000 deaths between 1989 and 1993, the last year for which complete figures are available.Economic dislocation, poverty and stress have combined with a calamitous breakdown in the health care infrastructure to kill at least 1 million people more than the region's normal mortality rates would have predicted.

A cheap and painless set of tests developed in leading medical centers around the country promises to predict heart disease and stroke, and pinpoint the patients who really need aggressive therapy, far more accurately than do the traditional risk factors.The new method includes a simple measurement of the difference in blood pressure between arms and ankles, and a noninvasive acoustic test that measures narrowing of the carotid arteries that carry blood to the brain.Many patients with high cholesterol levels do not develop heart disease.

A new study of high-school students has found that only 37 percent say they engage in regular exercise, while another 35 percent say they watch television for at least three hours after school each day.Male students were more likely to be vigorously active than females: 50 percent of boys said they exercised regularly, against 25 percent of girls. And the girls' activity levels decreased as they reached their senior year of high school, according to the survey, published in the current issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Forums slated for school closures City schools officials will hold two public forums on the impact of proposed school closures, including William H. Lemmel Middle, where a boy was fatally stabbed last year. The forums will take place from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday at Polytechnic Institute and from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Saturday at Lake Clifton high school complex. Baltimore schools chief Andres Alonso has proposed a reorganization plan that calls for closing failing schools and expanding successful ones.

CHICAGO - The debate over the safety of a chemical ubiquitous in the lives of Americans took center stage at a scientific hearing of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration yesterday as federal officials, scientists and health advocates gave vastly different assessments of the effects of exposure to bisphenol A. Bisphenol A, commonly known as BPA, is used extensively in epoxy resins lining food and beverage containers and in polycarbonate plastics used...

Baltimore has launched a citywide effort to educate the public on the dangers of high salt intake, which is associated with high blood pressure, particularly among African-Americans. In a city that is nearly 65 percent black, the risks of hypertension, which can lead to heart attack, kidney failure and stroke, are especially high. The city Health Department is bringing together researchers and public health advocates starting in September to try to untangle the reasons for high salt consumption and offer recommendations for how city officials and food suppliers can decrease it. The six-month-long effort was born out of a recent Health Department initiative to reduce health disparities caused by cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in Baltimore.

Too quick to discard accepted treatments In their column "Medical uncertainty" (Opinion Commentary, Feb. 18), Erik Rifkin and Edward J. Bouwer seek to emphasize the "uncertainties" that persist in modern medicine. In doing so, they challenge some pieces of conventional medical wisdom, including those on the detrimental effects of chronically elevated blood cholesterol and blood glucose. As support for their argument, the authors cite two recent studies - one in which the cholesterol-lowering drug Zetia did not significantly affect plaque build-up in the carotid arteries and a second in which very aggressive blood sugar control was associated with increased mortality rates.

To her neighbors, Grace Sommerhof seemed like a smart, capable and friendly woman who came for tea, bought gifts for neighborhood kids and stayed active in civic organizations. But she was also curiously private behind her front door. Neighbors checked on her by phone, but she would not answer the doorbell. She never let them inside her faded, two-story brick Colonial in the comfortable Wiltondale neighborhood of Towson. On Nov. 10, she became the first of 14 Maryland residents whose deaths this season have been attributed - in part at least - to cold weather.

About 20.8 million people in the United States have diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association. And as the general population ages and continues to gain weight and exercise less, more people are at risk for diabetes, says Dr. Thomas Donner, an endocrinologist and director of the University of Maryland's Joslin Diabetes Center. What is diabetes? Diabetes is a disease of elevated sugar levels in the blood. There are two main types of diabetes. Type 1, which is seen more in children, is an auto-immune disease in which the immune system destroys the beta cells that make insulin for the body.

Seminar to talk about child diets The nonprofit Feingold Association will hold a free seminar for parents and teachers about dietary options for children with learning or behavior problems from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. June 21. This event will be held at the Marriott SpringHill Suites at 899 Elkridge Landing Road in Linthicum Heights. This seminar will introduce guests to the low-additive Feingold Program, a dietary plan for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, autism, dyslexia and other problems.

Cardiology Blood tests not likely to spot risk A new study has dimmed researchers' hopes of detecting heart disease years before it develops with a battery of laboratory tests done on a single blood sample, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. Doctors traditionally rely on factors such as blood pressure, cholesterol levels, smoking, obesity and diabetes to spot people in danger of cardiovascular disease. But investigators have spent years combing through blood samples for other signs of risk, such as C-reactive protein, a measure of inflammation; and homocysteine, an amino acid thought to damage blood vessels.

CHICAGO -- The American Medical Association voted overwhelmingly yesterday to back a campaign to halve the amount of sodium in restaurant and processed foods during the next 10 years. At the same time, the nation's largest doctors group urged the Food and Drug Administration to revoke rules that have allowed sodium to go unregulated for decades. Under the rules, salt and its component sodium are included in the "generally recognized as safe" category. The AMA's support for revoking salt's status is similar to a petition filed last fall by the Center for Scientists in the Public Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group, which also sought to void the rule.

More than 71 million Americans suffer from some form of cardiovascular disease. That's just a bit more than the total number of married couples in the United States. What relationship could there possibly be between marriage and cardiac health? Well, if you have to ask that question, you aren't putting two and two together. And while we're on that subject, when will you start balancing the checkbook? Cripes, the way you go through money. But we digress. A recent study by some researchers at the University of Utah really digs closer to the heart - and the hopelessly clogged arteries - of the matter.