
Stay on top of your heart health with the help of these 6 monitoring tools
Try exercising regularly – the American Heart Association recommends 150 minutes of moderate activity per week. Aim for seven to nine hours of sleep per night. Sleep is important for heart health because it allows your heart to rest and recover. If you are having trouble sleeping, these items can help improve your sleep routine.
The best defense against heart disease is prevention. Understanding the signs of heart disease, the risk factors, and how to check your heart health at home is a significant first step in improving your heart health. You can take steps at home to monitor your heart health.
Here are six items that can help you keep track of your blood pressure, cholesterol and heart rate:
The 3D Tri-sport Walking 3D pedometer uses tri-accelerometer technology to measure steps accurately. This basic step counter is easy to set up and use and works in any position. You can wear it in your pocket, clip it to your waist, wear it around your neck on the included lanyard or even place it in your bag. It records steps (walking and running), distance, calories burned and exercise time. You can buy this pedometer in pink and on sale for $24.99 on Amazon.
Record how much physical activity you do and when you do strength exercises. This 12-week wellness journal from Papier is an excellent choice because it lets you track physical and mental health progress. Detailed daily pages include space for goals and intentions and space for tracking habits that contribute to a healthy lifestyle, like sleep and meals. This fitness log, $8.99 on Amazon, has space for 180 detailed entries.
Original price: $22.99
Use a heart rate monitor or check your pulse to see if your heart rate is regular. This pulse oximeter from Amazon clips onto your finger to track pulse rate and blood oxygen levels and conveniently displays the information on a large digital LED display. You can also easily monitor your heart rate while on the go with this Google Pixel watch, $100 from Walmart.
If you have diabetes, use a glucose meter to check your blood sugar levels. Contour Next One is a simple-to-use, budget-friendly meter that reads in five seconds. It also connects to an app to log and share readings with a doctor. The Metene TD-4116 Blood Glucose Monitor Kit, $34 on Amazon, is fast, easy to use and delivers accurate results according to reviews.
Use an over-the-counter kit to measure your cholesterol levels. The QuCare Complete is a home-based blood test kit that allows you to measure your total cholesterol level in your blood. The package contains enough materials to perform two separate tests. You can buy this at-home test from Amazon for $22.99.
For more deals, visit www.foxnews.com/category/deals
Use a blood pressure monitor to track your blood pressure. The OMRON Platinum Blood Pressure Monitor stores up to 200 readings for two users, with 100 readings per user. This Braun ExactFit 3 automatic blood pressure monitor, $55 at Walmart, takes measurements from the upper arm.
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Cosmopolitan
an hour ago
- Cosmopolitan
TikTok's Obsession With Hormone Balancing Fact-Checked by Experts
Hormones…are confusing. They're these little invisible chemicals that ultimately control nearly every major thing our bodies do, like our metabolism, mood, sexual function, and sleep cycles. Lately, they've been getting a lot of attention, especially on the Internet. By now, your FYP has likely fed you the phrase 'hormone balancing,' a trending term that's touted as a cure-all for essentially everything. Some creators on social media discuss them while hustling supplements (Magnesium! Folic acid! Zinc! Ashwagandha! B6! Inositol!) that allegedly balance your hormones to fix mood swings, weight gain, gut issues, lack of energy, allergies, PMS and menopause symptoms, and more. Over on Amazon, you'll find dozens of books making similar claims; some of which also promote following a special diet to do the trick. And brick-and-mortar clinics and at-home hormone testing have popped up, offering tests that promise to check for these hormonal imbalances. Doctors are seeing an uptick in questions about hormone levels too. "Patients are pointing to symptoms that a lot of people may feel, like fatigue, weight gain, difficulty losing weight, mood issues, and problems with sleep and libido,' says Karen Tang, MD, a board-certified gynecologist at Thrive Gynecology in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and a TikTok creator with more than 465,000 followers. But these kinds of symptoms can show up for a wide variety of reasons, really; experiencing one or more of them doesn't immediately mean that something is off with your endocrine system, aka the group of glands (think: ovaries, testicles, pancreas, thyroid, pituitary) that makes and regulates your hormones. Most people seeking out this information are just trying to get some relief or make some type of progress on the symptoms they're experiencing. But with so many conflicting messages and grifts out there, it's hard to know what to trust. 'People are taking advantage of women's genuine confusion and lack of answers from the traditional medical establishment,' says Dr. Tang, who is also the author of It's Not Hysteria. "There's a lot of room for science to give people more accurate guidance and information. Because right now it is sort of the wild west, where people can kind of make up any sort of claim.' We've tapped experts to bring some clarity to the table. Keep reading for the five must-know facts about hormone balancing that you probably wouldn't see on your Explore Page. There's actually no such thing as a hormone imbalance. 