Pulse Rate Clue to Heart Attacks

Researchers at AstraZenca, a pharmaceutical company, looked at a large group of post-menopausal women over the course of about seven years after randomly recording their heart rates for four years. They found that women who had a resting heart rate of 76 or above ahd a much higher rate of having a coronary event, heart attack or stroke, than did those women with lower resting heart rates of at or below 62 beats per minute. They found that the women with faster heart rates at a 1.6 times higher risk. They noticed that being overwight, having higher blood pressure and higher cholesterol, and consuming more saturated fats, as well has the occurence of diabetes, depression, and smoking was increased in those women that had higher heart rates. Pulse is affected by all of these aspects, so therefore, maybe by simply determining someone's heart rate, doctors can determine their heart risk. They found that the women with lower heart rates were typically more active women and drank more alcohol than the women with higher heart rates. Heart rate changes every minutes depending on mood and activity, so to believe someone will have a high chance of heart risk, doctors would need to take many measurements while the person is truly resting and determine if a person's heart rate is consistantly high. If determining heart risk could be determined early by a higher heart rate, then, it could make prevention of heart risk easier, since many of the causes of heart rate are controllable, such as diet and exercise.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7867304.stm