Can anger management help heart health?

How's this for a way to keep health care costs down: learn to control your emotions.

At least that's what Dr. Rachel Lampert, associate professor of cardiology and electrophysiology at Yale University, is suggesting. In fact, if you're suffering from an irregular heartbeat, her research suggests that simply learning to control your emotions can potentially help you avoid getting a defibrillator (also known as a "pace maker") implanted.

Lambert examined 62 people with pacemakers and had them take a mental stress test to determine their T-Wave alternan patterns (something that has been linked to arrhythmia fatalities).

T wave alternans are occasional irregular heartbeats, which can be detected using an electrocardiogram (ECG). People with higher T wave alternans are at an increased risk of potentially deadly cardiac arrhythmias. If you're at a high risk, doctors will often implant a device called a defibrillator in order to stop any arrhythmias.

During the course of three years, 16 percent of the test subjects experienced irregular heartbeats that engaged their pacemakers. These same people had more T-Wave alterans than the patients who did not experience arrhythmias.

Lampert says that the study "shows what anger does to the heart electrical system; in the laboratory, anger is predictive of having arrhythmias in the future."

The next step, according to Lampert, is to determine if anger management classes have a positive effect on the heart's electrical system. "We take people who have defibrillators, measure their T-Wave alternans, and enroll them in a self control program." She said. "We want to see if perhaps we can improve their quality of life."

It's a small study, but it's hard to argue that people who have pacemakers should be taking it easy when it comes to stress and anger.

Statistics show breast cancer decline

There are some encouraging statistics on breast cancer coming out of the UK. According to The Cancer Research UK, the number of women who have died from breast cancer fell below the 12,000 mark in 2007 - that's the lowest point that it's been since numbers of cancer deaths began to be recorded in 1971.

Dr. Sarah Cant of the UK's Breakthrough Breast Cancer says the statistic "highlights the impact of improved treatments, breast screening, and awareness of the disease."

The number of deaths from breast cancer fell steadily in the UK after reaching a high watermark in 1989 of a stunning 15,625 victims, and dropped every year until 1994. But in spite of this, the disease is still the most common cancer in all of the UK. In fact, there's been a 50 percent spike in the number of breast cancer diagnoses over the last quarter century.

Naturally, the few deaths the better. But my questions is, is it reason for encouragement - or just a statistical anomaly?

It's too soon to tell. But what I can tell you is that any decline in breast cancer cases is NOT because of the faulty, barbaric mammogram. To read more on the dangers of mammograms, see my article, Mammograms May Increase Potential for Developing Breast Cancer.