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for Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Welcome to another edition of Women's Heart Foundation email newsletter.       youtube    twitter  facebook

This is the last week of February, National Heart Month, and we want to take a moment to highlight outstanding physicians who are leading the way for our heart health. These doctors share a more global perspective on how we can move forward to save lives. We also want to empower you as a consumer to take action and become part of the Red Dress movement by supporting two projects.

First, you can place your vote for the iRescu project, currently in the lead of the inaugural American Heart Association NYC Health Sciences Innovation Investment Forum, taking place on the Medstartr webpage. iRescu is an App that is under development that will allow you to locate - anywhere in the world - the nearest AED in case of sudden cardiac arrest. This is a most worthy project that is critically important for all of us, so please donate any amount you wish, in support of the iRescu project TODAY, as voting ends at midnight tonight - February 25.Click here to go to Medstartr webpage to learn more about this project and to donate to the iRescu project.

Second, you can visit the eBay Cause and Effect page of the Women's Heart Foundation, as we are the featured charity for this week, February 24 to March 1. Buy, sell, dedicate a percentage of sale proceeds to the Women's Heart Foundation, or simply give a dollar at checkout. If you go to www.ebay.com/causeandeffect you can save us as your favorite nonprofit, which allows you to donate whenever you buy or sell on eBay. You can also Follow Our Collections on eBay and keep up to date on the newest items supporting our cause. It all matters to us, and to the women and families we serve, in the name of women's heart health and prevention, so please support the Women's Heart Foundation on eBay. Our eBay code for buying, selling and dedicating to charity is url: http://bit.ly/1bSocLu (you can also click on the widget below to Follow us on eBay)

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iRescu Project - Adding AED to the Chain of Survival

Nadine Levick, MD, MPH is a NYC emergency room physician with a big idea: If survival rates from sudden cardiac arrest are only about 8 percent with CPR instituted, and when combined with use of an AED (Automated External Defibrillator), jump to over 80 percent, then why can't we empower the public to save lives by helping them locate an AED? And so, the iRescU project was born. It's been three years, and iRescU has been advanced with gratis assistance of the data managers at Telematicus on a robust CABIS system. Dr. Levick has conducted five AED location challenges contests in communities around the world, and has collaboratively received government data on locations of AEDs in public places in a number of cities in the U.S.A. She knows the iRescU movement is only in its beginning phase, and she knows she needs to enlist the support of big data geo-locations servers like GOOGLE MAPS, and geo-locators worldwide like 4SQUARE and geo-caching communities globally, as this is the only way to crowd-source and gamify such a massive undertaking. The budget to pilot the demo of the iRescu App is set at $100,000, she said. With 300,000 people of all ages dying every single day from sudden cardiac arrest, finding an AED is critical. We can work together to reverse this number. You can help by voting for her project today. Go to medstartr. Click here to view the video and see the donation page.

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MCG Project - Early, Accurate and Safe Diagnosis of Heart Disease

Joseph T. Shen, MD is an inventor, computational electrophysiologist, and digital medicine scientist who imagines a world without heart disease. He is the founder of Premier Heart, LLC and developer of a scientifically and clinically proven disruptive medical diagnostic system, Multifunction Cardiogram (MCG). This new science of Computational Biology technology will fundamentally change how heart disease is diagnosed. "We created MCG Technolgy to solve an intractable problem in cardiology: the extreme and unacceptable inaccuracies of the traditional EKG. EKG can only detect approximately a third of patients with severe coronary artery disease, leaving them in danger of dying from their undetected illness", Dr. Shen said. "The problem is even worse for women, leading in part to more women dying from heart disease than men. The time has come for radical change. MCG is incredibly accurate, objective, and yields rapid reproducible results." MCG technology has been studied at leading research centers globally, all with similar findings, attesting to the accuracy of MCG.

As of January 1, 2014, the Affordable Care Act has changed the way hospitals and practitioners are paid. Insurance reimbursement for care rendered by a provider is now based on a Diagnosis Related Group, or "DRG" and a positive patient outcome. Looking to the bottom line, hospital emergency rooms are looking to the MCG as a cost-effective tool to manage patients entering into their system with complaints of chest pain. Women's Heart Foundation predicts in less than five years, this technology will change the paradigm of medicine, in particular, the practice of cardiology. MCG represents great hope for women and saving our lives from our number one killer: heart disease.

Click here to learn more about MCG at PremierHeart.com or you can click here to view a video of John Strobeck, M.D., PhD, describing the technology at the 2011 M-Health Summit.


