What he and Lee hope is that published studies will make people more aware of the mind-body connection. Even to many doctors’ ears, “broken-heart syndrome” still sounds like something from a lovelorn lyric.
When
Lee had jaw and chest pain recently, she returned to the
emergency room at North
Memorial Hospital, where she had been
transferred after her
stress-cardiomyopathy attack. “I was
telling my
doctor there about it and he
didn’t know
what
broken-heart syndrome
was,” she says. “In the same
hospital
where they saved my life!”
|
The X Factor Women have distinct risks in heart disease. Premenopausal women are more prone than men to a puzzling condition called Cardiac Syndrome X, in which they may experience chest pain, signs of poor blood flow in the heart, and difficulty doing light exercise or everyday tasks, but don’t exhibit signs of coronary artery disease. Heart attack poses a greater risk in women, because the symptoms they experience are sometimes different than what everyone has learned to expect. For instance, women are more likely to have pain in their backs or nausea than a shooting pain from their chest to their arm. Women also tend to wait longer than men to seek care. “Most times, it’s women in the family that send men in to get checked out,” says Dr. Scott Sharkey, a cardiologist at the Minneapolis Heart Institute. “If you start noticing unusual symptoms, like your heart racing or beating erratically, or pain
in your chest, have it checked out.”
CVRx Taps the Mind-Body Connection Getting the brain to control blood pressure. CVRx in Maple Grove is testing a device that relies on the brain’s ability to lower blood pressure. Founder and CEO Robert Kieval says that his company’s product, the Rheos Baroreflex Hypertension System, now in clinical trials, fools the brain and stimulates the body’s natural blood-pressure regulating mechanisms. The Rheos system includes a pulse generator that is surgically implanted near the collarbone. Connected to the generator are leads and electrodes that are placed in the carotid arteries. When an electronic pulse is delivered there, it “activates the tissues in the neck that lead the neuro signals up to the brain,” Kieval says. “The brain thinks blood pressure has gone up and works to relieve that. The analogy is holding a match under a thermostat to get it to cool off the room.” CVRx is testing the device in people whose blood pressure cannot be controlled with medication. “We’ve also done some research in congestive heart failure that has shown promise,” Kieval says. “We believe the most efficient way to get anything done in the body is to convince the brain to do it.” |
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