Published in the European Heart Journal, the finding found that rates of nonfatal heart attacks, angina and even death from heart-related conditions were 60 percent higher in people who worked at least three hours more than what is considered the “normal seven-hour day” when compared with those who didn’t work overtime.

The Whitehall II study, a long-term investigation on the health of 10,000 London office workers who were tracked since 1985, provided the data. In this specific study, the health of 6,014 of these men and women was observed for an average of 11 years.

Although the researchers are not sure what the link is caused by, they did find that overtime workers tended to be type A people, more prone to heart disease and more anxious and depressed. The key question is: did the overwork cause them to be that way or were they that way in the beginning?

It could be that they were simply stressed out from all that extra work since chronic stress is bad for the heart. Or maybe they did not get enough sleep. Sleep deprivation appears to be connected to more health problems over time. In any case, it seems to be better for your health to avoid long hours at the office. Instead, try getting more exercise or just doing things that relax you. When you are less stressed, your productivity is likely to improve anyway.

Unfortunately, some of us just don’t have control over how much we have to work. The study adds that the workload “has increased in recent years” and the U.S. is even one of the countries that is way above average in this area.

This said, it is worth mentioning that the scientists said having “decision latitude” seems to reduce the link between overtime and angina rates in the study. They noted that it is possible that choosing to work long hours might not be as harmful to your heart as actually being forced to work those extended hours.

There were two teams of researchers who came to this conclusion after they looked at evidence from over a dozen areas in the U.S. Canada, and Europe that had begun smoking restrictions.

According to the researchers, the decline in heart attacks was almost right away, and they even increased the longer the bans were held in place. One study found that after smoking bans began, heart attack rates went down an average of 26 percent in a year. After 3 years, heart attack rates declined an average of 36 percent.

David Meyers, from the University of Kansas Medical Center and lead author of one of the studies, said that he is sure of the benefit from the bans and that “the effect of smoke on heart attacks is huge.” He made a conservative estimate that a public smoking ban for the whole U.S. might prevent around 156,400 heart attacks a year. He also said that he was embarrassed that America has not passed a national smoking ban even though Scotland, Ireland, Italy and France already have one in place. His study is in the latest issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

North Carolina, which is the nation’s biggest tobacco-producing state,  joined around 30 other states this year in prohibiting smoking in restaurants and bars. In January the N.C. law will take effect and it authorizes fines of up to $50 for anyone who smokes after being asked to stop. A $200 fine will be issued for managers of establishments who don’t enforce the new law after being warned twice.

Recently published in Circulation, the American Heart Associatio’s journal, is a study from researchers at the University of California, San Francisco. They looked at a lot of related data and came to similar conclusions as the study mentioned earlier.

Also, a new federal ban on flavored cigarettes took effect on September 22. This is one of the first signals that the FDA is practicing new authority to regulate tobacco. The ban is on manufacturing, importing, marketing and distribution of candy, fruit or clove-flavored cigarettes. Health authorities say that these types of cigarettes are more popular with young people. Dr. Lawrence Deyton, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, said that studies show that 17-year-old smokers are three times more likely to use flavored cigarettes than smokers who are older than 25.

The ban is expected to help stop more than 3,600 youth from smoking because FDA officials said that around 90 percent of adult smokers begin smoking as teenagers. A letter was sent to the industry last week that discusses the ban.

This specific treatment is for a rhythm disorder, called atrial fibrillation, that 2.2 million Americans suffer from. It happens when the upper parts of the heart flutter instead of beating normally. This causes blood to pool and form clots that can make their way to the brain, resulting in a stroke.

The blood thinner warfarin, sold as Coumadin and in generic form, is the normal treatment for this condition. Unfortunately, zeroing in on the right dose tends to be tricky – too little and a stroke could result and too much could cause life-threatening bleeding. Patients using the drug have to go to the doctor often for blood tests to monitor their dosage.

Because of these complications, almost half of patients take aspirin instead of warfarin, even though aspirin is way less effective at preventing strokes. 

Dr. Stuart Connolly of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, was in charge of a study that tested whether adding clopidogrel, sold as Plavix by French-based Sanofi-Aventis SA, could be effective. There were 7,554 U.S. patients and 32 other countries who either were not able to or chose not to take the drug warfarin; also half were given Plavix.

At the end of four years of observance, the dual drug treatment lowered the number of these combined conditions – heart attacks, heart-related deaths, strokes and blood clots – by 11 percent. There were 924 of these problems in patients who took only aspirin versus only 832 patients who also took Plavix. Despite that, the combination treatment did raise the risk for serious bleeding – 251 cases against 162 who took only aspirin.

Dr. Connolly said that patients on the combination still fared better. In three years, for every 1,000 patients treated, the combination prevented 28 strokes and six heart attacks and resulted in 20 bleeding cases.

Results were given March 31 at an American College of Cardiology conference and published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.

On the whole, women endure heart attacks about the same as men while under a hospital’s care, but the study revealed that there is a difference in treatment of gender when women experience the most severe type of heart attack. It was found that women receive less of the required medicines and procedures than men, and or it takes a longer period of time to acquire them.

To get this data, 420 hospitals were enrolled in an American Heart Association program. This program objective was to push doctors to observe guidelines for treating patients who have suffered from heart attacks. Past research has indicated that women’s heart attacks were cared for in a less aggressive fashion.

The heart association funded the new research and the results were reported in the group’s medical journal, Circulation, on Monday, December 8, 2008.

A cardiologist who specializes in women’s care, Dr. Nieca Goldberg, said that the study shows that women’s heart attack symptoms are often not being taken seriously.She also adds that women usually don’t have the typical symptoms such as chest pains. They often have pain in their lower bodies or extreme shortness of breath.

In the study, the treatment of 78,254 heart attack victims was observed to check if guidelines were followed and take into account how many of these patients died. The heart association’s”Get with the Guidelines” program require hospitals in the program to log this kind of information in a registry.

Concerning heart attacks overall, approximately the same amount of men and women died in the hospital, but when the most serious kind of heart attacks are taken into consideration, there is a significant difference.

These severe type of heart attacks are caused by a complete blockage of an artery, which keeps oxygen and blood from getting to the heart muscle and causes part of it to die. An electrocardiogram, a machine that finds distinctive changes, is used to do the diagnosis. Prompt action is required to open the artery to get the blood flowing again. This is done either with a clot-dissolving drug or an angioplasty.

In the study, about one-third of the heart attacks were severe. The rough numbers revealed that 10 percent of the women with massive heart attacks died in the hospital. About 6 percent were men. Once the women’s older ages and other differences were considered, the researchers came to the conclusion that the women  in the study were 12 percent more likely than men to die of a severe heart attack while in the hospital. The researchers also revealed that women were not as likely as men to receive necessary medicines, such as an aspirin, within 24 hours, and they were less likely to receive treatment to restore blood flow, or it wasn’t provided quickly enough.

An important point was brought up by Dr. Laura Wexler, a researcher from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. She said that heart disease is usually thought of as a man’s disease, even though it is the leading cause of death in women.