Patients who present in the emergency room with chest pain are given a troponin test (blood sample is taken by nurse). Troponin is a protein enzyme that leaks from the heart when this muscle is [...]
If your calcium score is ZERO, how confident should you feel about not having heart disease, and having nice clean arteries? Did you recently get your coronary calcium score measured and it was zero, but [...]
Anxiety can cause PVCs (premature ventricular contractions), especially if you have anxiety over PVCs. But just how does this happen; what is the mechanism? “Anxiety causes increased stimulation of beta receptors on the heart, which [...]
A cardiologist addresses whether or not premature ventricular contractions can be caused by seasonal allergies. Many people who have PVCs want to know if seasonal allergies can cause this sometimes very disturbing symptom. “This would [...]
Find out why angina can cause vomiting. Angina is a condition in which insufficient blood flow occurs in the heart due to narrowing of the coronary arteries from disease (plaque buildup), and hallmark symptoms are [...]
A doctor answers the question, Can chronic fatigue syndrome cause twitching muscles. “Chronic fatigue might cause muscle twitching in some people, but the mechanism is not clear,” says Dr. Moshe Lewis, MD, board certified in [...]
Find out why inactivity is perhaps the worst thing you can do for low back pain. Bed rest and inactivity are bad for low back pain, you may already know, but do you know why? [...]
Cramping in your calves overnight has a number of possible causes. Many people have suffered from the sudden spasm of a calf muscle in the middle of the night, caused by tensing it a bit [...]
Are you getting up there in years or know someone of very old age and wondering if you can be TOO OLD for total knee replacement surgery? This surgery is invasive and comes with notorious [...]
The complication of DVT following joint replacement surgery can lead to a fatal pulmonary embolism. Therefore, the best prevention tactics for a DVT must be put into place. Other high risk surgeries for DVT are that [...]
Should you rely entirely on what a bone scan shows if you suspect that your total knee replacement has "loosened" or failed? It is important to discuss this with your orthopedic surgeon. A failed total [...]
“Total Knee replacements can ‘fail’ by a number of mechanisms,” says orthopedic surgeon David Fisher, MD, Director of the Total Joint Center at the Indiana Orthopedic Hospital. There are five chief reasons for a failed [...]
Did you know that the use of regional anesthesia for total knee replacement surgery isn’t all that uncommon? General anesthesia brings with it fear in many people that they'll "never wake up." Don't let the [...]
Beets are one of the best foods you can put in your body. At the same time, few foods have caused more anxiety and fear than beets--because in some individuals, they cause urine to turn [...]
Don't Let Long Femurs Stop You from a Perfect Back Squat There's a HUGE issue in the strength training world with femur length. I'm a former personal trainer who has long femurs -- great for [...]
A cardiologist addresses the question of ejection fraction being a predictor of mortality. Ejection fraction is the amount of “squeeze” or force that a heart yields with each beat. Can this actually be a predictor [...]
Marathon runners usually have strong hearts, but believe it or not, they can actually have a low ejection fraction, says a cardiologist. You may have heard that it’s possible for a marathon runner to have [...]
Top surgeons answer questions about just how much you can and cannot lift with a thoracic aortic aneurysm. After doing extensive research in online medical journals regarding weightlifting limitations for people with a thoracic aortic [...]
Symptoms of rotator cuff injury and biceps tendonitis overlap; a sports medicine doctor explains if there’s a way to tell difference. Is there a way to tell the difference between the symptoms of a rotator [...]
Not only can sore neck muscles from working out with weights cause a headache, but don’t underestimate what bad sitting posture can do, either. A headache can be an alarming symptom, but remember, the head [...]
Are you plagued by joint pain at night? Joint pain at night is no picnic, and it can be caused by one or more of several factors. Nighttime Joint Pain vs. Muscle Aches “The first [...]
Here's what can cause the ache in your tailbone when you’ve been sitting. And what to do. Does your tailbone hurt after you’ve been sitting for a while, even though you haven’t recently fallen on [...]
There's a specific reason why your elbow hurts or feels "funny" when you bench press. The tweaky kind of pain may occur the most as you remove the bar from the rack, then lessen a [...]
Find out why you get sudden “pain attacks” in your shoulder that can stop you in your tracks. You’re just sitting there, maybe watching TV or eating, when suddenly, it strikes out of the blue: [...]
More and more people are having their tibias or shins surgically lengthened strictly for cosmetic purposes: that of being taller. Surgical techniques for tibia lengthening have improved over the years, and people who desperately want [...]
Find out the likely causes of that awful, stabbing pain in your ankle that comes out of the blue. You haven’t broken your ankle; you haven’t even twisted it. Yet every so often you get [...]
Sitting should not have to cause low back pain, and there are things you can do to remedy this annoying problem. Why do some people have low back pain after sitting for a while? Let’s [...]
Can’t do pulling exercises (rows, chin-ups, deadlifts) because of elbow pain? I have the solution. Elbow pain often comes in the form of “golfer’s elbow.” This is an inflammation of the tendon on the inner [...]
Believe it or not, there are two ways to do inverted rows while protecting your golfer’s elbow from further injury or pain. If you have golfer’s elbow, you can actually do sets of inverted rows. [...]
There’s actually a way to do the shoulder shrug exercise against heavy resistance if you can’t grip due to golfer’s elbow. Golfer’s elbow has the potential to make gripping hurt, since the medial epicondyle tendon [...]
If you have golfer’s elbow, here is how to perform the lat pull-down without gripping a bar or handle. If your golfer’s elbow makes it painful to pull against resistance, this means you can’t do [...]
Learn how to do biceps curls even if you must avoid gripping due to golfer’s elbow. You need not give up biceps-targeted exercises just because you can’t grip due to golfer’s elbow. There are two [...]
If golfer’s elbow interferes with your bench press, here’s a way to help get around this problem. If your golfer’s elbow is bad enough, bench pressing will aggravate it. I’m a former personal trainer who [...]
If you have golfer's elbow, here's how to do inverted rows without any gripping by using a TRX suspension device. Whether or not you have golfer’s elbow, the TRX setup is the same: Make sure [...]
A fast resting pulse is not good for the heart, and unfortunately, a stressful life can cause this. Stress is bad for the heart, and one way this is so is because chronic stress or [...]
Heart problems, namely severely clogged arteries, cause chest pain -- even at rest if the disease is severe enough. But how short is too short for chest pain to be heart related? “Anginal chest pain [...]
Can a person have a low ejection fraction, even like 35 percent, yet not have congestive heart failure? Ejection fraction means how much blood the heart pumps out with each beat. For this article I [...]
People with costochondritis may say it “feels like a heart attack,” that the pain can be severe, but is there a way to tell the difference? Is there a way for a layperson to tell [...]
Learn exactly what you should do, tests to have, etc., if you have knee pain and swelling long after TKR. If you have knee pain despite having “recovered” from total knee replacement surgery, and especially [...]
Believe it or not, there IS a version of the deadlift that can be done if you have golfer’s elbow (medial epicondylitis). I've had golfer’s elbow. Until the tendon healed, I couldn't do deadlifts or [...]
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