A healthy heart: tips for adults and kids

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With Valentine's Day just around the corner, it's a great time to take a look at the state of your heart.

"Despite recent progress, cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death and disability for both men and women in the United States," said Dr. Gregg C. Fonarow, UCLA's Eliot Corday Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Science, professor of cardiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and director of the Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center. "However, heart disease can be almost entirely prevented with a healthy lifestyle and excellent control of cardiovascular risk factors."

"The path to heart disease begins at an early age," said Dr. Thomas Klitzner, professor of pediatric cardiology at Mattel Children's Hospital UCLA. "Obesity and high blood pressure are becoming an epidemic in children and young adults. By exercising regularly, eating well and not smoking, children can form heart-healthy habits that will help protect them from future heart attacks and strokes."

Adults: 10 Tips for a Healthy Heart

1. Don't smoke, and avoid secondhand smoke. Smoking markedly increases the risk of heart attacks and heart failure. Quitting smoking rapidly reduces your cardiovascular risk.
2. Exercise. New recommendations are to exercise for 30 to 60 minutes daily. Exercise helps you maintain a healthy weight and keeps your heart strong and disease-free.
3. Maintain a healthy weight. Obesity has been shown to increase the risk of heart attacks, heart failure and diabetes. A healthy diet and exercise program is the best way to maintain a normal weight.
4. Get your cholesterol levels checked. High cholesterol does not cause any symptoms until it is too late. The only way to know if you have a healthy cholesterol level is to get it checked. If you have not had your levels checked in the past year or two, get them checked now.
5. Maintain a healthy cholesterol level. The ideal level for your LDL ("bad" cholesterol) is less than 100. Certain individuals need to achieve even lower LDL cholesterol levels. Keeping your HDL ("good" cholesterol) levels up is also important. Know your lipid levels and talk to your physician about the best plan of action to keep your cholesterol levels ideal.
6. Get your blood pressure checked. Many patients with hypertension are not aware that they have this condition. There are very well-tolerated and effective treatments for high blood pressure.
7. Maintain a normal blood pressure. High blood pressure is a major risk factor for heart attacks, strokes and heart failure. Your systolic blood pressure should be below 140 and your diastolic blood pressure below 90. Certain individuals need to achieve even tighter control of their blood pressure.
8. Take your medications as recommended by your physician. Many patients stop taking their prescribed medications without discussing this with their physicians. Studies show that individuals who stop their cardiovascular medications are at much higher risk for heart attacks, strokes, heart failure and reduced survival, compared with those who adhere to their medical regimen.
9. Take omega-3 fatty acids. Studies show that getting one gram a day of omega-3 fatty acids in the diet, or taking supplements such as fish oil capsules, is associated with a lower risk of heart disease.
10. See your doctor. Regular medical follow-up is one of the best ways to keep your heart healthy and avoid problems down the road.

Children and Adolescents: Seven Tips for a Healthy Heart

1. Watch no more than one hour of television a day. (This includes non-schoolwork-related computer activities, video games and Game Boy-type activities.)
2. Make a point of getting outside and moving around for at least 30 minutes every day.
3. Eat five servings of fruits and vegetables every day.
4. Avoid fast food and fried food, and eat in moderation.
5. Don't smoke.
6. See your pediatrician for all regularly scheduled visits.
7. Report unusual feelings, such as a racing heart or feeling faint, to an adult.

Human auditory neurons more sensitive

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The human ear is exquisitely tuned to discern different sound frequencies, whether such tones are high or low, near or far. But the ability of our ears pales in comparison to the remarkable knack of single neurons in our brains to distinguish between the very subtlest of frequency differences.

Reporting in the Jan. 10 issue of the journal Nature, Dr. Itzhak Fried, professor of neurosurgery and director of the UCLA Epilepsy Surgery Program, and colleagues from Hebrew University and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, show that in humans, a single auditory neuron in the brain exhibits an amazing selectivity to a very narrow sound-frequency range, roughly down to a tenth of an octave.
In fact, the ability of such neurons to detect the slightest of differences in sound frequency far surpasses that of the human auditory nerve, which carries information from the hair cells of the inner ear to the brain's auditory cortex — by as much as 30 times greater sensitivity. Indeed, such frequency tuning in the human auditory cortex is substantially superior to that typically found in the cortex of nonhuman mammals, with the exception of bats.

It is a paradox, the researchers note, that even the auditory neurons of musically untrained people can detect very small differences in frequency much better than their peripheral auditory nerve. With other peripheral nerves, such as those in the skin, the human ability to detect differences between two points — say from the prick of a needle — is limited by the receptors in the skin; the neurons associated with those peripheral nerves display no greater sensitivity. With hearing, however, the sensitivity of the neuron actually exceeds that of the peripheral nerve.

The researchers, including senior author Israel Nelken and first author Yael Bitterman from Hebrew University, determined how neurons in the human auditory cortex responded to various sounds by taking recordings of brain activity from four consenting clinical patients at UCLA Medical Center. These patients had intractable epilepsy and were being monitored with intracranial depth electrodes to identify the focal point of their seizures for potential surgical treatment.

Using clinical criteria, electrodes were implanted bilaterally at various brain sites that were suspected to be involved in the seizures, including the auditory cortex. The recording of brain activity was carried out while patients listened to artificial random chords at different tones per octave and to segments from the film "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.'' Thus, the sounds the patients heard were both artificial (the random chords) and more natural (the voices and noise from the movie soundtrack).

The results surprised the researchers. A single auditory neuron from humans showed an amazing ability to distinguish between very subtle frequency differences, down to a tenth of an octave. This, compared to a sensitivity of about one octave in the cat, about a third of an octave in rats and a half to a full octave in the macaque.

"This is remarkable selectivity," said Fried, who is also co-director of UCLA's Seizure Disorder Center. "It is indeed a mystery why such resolution in humans came to be. Why did we develop this? Such selectivity is not needed for speech comprehension, but it may have a role in musical skill. The 3 percent frequency differences that can be detected by single neurons may explain the fact that even musically untrained people can detect such frequency differences.

"There is also evidence that frequency discrimination in humans correlates with various cognitive skills, including working memory and the capability to learn, but more research is needed to clarify this puzzle," he said.

This study, Fried noted, is the latest example of the power of neurobiological research that uses data drawn directly from inside a living human brain at the single-neuron level. Previous studies from Fried's lab have identified single cells in the human hippocampus specific to place in human navigation, and single cells that can translate varied visual images of the same item — such as the identity of an individual — into a single concept that is instantly and consistently recognizable.

The UCLA Division of Neurosurgery has been recognized by U.S. News & World Report for 17 consecutive years as one of the top 10 neurosurgery programs in the nation. Faculty members are committed to providing the finest and most comprehensive patient care through innovative clinical programs in minimally invasive brain and spinal surgery, neuroendoscopy, neuro-oncology for both adult and pediatric brain tumors, cerebrovascular surgery, stereotactic radiosurgery for brain and spinal disorders, surgery for movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease, and epilepsy surgery.