Happy Heart, Healthy Heart: The link between emotions and cardiovascular disease

Anyone who has ever felt the ache of a broken heart, or the anxious fluttering of butterflies before a promising job interview, knows that the physical heart and the emotions are intimately linked.  In the late 1950s, cardiologists Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman began studying this connection after noticing that the armrests of the chairs …

February: Sweet Enough!

February is all about the heart.  In the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day, grocery stores are filled with sweet heart-shaped cards, candies, and chocolates.  Advertisements and commercials urge us to use the holiday as a time to “speak from the heart,” and tell someone how we feel.  We might buy red roses at the …

You are What Your Mother Ate

It has long been known that many substances pass through the placenta and the breast milk.  This is why women are encouraged to abstain from alcohol and smoking during pregnancy and while breastfeeding.  It should be no surprise then that researchers at Monell Chemical Senses Center have discovered that flavors from the mother’s diet are …