Heart Aches
Well, it wouldn't be a trip home without a trip to the hospital.
Loyal readers, please send happy heart-strengthening thoughts to my Grandma, who has got a right branch bundle block (a blockage of the electrical impulses from the pacemaker cells of the heart) and is in the hospital today in the Suburbs of the Damned (North). She's 91 years old and deaf as a post but still keeps a cleaner house than anyone else in the family. We know we're buying time . . . but still.
My mom was telling me the other day how my great-grandmother got congestive heart failure at age 89. She'd had a heart defect for years that never bothered her until her son died and she became depressed. She got a pacemaker (this was 25 years ago, so I'm sure it was a clunkier model than what they use now), came out of her depression, and was recovering fine until she died of a stroke.
This Christmas was the first since my aunt died (my Grandma's oldest daughter) and she said "My heart just wasn't in it this year". That, for my ridiculously peppy Grandma, was equivalent to me hiding under the covers all day and moaning - she's clearly the most mentally stable person in the family, and by far the least vulnerable to attacks of the black-eyed dog. The madre posited that being depressed was a factor in her mother and grandmother having heart failure when they'd not had trouble with their hearts before.
Then just today I read an article that said the following:
New research suggests that depression may hasten the progression of heart disease by increasing the levels of a key protein that causes inflammation. In a study of 32 people with heart failure, the 14 patients who felt the most depressed had nearly twice the levels of this protein in their blood.
The protein, tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha), is one member of a large family of proteins called cytokines, chemical messengers that are mobilized when the body is injured or has an infection. These cytokines often cause inflammation in their effort to repair an injured or infected area of the body. In the case of heart failure, this inflammation makes it even more difficult for the heart to pump blood. (Heart failure is a disease in which the heart loses the ability to pump blood with normal efficiency.)
“People with heart failure typically have much higher TNF-alpha levels than people without the disease,” said Amy Ferketich, the study's lead author and an assistant professor of public health at Ohio State. “But depression seems to make levels of this cytokine even higher, which is bad for patients.”
The original report can be found in the American Heart Journal here.
Maybe we mean more than we think we mean when we talk about broken hearts?
Loyal readers, please send happy heart-strengthening thoughts to my Grandma, who has got a right branch bundle block (a blockage of the electrical impulses from the pacemaker cells of the heart) and is in the hospital today in the Suburbs of the Damned (North). She's 91 years old and deaf as a post but still keeps a cleaner house than anyone else in the family. We know we're buying time . . . but still.
My mom was telling me the other day how my great-grandmother got congestive heart failure at age 89. She'd had a heart defect for years that never bothered her until her son died and she became depressed. She got a pacemaker (this was 25 years ago, so I'm sure it was a clunkier model than what they use now), came out of her depression, and was recovering fine until she died of a stroke.
This Christmas was the first since my aunt died (my Grandma's oldest daughter) and she said "My heart just wasn't in it this year". That, for my ridiculously peppy Grandma, was equivalent to me hiding under the covers all day and moaning - she's clearly the most mentally stable person in the family, and by far the least vulnerable to attacks of the black-eyed dog. The madre posited that being depressed was a factor in her mother and grandmother having heart failure when they'd not had trouble with their hearts before.
Then just today I read an article that said the following:
New research suggests that depression may hasten the progression of heart disease by increasing the levels of a key protein that causes inflammation. In a study of 32 people with heart failure, the 14 patients who felt the most depressed had nearly twice the levels of this protein in their blood.
The protein, tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha), is one member of a large family of proteins called cytokines, chemical messengers that are mobilized when the body is injured or has an infection. These cytokines often cause inflammation in their effort to repair an injured or infected area of the body. In the case of heart failure, this inflammation makes it even more difficult for the heart to pump blood. (Heart failure is a disease in which the heart loses the ability to pump blood with normal efficiency.)
“People with heart failure typically have much higher TNF-alpha levels than people without the disease,” said Amy Ferketich, the study's lead author and an assistant professor of public health at Ohio State. “But depression seems to make levels of this cytokine even higher, which is bad for patients.”
The original report can be found in the American Heart Journal here.
Maybe we mean more than we think we mean when we talk about broken hearts?
posted by Joolya at
1:22 PM
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