Calisthenics for Beginners – by Matt Schifferle

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For those who are curious to take up calisthenics, for its famed benefit to many kinds of health, this is a great starter-book.

First, what kind of benefits can we expect? Lots, but most critically:

  • Greater mobility (as a wide range of movements is practiced, some of them stretchy)
  • Cardiovascular fitness (calisthenics can be performed as a form of High Intensity Impact Training, HIIT)
  • Improved muscle-tone (because these are bodyweight strength-training exercises—have you seen a gymnast’s body?)
  • Denser bones (strong muscles can’t be built on weak bones, so the body compensates by strengthening them)

A lot of the other benefits stem from those, ranging from reduced risk of stroke, diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, etc, to improved mood, more energy, better sleep, and generally all things that come with a decent, rounded, exercise regime.

Schifferle explains not just the exercises, but also the principles, so that we understand what we’re doing and why. Understanding improves motivation, adherence, and—often—form. Exercise diagrams are clear, and have active muscle-groups highlighted and color-coded for extra clarity.

As well as explaining exercises individually, he includes three programs, increasing in intensity. He also offers adjustments to make exercises easier or more challenging, depending on the current condition of your body.

The book’s not without its limitations—it may be a little male-centric for some readers, for instance—but all in all, it’s a very strong introduction to calisthenics… Enough to get anyone up and running, so to speak!

Get started with “Calisthenics for Beginners” from Amazon today!

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    Battle autoimmune disease with a 4-step plan involving diet, stress management, gut health, and liver care—fortified by science, worksheets, and recipes to personalize your healing journey.

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  • Chickpeas vs Soybeans – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing chickpeas to soybeans, we picked the soybeans.

    Why?

    Both are great! But:

    In terms of macros, chickpeas have more than 3x the carbs and only very slightly more fiber, while soybeans have more than 2x the protein. Given the ratio of carbs to fiber in each, soybeans also have the lower glycemic index, so all in all, we’re calling this a win for soybeans.

    In the category of vitamins, chickpeas have more of vitamins A, B3, B5, and B9, while soybeans have more of vitamins B1, B2, B6, C, K, and choline—another win for soybeans.

    When it comes to minerals, chickpeas have more manganese and zinc, while soybeans have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium—meaning soybeans win yet again.

    Two extra things to know:

    • Chickpeas are naturally high in FODMAPs, which can be problematic for a minority of people—however, canned chickpeas are not.
    • Soybeans are famously high in phytoestrogens, however, the human body cannot actually use these as estrogen (we are not plants and our physiology is different). This means that on the one hand they won’t help against menopause (aside from the ways in which any nutrient-dense food would help), but on the other, they aren’t a cancer risk, and no, they won’t feminize men/boys in the slightest. You/they would be more at risk from beef and dairy, as the cows have usually been given extra estrogen, and those are animal hormones, not plant hormones.

    All in all, chickpeas are a wonderful food, but soybeans beat them by most nutritional metrics.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Why You Can’t Skimp On Amino Acids ← soybeans also have a great amino acid profile!

    Enjoy!

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  • 12 Questions For Better Brain Health

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    We usually preface our “Expert Insights” pieces with a nice banner that has a stylish tall cutout that allows us to put a photo of the expert in. Today we’re not doing that, because for today’s camera-shy expert, we could only find one photo, and it’s a small, grainy, square headshot that looks like it was taken some decades ago, and would not fit our template at all. You can see it here, though!

    In any case, Dr. Linda Selwa is a neurologist and neurophysiologist with nearly 40 years of professional experience.

    The right questions to ask

    As a neurologist, she found that one of the problems that results in delayed interventions (and thus, lower efficacy of those interventions) is that people don’t know there’s anything to worry about until a degenerative brain condition has degenerated past a certain point. With that in mind, she bids us ask ourselves the following questions, and discuss them with our primary healthcare providers as appropriate:

