But he reserves final judgment until the therapy is subjected to scientific study. Even some within yoga therapy circles are dubious of Phoenix Rising. Traditional yoga therapists, he said, rely on principles published 2,000 years ago to tap into a person's psyche. Psychologist Daniel Wiener, a professor at Central Connecticut State University, was more impressed. Thanks to a growing array of sophisticated new technologies, doctors can diagnose and treat heart attacks with increasing precision.
Heart attacks occur when blood flow to the heart muscle is interrupted.
This happens when a blockage obstructs one or more of the coronary arteries that supply blood to the heart muscle. Without blood, heart cells lack oxygen and quickly begin to die. As they succumb, the cells spew their contents into the blood, giving doctors chemical signs, or biomarkers, to measure the severity of a heart attack. These biomarkers now include substances called troponins, which give earlier warnings than other biomarkers and allow doctors to diagnose even the mildest heart attacks. We are better at picking up the small heart attacks now than we were a few years ago, and that is what you really want to do.