'Hormone imbalance' isn't a recognized medical term, but you can have a hormone disorder, or what is formally called an 'endocrine disorder,' aka when one or more of those glands we mentioned earlier makes too little or too much of a specific hormone, according to the NIH. Determining an endocrine disorder can get complicated sometimes, but in general, doctors are able to see this through blood tests (because your glands pump hormones straight into your bloodstream!). Your physician will know what's normal (if you want to get a baseline understanding for yourself, check out this infographic), but if you want a more specialized approach, you'll need to see an endocrinologist. In short, endocrine disorders are the more official term for what TikTokers are calling hormone imbalances. A lot of different kinds of these exist (more on that below) and they can be difficult to manage since they impact nearly every part of your body, from your reproductive organs to your mental and physical health. Endocrine disorders aren't as common as the internet makes it seem. "A lot of people have endocrine disorders, but definitely not as many as you would expect based on social media," says Dr. Tang. Common endocrine disorders include PCOS, type II diabetes, insulin resistance, and hyper- and hypothyroidism. PCOS affects about 10 percent of people of childbearing age with ovaries, and about one in eight women develop thyroid disorders in their lifetime. Your primary care doctor or gyno can usually diagnose and treat PCOS, thyroid disorders, insulin resistance, or pre-diabetes, according to Alexis Melnick, MD, an ob-gyn and reproductive endocrinologist at New York-Presbyterian in New York City. This can involve a slew of options, but generally some kind of medication will be a part of treatment (unless you go see a DO, who may provide non-medication options). There is no "normal" hormone level. Think of 'normal' hormones like a kid's growth bell curve, says Angela Koenig, MD, an ob-gyn at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, in Lebanon, New Hampshire: You can be on the very low or very high ends of the height range and be perfectly healthy. And since it's normal for hormones to fluctuate, 'there's really not a clear definition of what having 'balanced hormones' means,' says Dr. Melnick. Hormones can vary a ton from person to person, day to day, sometimes even hour to hour, especially when the menstrual cycle is at play. Some people naturally have lower or higher baseline levels than others, without having a hard-and-fast hormone disorder. There isn't one test to determine your hormone levels. "Patients will say, 'Can you test my hormones to see if they're balanced?' but I don't have a test for that," explains Chantel Cross, MD, a reproductive endocrinology and infertility specialist at Johns Hopkins. Doctors only check hormone levels if you have a collection of symptoms that might point to a specific endocrine disorder. "At that point, you test the relevant hormone,' says Dr. Melnick. This is usually a blood test. For example, if you experience irregular or missed periods, your doctor may suspect PCOS or hypothyroidism and test for those hormones to determine their levels. A doctor will also want to rule out non-hormonal conditions like autoimmune diseases and endometriosis, which sometimes can look like endocrine disorders with symptoms like fatigue, pelvic pain, bowel problems, bloating, and migraines. "A lot of people have those [symptoms] and they're like, oh, must be my hormones?" says Tang. "It's a little dangerous to not investigate other conditions that could explain it." Many influencers who talk about hormone imbalance might have negative opinions on birth control, which doctors say is misplaced. 'You could make the argument that if you want to balance some of these hormones, nothing does that as well as the birth control pill because it keeps them at a constant level," says Dr. Melnick. While birth control isn't for everyone, for some people it can be "life-changing" when it comes to hormones, says Dr. Tang (and in general, it is a life-changing and essential medication to prevent pregnancy!). "Birth control pills are so effective because they really lower the estrogen levels that can be 'out of balance' in PCOS," says Dr. Cross. "It also can block the receptor for androgens at the hair follicle. So it really helps the skin." Dr. Cross suspects birth control gets a bad rap because it tricks people into thinking their cycles are normal. When people quit birth control for whatever reason, as some have recently, they're often frustrated when irregular periods return because the underlying condition is still there—the birth control just stops the symptom, it doesn't cure the entire endocrine disorder. No matter why you're experiencing your symptoms, if you don't feel they're are being taken seriously by physicians, definitely speak up for yourself and seek out new care or a second opinion if necessary. "I think so often, especially as a woman of color, we're told [our symptoms are] 'normal,'' says Courtney Minors, RD, a registered dietitian specializing in PCOS and the supervisor of clinical nutrition services at Bethesda Hospital in Jupiter, Florida. 'But you don't have to feel that way. You can get help, you can make changes, and things can improve." Colleen de Bellefonds is a freelance journalist and editor who covers science, health and parenting. Her reporting and writing regularly appears in Well + Good, US News & World Report, Women's Health, The Bump, What To Expect, SELF and many other publications. She lives in Paris, France with her husband and two kids. See more of her work at or follow her on X @colleencync and Insta @colleendebellefonds.


