Each year, more than 800,000 Americans will suffer a heart attack. More than 150,000 will die before they experience their first symptom. Could they have been saved? A relatively new and effective way to screen people at risk for heart disease is called coronary calcium scanning. Calcium scanning has been around since the late 1990s, and started capturing people’s attention when President Bill Clinton had his. Coronary calcium screening uses specialized medical equipment to look at the structure of the heart’s coronary arteries. Much like standard x-rays, calcium scanning can be done using electron beam computed tomography (CT), multidetector CT (MDCT) or electron beam CT (EBT) scanners. The scanners are…
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Is Your Gray Hair Increasing Your Risk for Heart Disease? The newest risk factor for heart disease is gray hair. Yes, you heard that right.
Unless you’ve been sequestered from television news and social media, you probably know that heart disease is the leading killer in the U.S., responsible for killing over 800,000 people a year. That’s more people than cancer and chronic lower respiratory disease combined. Over 92 million Americans are currently living with some form of cardiovascular disease, to the tune of $316 billion in health costs and loss of productivity. Common risk factors for heart disease include: Hypertension High blood cholesterol Cigarette smoking Diabetes Obesity Sedentary lifestyle Family history Gender Age The newest risk factor for heart disease is gray hair. Yes, you heard that right. Before you go running for a…
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Speed Dating Cougars, MILFs and Chihuahuas Scoring the woman of your dreams from your Barcalounger and iPhone
Ten minutes after my divorce was final, I decided that I’d waited long enough to go looking for the woman of my dreams. Or, at least the next woman of my dreams. It was time for speed dating. I heard from my friends that dating in the 21st Century might be a tad different than I remember it. Guys don’t cruise the boulevard looking for chicks at the malt shop anymore and it’s not cool to leave large hickies on their necks. So, I decided to do some research before I got busy. The Internet has made dating infinitely easier than it used to be. Thanks to my Comcast account,…
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Watching Grandma Circle the Drain Alkaline hydrolysis: the latest way to get rid of a dead body
There’s only so many ways you can get rid of a dead body. Regardless of how it got that way – stabbed, shot, bludgeoned, run over by a truck, pummeled, poisoned, choked, tossed off a building or just withered from old age – its final demise has to be handled with care. Up until recently, you only had two choices. You could bury Grandma in a casket or cremate her. Both cost a lot of money and take weeks of planning. Or, if money’s tight, you could always drive into the middle of the desert in the dead of night, dig a hole by the glow of your car’s headlights…
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Expelled from Match.com! Tips for scoring hot chicks on internet dating sites... just before they pull your plug
Last year I enrolled at Match.com using the pen name of “MrMarvelous” just to see if there was anyone out there as desperate as I was to meet their perfect mate. After blowing off an entire day’s work perusing the women within 100 miles of my zip code, seven major metropolises and all of the neighborhoods I’ve ever lived, it became readily apparent that of the 40 million single men and women who subscribe to on-line dating services, most are looking for the same thing – and their profiles reflect it. So, to leverage myself against my male competitors and attract more than my fair share of the lovelier sex,…