Word: heartful
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Doctors have discovered that these people carry in their blood a component that seems to protect them against the heart disease that plagues many in the Western world, where affluence has made fatty diets and physical inactivity a common way of life. Rose Sweeney, a head nurse at a Cincinnati hospital, is a member of one of the families. "I eat everything I want," she says. "I don't worry about it as far as affecting my heart or building up plaque in my arteries." Sweeney's mother Regina Darpel, 86, notes that other members of her family have lived...
...united in a pact of longevity by the way their bodies process a waxy, odorless substance present in every human being: cholesterol. Cholesterol? The nemesis of every health- conscious person? The object of a swelling tide of medical diatribes against overeating and underexercising? The primary cause of coronary heart disease, which last year caused 1.5 million heart attacks and 550,000 deaths in the U.S.? How can this be? Isn't cholesterol the enemy...
...cholesterol because an excess of cholesterol carried by them can lead to the buildup of harmful deposits in the arteries. The other cholesterol carriers, known as HDLs (for high-density lipoproteins), are considered "good" because, far from being killers, they may actually play a vital role in preventing heart disease. They seem to act like biological vacuum cleaners, sucking up excess cholesterol in the bloodstream. It is because the 50-odd Cincinnati families possess unusually high levels of HDL that they are believed to have such a resilient blood chemistry -- and such long lives...
...blood's total cholesterol. This excess can trigger the formation of plaque on the interior walls of the coronary arteries, a condition called atherosclerosis. In time, this hardened, sludge-filled growth narrows the artery and allows a clot to form, severely blocking the blood flow. The result: a heart attack...
...little HDL may be as important a factor as too much LDL. On the other hand, the higher the level of HDL, the more it may aid in counteracting the effects of the bad cholesterol. This is the view of Dr. William Castelli, medical director of the Framingham Heart Study, a major research project that for the past 40 years has been following the cardiac history of residents of Framingham, Mass. "A number of us," says Castelli, "feel we can do a much better job of predicting who is at risk of getting heart disease if we look...