Long work hours may significantly raise risk for heart disease.

Examining a group of some 7000 low-risk British civil servants, researchers found that long work hours make the risk of heart disease higher. After adjusting for their Framingham risk score, those who worked 11 or more hours per day had a 67% increased risk for coronary disease compared to those who worked the normal 7-8 hours. The authors suggest "further testing is needed."

PositiveTip: Are you working long hours? Perhaps you need to cut back a bit for your heart's sake.

Exercising longer and more frequently helps cardiac rehab patients lose more weight!

It seems in life that nothing worthwhile comes easily! A newly published research paper underscores this fact in finding the higher the energy expenditure of overweight patients in a cardiac rehabilitation program, the greater the improvement in risk.

Typical protocols result in little weight loss for the more than 80% overweight patients who enter cardiac rehabilitation programs. Investigators designed exercise programs which increased energy expenditure by 615 kcal per day compared to the 269 kcal increase in the control group. At five months those in the high-calorie exercise expenditure group had lost more than twice as much weight, and their insulin resistance was significantly better.