Your Breasts May Hold the Key the Your Heart (Seriously!)

For many women, mammograms are just an uncomfortable fact of life. Over 60 percent of women over 40 and more than 70 percent of those over 50 have had at least one mammogram, to screen for signs of breast cancer. It's hard to go anywhere without being reminded of the importance of early detection, and most women are taking the message seriously.

Yet many women still haven't heard the news that we are ten times as likely to die from heart disease as from breast cancer, and that, ominously, deaths from heart disease are on the rise in women under 50. Prevention and early detection are every bit as important when it comes to matters of the heart.

Recetly, radiologists have become more aware of the importance of a bit of "bonus information" that might be gleaned from some womens' mammograms. When a mammogram is viewed by the radiologist, it is screened for signs of abnormal calcifications in the tissue of the breast. These abnormal areas can be red flags for cancer. Calcifications may also show up in the arteries feeding the breast tissue, and it turns out that this hardening of the arteries is often a marker for cholesterol build-up in the heart. In fact, women with this finding are more than twice as likely to have heart disease.

Next time you have a mammogram, ask your doctor whether the radiologist reported calcification in the breast arteries. Since the test is done primarily to screen for cancer, this "side-bar" type of information is often not discussed in detail, although one in six women over 55 will have this abnormality. Take the report to your primary doctor or cardiologist, and be sure that you get screened for important risk factors such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes. Your doctor might even recommend a heart scan or a stress test, to get a better handle on your heart health. Take the initiative, and your mammogram may turn out to be your heart's best friend.

Trans Fats: Nothing but Trouble

By now, we've probably all heard the news that trans fats are bad for us, but you might not know exactly what makes a fat a trans fat. Put simply, trans fats are natural fats and oils that have been "transformed" through a chemical process, in order to make them more stable (thus prolonging shelf life)  and more solid. Typical examples are hard margarine and old-fashioned vegetable shortening. In nature, trans fats are found only in very miniscule amounts.

The problem with trans fats is that they are even worse for our heart health than the saturated fats found in meat and dairy products, and in palm and coconut oils. A Harvard-based study published way back in 1994 estimated that at that time, somewhere between 30,000 and 100,000 deaths from heart disease were directly linked to trans fats.

How do you know when you meet a trans fat? The easiest way to sort this out is to look on the label. If the ingredient list includes "partially hydrogenated" oils, you have come face to face with the enemy. Thanks to awareness campaigns and labeling requirements, we are eating less trans fats than we were a few years ago. But since the FDA allows a product to be labeled "trans fat free" as long as the trans fat content per serving is less than half a gram, there are many products containing this bad fat that do not list it in the nutrition information panel. Studies around the world have found that when your diet includes six grams or more of trans fats every day, your risk of a heart attack jumps by about 40%.

The bottom line is that there is no really safe amount of trans fats. And since trans fats are mainly found in snack food, fast food, and other junk foods that are really worthless from a nutritional standpoint, there is no good reason that you should welcome trans fats into your body. It really isn't nice to fool Mother Nature.