Medscape
6 hours ago
- Medscape
New Blood Pressure Guidelines: My Likes and Concerns
The American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology, along with numerous other professional societies, have released new guidance on hypertension. The 105-page document updates guidance from 2017. Here are a few highly selected likes and worries. Things I Like Accurate measurement of blood pressure. The authors place great emphasis on the accurate measurement of blood pressure (BP). This includes a picture of a patient who is sitting, feet on the floor and arm resting on a table. Adjacent to the picture is an 8-point list of how to take a BP. It boggles my mind how badly BP is taken in the healthcare setting. I don't think I've ever witnessed it done properly — not once, in 30 years of practice. I am not sure how the culture evolved not to care about accurate BP measurement. We have time-outs, sepsis protocols, and quality measures for numerous conditions, and yet, something as simple as accurate recording of a vital sign is virtually ignored. Mediocrity has been codified as standard when it comes to measuring BP. A healthcare system could improve its quality overnight if it made accurate BP recording a point of emphasis. Good on the authors. Home-based BP monitoring. A corollary of accurate BP measure is the class 1/evidence level A recommendation to supplement office BP measures with home-based monitoring. While this makes sense, it's actually supported by multiple RCTs which, taken together, show that home monitoring of BP plus lifestyle interventions leads to clinically significant BP reduction that persists for at least 12 months. The authors emphasize that cuffless technology options that are often embedded in wearable devices are not reliable enough for clinical use. One caveat the authors did not mention, but which I find important, is practical guidance on use of home BP devices. I have seen people who spend far too much of their life recording and pondering their BP. Patients need clear education regarding the natural fluctuations of BP, and that the goal is to reduce average BP over days to weeks. We want patients to have good BP and good lives. More often than not, I find myself telling patients to use their home BP cuff less, not more. Single-pill combination drugs. My view of single-pill combination drugs has changed. I used to be against combining agents in a single pill because it can be hard to change course. The guidelines give a class 1 recommendation for using combination pills for patients with stage 2 hypertension (systolic BP ≥ 140 mm Hg and diastolic BP ≥ 90 mm Hg). I like this call on both efficacy (it probably will take multiple drugs) and efficiency grounds; having only one pill and one prescription to fill and refill is important. Renal denervation caution is warranted. Renal denervation (RDN) is on the precipice of becoming cardiology's biggest blemish — even worse than left atrial appendage occlusion. Doctors and hospitals are coiled and ready to deploy this procedure to the millions with high BP. The only thing maintaining sanity is the reluctance of payers — thankfully. Here is a quote from the guideline document: While some trials showed a small but significant reduction in 24-hour ambulatory SBP by 3 to 5 mm Hg over the sham arm, others failed to reach their primary endpoint. Although broader indications are approved for the RDN devices by the FDA, given the relatively short duration of follow-up in clinical trials with modest BP-lowering effects and the absence of CVD outcome trials, RDN should not be considered as a curative therapy for hypertension or full replacement for antihypertensive drugs. I would have been stronger, but this is decent. The problem comes in that RDN makes the colored recommendation box, albeit with the lowest 2b level. I call this a problem because procedure-loving doctors only need it to be recommended. The level of recommendation does not matter in the real world of US medicine. I reiterate: RDN trials found either no significant or clinically small reductions in systolic BP. There are no sham-controlled efficacy data beyond a few months and not even a hint of clinical outcome data. A middle-aged person does not require BP control for 3 months; they need it for 3 decades. RDN was a nice idea, but before a single dollar is paid to a doctor or hospital for this procedure, we should have far more persuasive evidence. I would have left it out of the colored box of recommendations. Two Things I Worry About Summary statements and colored boxes. The document begins with take-home messages. I take from this that the writers think clinicians are not capable of reading the document. These efforts to dumb down medicine, which are not specific to hypertension guidelines, worry me greatly. Hypertension is one of the most common and modifiable risk factors for cardiovascular health. Clinicians should be encouraged and expected to read the details of the document — including the references. Few things could be more important in the prevention of cardiovascular disease than extreme knowledge of hypertension. I feel the same way about the colored boxes of recommendations, which attempt to simplify what is complex. I believe it best to provide the narrative review and references — with a table, perhaps — but jettison the summary boxes, because the vast majority of patients do not fit into such algorithms. Risk-based recommendations use the new PREVENT risk score. A major feature of this guideline is to base treatment not only on BP measures but also on overall cardiovascular risk. For instance, for patients with stage 1 hypertension and a 10-year PREVENT risk score of < 7.5%, the recommendation is for lifestyle interventions only. Risk-based intervention is a decent idea; my worry here is the use of the new PREVENT score. PREVENT is a new AHA initiative; it replaces the pooled cohort equation (PCE). Proponents of the score cite its many advantages. These include broader outcomes, such as heart failure, atrial fibrillation, stroke, as well as atherosclerotic events. PREVENT is also derived from more diverse and contemporary data that include kidney function and social determinants of health. These factors are believed to lead to improved calibration between expected and observed event rates. The provocative feature of PREVENT in the statin decision was that more accurate calibration — with less risk overestimation — led to fewer patients being labeled statin eligible. Similar concerns arise in the hypertension guideline. Will use of PREVENT lead to undertreatment? Another highly provocative feature of PREVENT is that it does not include race as a determinant of risk. While this may satisfy equity concerns, some cite strong associations of race and risk in hypertension — and not considering race may lead to undertreatment of vulnerable people. I am neither a statistician nor an epidemiologist, but decreeing a new risk score that could affect so many patients, and the most important modifiable cardiovascular risk factor, seems like a major risk. The authors give this a class 1/evidence level B rating, but I find no trials comparing PREVENT and PCE as risk modifiers. I am not saying it is wrong to use PREVENT; rather, I am saying that even a little undertreatment of BP could be a public health disaster. Let me know what you think in the comments section.


New York Post
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