The American Health Foundation will celebrate its 13th Annual "Senior Achievement" Awards
Luncheon on Friday, November 11, 2011 (11.11.11.) at Benevenuto's Restaurant, in Boynton
Beach, Florida.  The event honors five outstanding volunteers/staff whose service to the community inspires, enriches and contributes to the "good" of many.  All of our past honorees represent a wide spectrum of volunteer and staff effects including mentoring the children, wildlife and environment, health and medical care and everything in between.

Diagnosing Heart Attacks with an X-ray 

ST. LOUIS, MO (American Health Newswire) - Is it a heart attack or just indigestion? A Harvard study states six-million people who went to hospital emergency rooms for chest pain in 2009, only about 20 percent were actually having heart attacks. Now, researchers are working on a faster way to tell doctors and patients what's really going on.

"I experienced some chest pains, and they wouldn't go away. They took those sticky things and hooked up wires to me, and then they put me on the treadmill," Chris Paradowski told American Health. "I thought is this happening? I'm not that old, you know."

Chris Paradowski knows now what he thought was a heart attack was really just a false alarm, but it took several hours in the ER to find out.

"I thought, too bad there's not an easier way," Chris said.

Cardiologist doctor Greg Lanza agrees.

"The primary problem that we wanted to address was the issue of patients coming into the emergency room with chest pain who have to go through significant testing only to find out they never really had coronary disease," Gregory Lanza, M.D, Ph.D, a cardiologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, explained.

Lanza's team at Washington University is working on a rapid test to get heart attack patients fast treatment and people without heart disease home fast. The test takes minutes, instead of hours.

"What we specifically do is we identify the signature of a heart attack, and that's clot," Dr. Lanza said.

The patient would be injected with a solution containing millions of tiny nanoparticles designed to bind to proteins that form blood clots in the coronary artery. In experimental models, spectral CT scan imaging works like X-ray vision to detect the particles and light up the clot.

"That's the basis of a heart attack. That's what these particles will see," Dr. Lanza said.

It could be the diagnostic imaging tool of the future, separating false alarms like Chris's from the real thing when every second counts. This heart attack test is still experimental. The research phase of the project is continuing with clinical trials still a few years down the road. This same spectral CT technology is also being tested to provide an early warning for stroke. More Information

(American Health Newswire) -- If you're watching your weight, you've probably been told to stay away from potatoes. However, new research shows potatoes can actually reduce blood pressure without causing weight gain.

In the study, 18 patients who were overweight or obese with high blood pressure consumed 6-8 purple potatoes with skins twice daily for a month. They were told to eat purple potatoes because the coloring material in fruits and vegetables is especially rich in phytochemicals. The potatoes in the study were microwaved, which researchers believe is a good way to preserve nutrients.

Results showed the average diastolic blood pressure reading dropped by 4.3 percent, and the average systolic blood pressure reading dropped by 3.5 percent. Most of the participants took blood pressure medications, and none gained weight during the study.

However, researchers say America's favorite potato, the French fry, doesn't offer the same benefits. French fries and potato chips are cooked in high temperatures, which seem to destroy most of the healthy substances, leaving mainly starch, fat and minerals. Although they used purple potatoes in their study, researchers believe red potatoes may have a similar benefit.  

"The potato, more than perhaps any other vegetable, has an undeserved bad reputation that has led many health-conscious people to ban them from their diet," Joe Vinson, Ph.D., who headed the research, was quoted as saying. "Mention 'potato' and people think 'fattening, high-carbs, empty calories'. In reality, when prepared without frying and served without butter, margarine or sour cream, one potato has only 110 calories and dozens of healthful phytochemicals and vitamins. We hope our research helps to remake the potato's popular nutritional image."

SOURCE: 242nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, August, 2011