The Quick And Easy Heart Book

About the Book

In a concise straight-forward manner, Dr. Haft distills the explanations, advice and council he has been giving his many heart patients over more than two decades into a readable, easy-to-understand laymans’ manual on heart attacks and heart disease. In addition to describing how the heart works and how and why heart attacks occur he offers useful pointers about returning to work, to sex and to life after a heart attack, and how to avoid having another heart attack (or a heart attack in the first place). The reader will learn about coronary arteriography, angioplasty, stents, bypass surgery, pacemakers, implantable defibrillators, in addition to“good” and “bad” cholesterol. Dr. Haft discusses the current logical management of heart attacks, of angina, of heart failure and of hypertension so the patient and his family will understand what is being done and why. He presents low cholesterol diets and low salt diets that have worked in his patients to effectively lower cholesterol intake and to decrease salt intake.

Diets to lose weight are extensively discussed and effective suggestions that result in weight loss are presented. Dr Haft also presents in detail the low carbohydrate diet that is “heart healthy” that he has used successfully in his patients. In special chapters he presents the unique problems related to women and heart attacks and the current thinking on hormone replacement therapy. Dr Haft describes the exciting new concepts of the role that inflammation and infection play in arteriosclerosis and heart attacks and how they may not be that new. In another special chapter, Dr. Haft also discusses how the heart becomes stiffer as it ages and how this has led to an increase in symptomatic diastolic heart failure, an entity that is just now being recognized, and that is becoming more prevalent as the population matures. To help understand the terms used in heart disease, there is an extensive glossary.