Regular meditation helps us to unwind and to avoid the memory loss that can come with high stress levels.

Heart disease is still the number one cause of death in Cork.

Watching too much TV can be fatal, a new study has found. Hours of inactivity slumped in front of a television raises the risk of dying from a blood clot in the lungs, say scientists.

BRITAIN’S chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne led the United Kingdom into a small but growing club of countries when he introduced his eight budget on Wednesday. Mr Osborne announced that Britain would impose a sugar tax on soft drinks from 2018 to try to slow the obesity epidemic threatening millions of individuals and the economic sustainability of public health services.

Ground-breaking work on pre-eclampsia, a life-threatening complication of late pregnancy, has earned experts at the Irish Centre for Fetal and Neonatal Translational Research (Infant), based at UCC and Cork University Maternity Hospital, an award from the American Heart Association.

A tiny, wireless pacemaker could offer some heart patients a surgery-free alternative to the traditional devices, a new study says.

The American Heart Association’s first policy statement on electronic cigarettes backs the view that the devices are a last resort to help smokers quit.

Eating probiotics regularly may help lower blood pressure, according to research findings.

A new class of experimental medicines can dramatically lower cholesterol, raising hopes of a fresh option for people who cannot tolerate or do not get enough help from Lipitor and other statins used for decades.

Most children today cannot run as far or as fast as their parents did, according to research.

Giving paralysed stroke patients a set of thought- controlled virtual reality hands could help them regain movement of their limbs, scientists believe.

The Irish Heart Foundation has repeated its call for a tax on caffeine-filled “energy” drinks after a study warned they can cause heart problems and, potentially, death.

DAVID Bobbett, a global entrepreneur and a major shareholder in H&K International, was on a fast track to becoming a fatal statistic. On the face of things he was an unlikely candidate.

THE next time you forget your partner’s birthday or fail to turn up for a planned meal, don’t look at their face for signs of anger.

Blood group helps to determine a person’s risk of heart disease, a study has found.

Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was being kept alive by life support after he was rushed from a prison hospital to a military one in a rapidly worsening condition, officials said.

The draft code proposal by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, to ban the advertising of cheese on children’s television programmes, is a recipe for disaster, and represents the predictable consequences of anti-fat lobbying by senior HSE dieticians.

Toni Braxton has been hospitalised after her immune system started to shut down.

DEPRESSION may increase the chances of women having a stroke.

Jamie Oliver has vowed to keep his healthy food fight boiling in Los Angeles after his recipe for success curdled with schools chiefs.

Elderly people are not putting themselves at greater risk of heart attack if they take the painkiller ibuprofen, a study said today.

PepsiCo plans to remove sugary drinks from schools worldwide, the company has announced, following the success of programmes in the US aimed at cutting down on childhood obesity.

A 51-year-old American man has embraced the Valentine’s Day spirit faster than anyone before, giving 7,777 hugs in 24 hours for a new world record.

BRITISH doctors designed a radical solution to save a girl with major heart problems in 1995: they implanted a donor heart directly onto her own failing heart.

MOST people who are overweight are unhappy to be so. For the vast majority of obese people the feelings can be even stronger, many are deeply unhappy that they have lost control of such a fundamental aspect of their wellbeing.

Cells from umbilical-cord blood have been used to build early versions of laboratory-grown heart valves that could in future save the lives of sick children.

TYPICALLY “western” diets that include a lot of fried food, salty snacks and meat contribute almost a third of the heart attack risk around the world, a study has found.

TWO out of five men and almost a third of women around the world are overweight, a major population study has shown.

America’s largest beverage distributors are to halt nearly all sales of fizzy drinks to schools – a step that will remove them from vending machines and cafeterias across the country.

Garda cars in two districts are to carry life-saving equipment in a 12-month pilot project.

US PRESIDENT George Bush and dozens of other leading politicians are racing to distance themselves from a disgraced political lobbyist.

Ariel Sharon, who suffered a mild stroke less than a week ago, has cholesterol and blood pressure levels that are astonishingly normal for a man of his weight and age, his doctor said today after an Israeli newspaper revealed some of his medical records for the first time.

SWITCHING to decaffeinated coffee could increase the risk of heart disease, according to research published yesterday.

Two kidney patients from Argentina have received the world’s first blood vessels grown in a lab dish from snippets of their own skin, in an exciting step towards helping people with a variety of diseases, it emerged today.

CHILDREN who are treated to lots of meals out are more likely to face greater heart disease risk factors, research showed yesterday.

Former US President Bill Clinton underwent surgery for the second time in six months today as doctors removed fluid and scar tissue that developed following his quadruple heart bypass.

Taking very high doses of a drug to push cholesterol to very low levels can help people with heart disease avoid strokes and heart attacks, research has revealed.

Middle-age women can cut their risk of strokes but not heart attacks by regularly taking low doses of aspirin, and the pills help prevent both problems in women 65 and older, a major study found today.

Fast food giant McDonald’s will pay around €6.8m to settle a lawsuit accusing the company of failing to inform consumers of delays in a plan to reduce fat in the cooking oil used for its popular French fries and other foods.

Former President Bill Clinton’s heart bypass, expected today, will probably be an ordinary replumbing of his ailing heart, not some new whiz-bang robotic or “keyhole” surgery, leading surgeons say.

Flying is not as risky for heart patients as doctors once thought, according to new research published tonight.

Even when relaxed, Slobodan Milosevic’s blood pressure is above normal. At times of stress during his war crimes trial, doctors say it shoots up to dangerous levels.