    1. Sleep: Are you able to get sufficient sleep to feel rested?
    2. Affect, mood and mental health: Do you have concerns about your mood, anxiety, or stress?
    3. Food, diet and supplements: Do you have concerns about getting enough or healthy enough food, or have any questions about supplements or vitamins?
    4. Exercise: Do you find ways to fit physical exercise into your life?
    5. Supportive social interactions: Do you have regular contact with close friends or family, and do you have enough support from people?
    6. Trauma avoidance: Do you wear seatbelts and helmets, and use car seats for children?
    7. Blood pressure: Have you had problems with high blood pressure at home or at doctor visits, or do you have any concerns about blood pressure treatment or getting a blood pressure cuff at home?
    8. Risks, genetic and metabolic factors: Do you have trouble controlling blood sugar or cholesterol? Is there a neurological disease that runs in your family?
    9. Affordability and adherence: Do you have any trouble with the cost of your medicines?
    10. Infection: Are you up to date on vaccines, and do you have enough information about those vaccines?
    11. Negative exposures: Do you smoke, drink more than one to two drinks per day, or use non-prescription drugs? Do you drink well water, or live in an area with known air or water pollution?
    12. Social and structural determinants of health: Do you have concerns about keeping housing, having transportation, having access to care and medical insurance, or being physically or emotionally safe from harm?

    You will note that some of these are well-known (to 10almonds readers, at least!) risk factors for cognitive decline, but others are more about systemic and/or environmental considerations, things that don’t directly pertain to brain health, but can have a big impact on it anyway.

    About “concerns”: in the case of those questions that ask “do you have concerns about…?”, and you’re not sure, then yes, you do indeed have concerns.

    About “trouble”: as for these kinds of health-related questionnaires in general, if a question asks you “do you have trouble with…?” and your answer is something like “no, because I have a special way of dealing with that problem” then the answer for the purposes of the questionnaire is yes, you do indeed have trouble.

    Note that you can “have trouble with” something that you simultaneously “have under control”—just as a person can have no trouble at all with something that they leave very much out of control.

    Further explanation on each of the questions

    If you’re wondering what is meant by any of these, or what counts, or why the question is even being asked, then we recommend you check out Dr. Selwa et al’s recently-published paper, then all is explained in there, in surprisingly easy-to-read fashion:

    Emerging Issues In Neurology: The Neurologist’s Role in Promoting Brain Health

    If you scroll past the abstract, introduction, and disclaimers, then you’ll be straight into the tables of information about the above 12 factors.

    Want to be even more proactive?

    Check out:

    How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk

    Take care!

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  • The Good, The Bad, & The Vigorously Debated

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    This week in health news sees some pretty varied topics:

    One more reason to care about the gut-brain axis

    Stroke is a top killer in much of the industrialized world, usually making it into the top-few list on a per-country basis. And, it’s rising in prevalence, too. This is partly because our longevity is increasing so age-related things kill us more often, statistically, than age-unrelated things. But that’s only part of the reason; another is that our lifestyle (on the national level) is becoming more conducive to stroke. Diet is a large contributor to that, and gut health has now been identified as a key factor.

    What recent research has shown is that minutes after a stroke occurs, normal gut anatomy is disrupted, and cells responsible for gut barrier integrity are eroded, and bugs from the gut get into the blood, and arrive at the (newly damaged) brain vasculature, where the blood-brain barrier is often also compromised on account of the stroke.

    Because of this, critical to reducing post-stroke neuroinflammation (something that makes stroke damage more severe and recovery a lot harder) is improving the gut’s ability to heal itself quickly.

    This can be helped with a dose of Insulin-like Growth Factor (IGF-1), but there are other things that can help or hinder, and those other things are modifiable by us as individuals in our lifestyle choices (e.g. a gut-healthy diet with plenty of fiber, and avoiding gut-unhealthy things like sugar and alcohol that feed C. albicans growths that will put roots through your intestines and make holes as they do), because the better/worse your gut barrier integrity is to start with, the easier/harder it will be for your gut to repair itself quickly:

    Read in full: Healing the gut can reduce long-term impact of stroke

    Related: Stop Sabotaging Your Gut

    How about that seasonal lead-spiced hot drink?

    Lead contamination in ground spices has become a bit of an issue, ground turmeric has had quite some flak in this regard, and now the spotlight is on cinnamon.

    These reports, by the way, do not specify what kind of cinnamon (i.e. cassia vs Ceylon), however, clicking through to assorted sources and then doing our own digging finds that all cinnamon products we found listed as contaminated, were cassia cinnamon. This is unsurprising, as a) it’s cheaper b) it’s the kind most readily found on shelves in the US. That said, when it comes to Ceylon (sweet) cinnamon, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, so that doesn’t mean they got the all-clear on lead contamination, but rather, that they haven’t received the same scrutiny as yet.

