cardiovascular function tagged posts

A supplement widely promoted for athletic performance may interfere with some of the heart’s beneficial adaptations to exercise, according to new Dalhousie University research published in Scientific Reports.

While these supplements are often promoted to support exercise performance and cardiovascular function, researchers found the combination of sodium nitrate and running prevented several beneficial cardiac improvements normally associated with exercise in females.

Those benefits included changes linked to heart structure, ventricular function and calcium handling in heart cells, which helps regulate contraction and relaxation...

Exposure to even moderate ambient lighting during nighttime sleep, compared to sleeping in a dimly lit room, harms your cardiovascular function during sleep and increases your insulin resistance the following morning, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study.

“The results from this study demonstrate that just a single night of exposure to moderate room lighting during sleep can impair glucose and cardiovascular regulation, which are risk factors for heart disease, diabetes and metabolic syndrome,” said senior study author Dr. Phyllis Zee, chief of sleep medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a Northwestern Medicine physician. “It’s important for people to avoid or minimize the amount of light exposure during sleep.”

There is already evidence that li...