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The Yentl Syndrome - Researching Women's Heart Disease

Noel Bairey Merz, MD, FACC is Director of the Barbra Streisand Women's Heart Center as well as the Preventive and Rehabilitative Cardiac Center at Cedars-Sinai's Heart Institute. She also is Professor of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai and holds the Women's Guild Chair in Women's Health.

Dr. Bairey Merz's research interests include women and heart disease, mental stress and heart disease, the role of exercise and stress management in reversing disease, and the role of nutrition in heart disease. Currently, she is chair of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-sponsored WISE (Women's Ischemic Syndrome Evaluation) initiative, which is investigating potential methods for more effective diagnosis and evaluation of coronary artery disease in women. Dr. Bairey Merz has received investigational grants from the NIH-National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), NIH-National Center for Alternative and Complementary Medicine (NCCAM), the Pfeiffer Foundation, The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, The Barbra Streisand Foundation, and the Women's Guild.

As a cardiologist and researcher who imagines a better way to help women with early diagnosis and prevention of heart disease, she readily admits much of the ground work has been accomplished through the Women's Health Study, under the leadership of then NIH Director Bernadine Healy, M.D. who was also a cardiologist. To hear Dr. Merz's lecture at TEDMED click here

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A Plant-based Diet for Heart and Health

Caldwell Esselstyn, MD worked at the Cleveland Clinic as a surgeon. He is the author of the 2007 text, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, in which he discusses his heart diseased patients's reversals of atherosclerosis by following a low-fat, whole foods, plant-based diet. The second half of the book contains recipes from his wife Ann Crile Esselstyn (the granddaughter of George Washington Crile, founder of the Cleveland Clinic) who works with him to counsel patients on cooking practices. Esselstyn and his family of four children have maintained a plant-based diet since the mid-1980s. Esselstyn attributes the success of his twelve-year trial with heart patients to low mean levels of both total cholesterol (145 mg/dl) and LDL cholesterol (82 mg/dl).*

After undergoing cardiac surgery in 2010, former American president Bill Clinton adopted the plant-based diet recommended by Dean Ornish, T. Colin Campbell, and Esselstyn. Esselstyn stars in the 2011 documentary Forks Over Knives, based on his work in Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease and the research of his colleague T. Colin Campbell in The China Study (2005). It also explores the work of other doctors who share this approach, as well as the personal experiences of some Esselstyn's patients. Esselstyn's son, Rip Esselstyn (pictured above), a former "professional triathlete," firefighter, and author of The Engine 2 Diet based on his father's research, also appears in the film, as does his wife Ann. To hear Rip Esselstyn's stellar lecture at TEDMED click here

*source: wikipedia


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Pioneer in Gender Medicine - laying a new foundation for care of women (and men)

Marianne J. Legato, MD, FAAC is an internationally known academic physician, author, and lecturer and globally recognized expert in gender-specific medicine, the science of how normal human function and the experience of the same disease vary as a function of gender/biological sex. Legato is an expert on the sex-specific aspects of men's and women's health and is the founder and director of the Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine at Columbia University. In 2008, she established the non-profit Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine. She has devoted much of her research to the subject of women and heart disease and in 1992 won the American Heart Association's Blakeslee Award for writing the best book on cardiovascular disease written for the lay public.

Legato is the founder and editor of The Journal of Gender-Specific Medicine and of Gender-Medicine and a leading advocate for the inclusion of women in clinical trials. She is annually cited in New York Magazine's top doctors issues. She is also the author of bestselling Why Men Die First: How to Lengthen Your Lifespan, Eve's Rib:The New Science of Gender-Specific Medicine and How It Can Save Your Life, The Female Heart, and Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget, which was translated into eleven languages. She edited the medical textbook, Principles of Gender Specific Medicine, the first compilation for professional audiences of the sex-specific aspects of normal human function and disease.*

*source: wikipedia




Imagine a world without heart attack and stroke

Imagine area high schools being open year-round to offer free activites for every member of the community; a connected place where participation in multi-generational intramural sports is the norm, and includes swimming, courses in healthy cooking, and fitness and wellness classes; a place to live, laugh, learn and grow. Now, imagine an obese or overweight child who can't dream her dreams without fear that this illness will rob her of her future, or the same affliction take away a parent due to premature death.

A better future can be ours but it takes advocacy at the grassroots level.

Please consider making a donation and help us build a world without heart disease.

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