    It’s worth noting that cinnamon sticks have been found to have less contamination than ground cinnamon, though.

    It’s also worth noting that since some adulterated products have had lead added deliberately in increase the weight and darken the color, this is more likely to happen to cassia cinnamon than sweet cinnamon because cassia cinnamon is visibly darker, so adding a darkening agent to sweet cinnamon would just make it look like cassia (which no seller would want to do since cassia is the cheaper of the two).

    Read in full: Why lead-tainted cinnamon products have turned up on shelves, and what questions consumers should ask

    Related: Sweet Cinnamon vs Regular Cinnamon – Which is Healthier? ← this also covers toxicity issues, by the way

    A matter of life and death

    Assisted dying is currently legal in 10/40 US states, and Canada. Over in the UK, it’s being debated (and voted on) in Parliament today, at time of writing.

    While bodily autonomy discussions are usually quite straightforward arguments between the very separate camps of

    • “my body, my choice” vs
    • “they shouldn’t be allowed to do that”,

    …this one comes with a considerable middleground, because

    • “people should have to right to end things without extra suffering and on their own terms”, and
    • “many disabled people fear being placed in a position of having justify why they are not exercising their right to die when it might be cheaper and easier for others if they did”

    …are positions with a lot of potential overlap.

    In any case, we know most of our readers are in the US, but with a 10/40 split in US states (and some recent controversies in Canada), it’s likely a topic that’ll come up for most people at some point, so it’s good to understand it, and this is as good an opportunity as any:

    Read in full: How would the assisted dying bill work and what issues might it create?

    Related: Managing Your Mortality ← this talks about psychological/social considerations, as well as end-of-life care, palliative care (which is not quite the same thing!) and euthanasia in various forms, including the unofficial kind that you might want to be aware of if you want to avoid that happening.

    Take care!

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  • Unfuck Your Brain – by Dr. Faith Harper
  • We analysed almost 1,000 social media posts about 5 popular medical tests. Most were utterly misleading

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    When Kim Kardashian posted on Instagram about having had a full-body MRI, she enthused that the test can be “life saving”, detecting diseases in the earliest stages before symptoms arise.

    What Kardashian neglected to say was there’s no evidence this expensive scan can bring benefits for healthy people. She also didn’t mention it can carry harms including unnecessary diagnoses and inappropriate treatments.

    With this post in mind, we wanted to explore what influencers are telling us about medical tests.

    In a new study published today in JAMA Network Open, we analysed nearly 1,000 Instagram and TikTok posts about five popular medical tests which can all do more harm than good to healthy people, including the full-body MRI scan.

    We found the overwhelming majority of these posts were utterly misleading.

    C-R-V/Shutterstock

    5 controversial tests

    Before we get into the details of what we found, a bit about the five tests included in our study.

    While these tests can be valuable to some, all five carry the risk of overdiagnosis for generally healthy people. Overdiagnosis is the diagnosis of a condition which would have never caused symptoms or problems. Overdiagnosis leads to overtreatment, which can cause unnecessary side effects and stress for the person, and wasted resources for the health system.

    As an example, estimates suggest 29,000 cancers a year are overdiagnosed in Australia alone.

    Overdiagnosis is a global problem, and it’s driven in part by healthy people having tests like these. Often, they’re promoted under the guise of early screening, as a way to “take control” of your health. But most healthy people simply don’t need them.

    These are the five tests we looked at:

    The full-body MRI scan claims to test for up to 500 conditions, including cancer. Yet there is no proven benefit of the scan for healthy people, and a real risk of unnecessary treatment from “false alarm” diagnoses.

    The “egg timer” test (technically known as the AMH, or anti-mullarian hormone test) is often falsely promoted as a fertility test for healthy women. While it may be beneficial for women within a fertility clinic setting, it cannot reliably predict the chance of a woman conceiving, or menopause starting. However, low results can increase fear and anxiety, and lead to unnecessary and expensive fertility treatments.

