Just walking a few short blocks can make a big difference in heart health for the elderly. A recent study found that light exercise such as walking or dancing can prevent atrial fibrillation.

Atrial fibrillation is a common heart condition where the upper chambers of the heart twitch instead of beating steadily. The condition is most common in people over age 65, though there is an elevated number of cases in younger people who exercise vigorously (e.g. marathon runners).

The researchers studied the lifestyle habits of more than 5,000 people (average age of 73) and found that those who were active had a reduced risk of the heart condition. In fact, those who walked five to 11 blocks a week had 22% less risk of developing the condition.

AOL Health has more information on healthy aging.

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A recent study published in Circulation: Heart Failure reveals that, for heart failure patients, the day that they're admitted to the hospital may dictate the length of their stay.

The researchers reviewed data for more than 48,000 heart failure patients admitted to 259 different US hospitals. Those admitted on Tuesdays had the shortest stays, while patients admitted on Thursdays and Fridays had the longest stays. This finding didn't hold true for heart attack patients.

Researchers theorize that the discrepancy in length of stay could be do to reduced staffing over the weekend. Though many hospitals are already eschewing the old trend of running on a tighter staff over the weekend. If short staffing is to blame for the increased lengths of stay, correcting the staffing issue could potentially save hundreds of thousands for a hospital.

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Yoga is good for so many things -- you body, your mind and your soul. So to us yogis, it never comes as a surprise when it's found to be good for specific ailments, including this one -- recent studies have found that yoga improves the health of heart failure patients. Yoga not only reduced heart inflammation, but it improved the quality of life in patients, and those who did yoga saw a 26% decrease in symptoms compared to those who didn't.

In lieu of these studies, it would be nice to see yoga become a part of rehabilitation process for cardiac patients, don't you think?

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It never hurts to do a little review on a topic that affects so many women, and some men too. The topic: Anorexia.

Anorexia Nervosa, a type of eating disorder characterized by an intense fear of gaining weight and leading to a restriction of food and dangerous weight loss, is one serious disease -- between one and two of every 10 cases of anorexia leads to death from starvation, cardiac arrest, medical complications, or suicide.

Anorexia can halt the physical and emotional growth of teenagers and can lead to premature osteoporosis, infertility, increased risk of miscarriage, and low-birth-weight babies. Anorexia may be especially deadly for women with insulin-dependent diabetes if they omit or under-use insulin to control their weight.

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If you suffer from panic attacks, which can often feel like a heart attack due to the rapid heart beat and shortness of breath, you should be aware that they can often signal very real heart problems later in life. In a group of women studied those who reported having even just one panic attack were 5 times more likely to report having a heart attack over the next 5 years.

Experts are lumping panic attacks into the same category as other psychological disorders like depression and anxiety, which have already been established as heart risks.

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Ugh, gotta love contradicting health information these days! Seems like it's everywhere, including cardiac health and heart attacks. Where the usual advice for heart attack patients has been to lose weight and live a healthier lifestyle, now new studies are showing it may be better for them not to lose weight. It seems once the damage of obesity has been done there is little to gain by losing the extra pounds, and that the additional weight may actually help the prognosis of heart attack patients.

Although I'm not a doctor this seems screwed up to me. Even if it does benefit the heart in recovering from a heart attack, what about all other serious and life threatening problems that can come from obesity?

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Just what we need, another weight loss pill. I really think less money needs to be spent on drugs and quick fixes and more on education and making healthy options more readily available. So I'm not upset that we may have to wait longer than expected for Lorcaserin, the latest weight loss medication from Arena Pharmaceuticals. The delay is to assure that heart side-effects (Lorcaserin is a descendant of Redux) aren't an issue and there won't be a repeat of past disasters.

Arena Pharmaceuticals is confident they've found and fixed the problem and that Lorcaserin is safe, but we've all heard that before.

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It's hard for most people to find a fitness routine and really stick to it, mostly because it's not that fun or interesting to run on a treadmill or ride a stationary bicycle at the gym -- it definitely gets monotonous. While looking for ways to get cardiac patients to stick to their workouts researchers in Italy may have found an answer for all of us -- dancing. As many as 70% of heart patients drop out of their recommended exercise plans, and doctors wanted to find something that people would enjoy doing and develop a personal interest in.

The study showed that waltzing had the same health benefits as bicycle and treadmill training, and the hope is that because patients dance with partners and it's a more social activity they will be more likely to stick with it long term.

This study was intended to help cardiac patients find an interesting and fun way to exercise, but there's no reason the rest of us can't steal the advice for ourselves! Whether you have heart problems or not, lots of different dance styles can get your blood pumping and make exercising more fun. Maybe instead of going to the gym for my workout I'll head to the dance studio instead.

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