    Multi-cancer early detection blood tests are being heavily marketed as the “holy grail of cancer detection”, with claims they can screen for more than 50 cancers. In reality, clinical trials are still a long way from finished. There’s no good evidence yet that the benefits will outweigh the harms of unnecessary cancer diagnoses.

    The gut microbiome test of your stool promises “wellness” via early detection of many conditions, from flatulence to depression, again without good evidence of benefit. There’s also concern that test results can lead to wasted resources.

    Testosterone testing in healthy men is not supported by any high-quality evidence, with concerns direct-to-consumer advertising leads men to get tested and take testosterone replacement therapy unnecessarily. Use of testosterone replacement therapy carries its own risk of potential harms with the long-term safety in relation to heart disease and mortality still largely unknown.

    Woman scrolling on a phone
    Multi-cancer early detection blood tests are heavily marketed. Yuri A/Shutterstock

    What we found

    Together with an international group of health researchers, we analysed 982 posts pertaining to the above tests from across Instagram and TikTok. The posts we looked at came from influencers and account holders with at least 1,000 followers, some with a few million followers. In total, the creators of the posts we included had close to 200 million followers.

    Even discounting the bots, that’s a massive amount of influence (and likely doesn’t reflect their actual reach to non-followers too).

    The vast majority of posts were misleading, failing to even mention the possibility of harm arising from taking one of these tests. We found:

    • 87% of posts mentioned test benefits, while only 15% mentioned potential harms
    • only 6% of posts mentioned the risk of overdiagnosis
    • only 6% of posts discussed any scientific evidence, while 34% of posts used personal stories to promote the test
    • 68% of influencers and account holders had financial interests in promoting the test (for example, a partnership, collaboration, sponsorship or selling for their own profit in some way).

    Further analysis revealed medical doctors were slightly more balanced in their posts. They were more likely to mention the harms of the test, and less likely to have a strongly promotional tone.

    A man on public transport looking at a smartphone.
    The vast majority of posts we looked at were misleading. DimaBerlin/Shutterstock

    As all studies do, ours had some limitations. For example, we didn’t analyse comments connected to posts. These may give further insights into the information being provided about these tests, and how social media users perceive them.

    Nonetheless, our findings add to the growing body of evidence showing misleading medical information is widespread on social media.

    What can we do about it?

    Experts have proposed a range of solutions including pre-bunking strategies, which means proactively educating the public about common misinformation techniques.

    However, solutions like these often place responsibility on the individual. And with all the information on social media to navigate, that’s a big ask, even for people with adequate health literacy.

    What’s urgently needed is stronger regulation to prevent misleading information being created and shared in the first place. This is especially important given social media platforms including Instagram are moving away from fact-checking.

    In the meantime, remember that if information about medical tests promoted by influencers sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

    Brooke Nickel, NHMRC Emerging Leader Research Fellow, University of Sydney; Joshua Zadro, NHMRC Emerging Leader Research Fellow, Sydney Musculoskeletal Health, University of Sydney, and Ray Moynihan, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences & Medicine, Bond University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Montana Eyes $30M Revamp of Mental Health, Developmental Disability Facilities

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    HELENA, Mont. — As part of a proposed revamping of the state’s behavioral health system, Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte’s administration is looking into moving a facility for people with developmental disabilities, beefing up renovations at the Montana State Hospital, and creating a Helena unit of that psychiatric hospital.

    The changes, backers say, would fill gaps in services and help people better prepare for life outside of the locked, secure setting of the two state facilities before they reenter their own communities.

    “I think part of the theme is responsibly moving people in and out of the state facilities so that we create capacity and have people in the appropriate places,” state Sen. Dave Fern (D-Whitefish) said of the proposed capital projects during a recent interview.

    Fern served on the Behavioral Health System for Future Generations Commission, a panel created by a 2023 law to suggest how to spend $300 million to revamp the system. The law set aside the $300 million for improving state services for people with mental illness, substance abuse disorders, and developmental disabilities.

    Gianforte’s proposed budget for the next two years would spend about $100 million of that fund on 10 other recommendations from the commission. The capital projects are separate ideas for using up to $32.5 million of the $75 million earmarked within the $300 million pool of funds for building new infrastructure or remodeling existing buildings.

    The state Department of Public Health and Human Services and consultants for the behavioral health commission presented commission members with areas for capital investments in October. In December, the commission authorized state health department director Charlie Brereton to recommend the following projects to Gianforte:

    • Move the 12-bed Intensive Behavior Center for people with developmental disabilities out of Boulder, possibly to either Helena or Butte, at an estimated cost of up to $13.3 million.
    • Establish a “step-down” facility of about 16 beds, possibly on the campus of Shodair Children’s Hospital in Helena, to serve adults who have been committed to the Montana State Hospital but no longer need the hospital’s intensive psychiatric services.
    • Invest $19.2 million to upgrade the Montana State Hospital’s infrastructure and buildings at Warm Springs, on top of nearly $16 million appropriated in 2023 for renovations already underway there in an effort to regain federal certification of the facility.

    The state Architecture & Engineering Division is reviewing the health department’s cost estimates and developing a timeline for the projects so the information can be sent to the governor. Gianforte ultimately must approve the projects.

    Health department officials have said they plan to take the proposals to legislative committees as needed. “With Commission recommendation and approval from the governor, the Department believes that it has the authority to proceed with capital project expenditures but must secure additional authority from the Legislature to fund operations into future biennia,” said department spokesperson Jon Ebelt.

    The department outlined its facility plans to the legislature’s health and human services budget subcommittee on Jan. 22 as part of a larger presentation on the commission’s work and the 10 noncapital proposals in the governor’s budget. Time limits prevented in-depth discussion and public comment on the facility-related ideas.

    One change the commission didn’t consider: moving the Montana State Hospital to a more populated area from its rural and relatively remote location near Anaconda, in southwestern Montana, in an attempt to alleviate staffing shortages.

    “The administration is committed to continuing to invest in MSH as it exists today,” Brereton told the commission in October, referring to the Montana State Hospital.

    The hospital provides treatment to people with mental illness who have been committed to the state’s custody through a civil or criminal proceeding. It’s been beset by problems, including the loss of federal Medicaid and Medicare funding due to decertification by the federal government in April 2022, staffing issues that have led to high use of expensive traveling health care providers, and turnover in leadership.

    State Sen. Chris Pope (D-Bozeman) was vice chair of a separate committee that met between the 2023 and 2025 legislative sessions and monitored progress toward a 2023 legislative mandate to transition patients with dementia out of the state hospital. He agreed in a recent interview that improving — not moving — MSH is a top priority for the system right now.

    “Right now, we have an institution that is failing and needs to be brought back into the modern age, where it is located right now,” he said after ticking off a list of challenges facing the hospital.

    State Sen. John Esp (R-Big Timber) also noted at the October commission meeting that moving the hospital was likely to run into resistance in any community considered for a new facility.

    Fern, the Whitefish senator, questioned in October whether similar concerns might exist for moving the Intensive Behavior Center out of Boulder. For more than 130 years, the town 30 miles south of Helena has been home, in one form or another, to a state facility for people with developmental disabilities. But Brereton said he believes relocation could succeed with community and stakeholder involvement.

    The 12-bed center in Boulder serves people who have been committed by a court because their behaviors pose an immediate risk of serious harm to themselves or others. It’s the last residential building for people with developmental disabilities on the campus of the former Montana Developmental Center, which the legislature voted in 2015 to close.

    Drew Smith, a consultant with the firm Alvarez & Marsal, told the commission in October that moving the facility from the town of 1,300 to a bigger city such as Helena or Butte would provide access to a larger labor pool, possibly allow a more homelike setting for residents, and open more opportunities for residents to interact with the community and develop skills for returning to their own communities.

    Ideally, Brereton said, the center would be colocated with a new facility included in the governor’s proposed budget, for crisis stabilization services to people with developmental disabilities who are experiencing significant behavioral health issues.

    Meanwhile, the proposed subacute facility with up to 16 beds for state hospital patients would provide a still secure but less structured setting for people who no longer need intensive treatment at Warm Springs but aren’t yet ready to be discharged from the hospital’s care. Brereton told the commission in October the facility would essentially serve as a less restrictive “extension” of the state hospital. He also said the agency would like to contract with a company to staff the subacute facility.

    Health department officials don’t expect the new facility to involve any construction costs. Brereton has said the agency believes an existing building on the Shodair campus would be a good spot for it.

    The state began leasing the building Nov. 1 for use by about 20 state hospital patients displaced by the current remodeling at Warm Springs — a different purpose than the proposed subacute facility.

    Shodair CEO Craig Aasved said Shodair hasn’t committed to having the state permanently use the building as the step-down facility envisioned by the agency and the commission.

    But Brereton said the option is attractive to the health department now that the building has been set up and licensed to serve adults.

    “It seems like a natural place to start,” he told the commission in December, “and we don’t mind that it’s in our backyard here in Helena.”

    Republish This Story

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

    This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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  • What’s behind rising heart attack rates in younger adults

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    Deaths from heart attacks have been in decline for decades, thanks to improved diagnosis and treatments. But, among younger adults under 50 and those from communities that have been marginalized, the trend has reversed. 

    More young people have suffered heart attacks each year since the 2000s—and the reasons why aren’t always clear. 

    Here’s what you need to know about heart attack trends in younger adults.

    Heart attack deaths began declining in the 1980s

    Heart disease has been a leading cause of death in the United States for more than a century, but rates have declined for decades as diagnosis and treatments improved. In the 1950s, half of all Americans who had heart attacks died, compared to one in eight today. 

    A 2023 study found that heart attack deaths declined 4 percent a year between 1999 and 2020. 

    The downward trend plateaued in the 2000s as heart attacks in young adults rose

    In 2012, the decline in heart disease deaths in the U.S. began to slow. A 2018 study revealed that a growing number of younger adults were suffering heart attacks, with women more affected than men. Additionally, younger adults made up one-third of heart attack hospitalizations, with one in five heart attack patients being under 40.

    The following year, data showed that heart attack rates among adults under 40 had increased steadily since 2006. Even more troubling, young patients were just as likely to die from heart attacks as patients more than a decade older. 

    Why are more younger adults having heart attacks?

    Heart attacks have historically been viewed as a condition that primarily affects older adults. So, what has changed in recent decades that puts younger adults at higher risk? 

    Higher rates of obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure

    Several leading risk factors for heart attacks are rising among younger adults.
    Between 2009 and 2020, diabetes and obesity rates increased in Americans ages 20 to 44. 

    During the same period, hypertension, or high blood pressure, rates did not improve in younger adults overall and worsened in young Hispanic people. Notably, young Black adults had hypertension rates nearly twice as high as the general population. 

    Hypertension significantly increases the risk of heart attack and cardiovascular death in young adults.

    Increased substance use

    Substance use of all kinds increases the risk of cardiovascular issues, including heart attacks. A recent study found that cardiovascular deaths associated with substance use increased by 4 percent annually between 1999 and 2019. 

    The rise in substance use-related deaths has accelerated since 2012 and was particularly pronounced among women, younger adults (25-39), American Indians and Alaska Natives, and those in rural areas.

    Alcohol was linked to 65 percent of the deaths, but stimulants (like methamphetamine) and cannabis were the substances associated with the greatest increase in cardiovascular deaths during the study period. 

    Poor mental health

    Depression and poor mental health have been linked to cardiovascular issues in young adults. A 2023 study of nearly 600,000 adults under 50 found that depression and self-reported poor mental health are a risk factor for heart disease, regardless of socioeconomic or other cardiovascular risk factors. 

    Adults under 50 years consistently report mental health conditions at around twice the rate of older adults. Additionally, U.S. depression rates have trended up and reached an all-time high in 2023, when 17.8 percent of adults reported having depression. 

    Depression rates are rising fastest among women, adults under 44, and Black and Hispanic populations. 

    COVID-19

    COVID-19 can cause real, lasting damage to the heart, increasing the risk of certain cardiovascular diseases for up to a year after infection. Vaccination reduces the risk of heart attack and other cardiovascular events caused by COVID-19 infection.

    The first year of the pandemic marked the largest single-year spike in heart-related deaths in five years, including a 14 percent increase in heart attacks. In the second year of the pandemic, heart attacks in young adults increased by 30 percent. 

    Heart attack prevention 

    Not every heart attack is preventable, but everyone can take steps to reduce their risks. The American Heart Association recommends managing health conditions that increase heart disease risk, including diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure. 

    Lifestyle changes like improving diet, reducing substance use, and increasing physical activity can also help reduce heart attack risk. 

    For more information, talk to your health care provider.

    This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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