"If Either of Your Parents Smoked, Go and Get Your Heart Checked Out"

That's the ominous headline from TIME.

My father smoked Camels when I was a kid. One grandfather smoked Winstons. The other grandfather preferred stogies. I was around my dad and grandfather #1 all the time as a kid.

Additionally, I often was taken along with my dad and grandfather when they bowled, where I learned how to keep score. (This now being an entirely useless skill.) There usually was cigarette smoke wafting into my face throughout these evenings out. So, I got exposed to lots of second-hand smoke.

Except for a few cigarettes and Tiparillos (don't ask me to explain), I never smoked, one of the big risk factors for heart attacks.

Until recently, I've never been overweight. And I have tried always to exercise regularly and eat right. I also had no relevant family bad heart history.

Yet, in 2010, I had a major heart attack. My cardiologist says it had nothing to do with stress, but with a chunk of plaque that lodged the wrong way, creating a 100% blockage in left anterior descending artery. Fortunately, I was otherwise healthy enough that collateral arteries took up the slack and I wasn't killed by a blockage that the cardiologists graphically refer to as "the widow maker."

My cardiologist calls my heart attack, which resulted in the loss of 40% of my heart and the installation of a stent and later, a pacemaker/defibrillator, "a fluke."

That may be. But I can only refer to my survival as a miracle.

This article from TIME makes me wonder if the heart attack wasn't a delayed response to secondhand smoke to which I was exposed in childhood.

We'll never know this side of heaven, of course. But I think the headline gives good advice to those exposed to secondhand smoke: Get your heart checked.

Any Questions?

This from the Harvard Business Review's Daily Stat. Draw your own conclusions.

JANUARY 2, 2013

Fatal Heart Attacks Decline When Workplaces Go Smoke-Free

U.S. states that impose workplace smoking bans covering the entire population can expect to see about 70 fewer fatal heart attacks annually, on average, among workers ages 25 to 54, in comparison with states having no workplace smoking bans, says a team led by Scott Adams of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Put another way, heart attack fatalities for that age group fall by 17% when states go from having no bans to total workplace smoking prohibitions, the researchers say. Some 36 states have workplace smoking bans of some kind, but many of the laws exclude restaurants and bars.

Source: The short-term impact of smoke-free workplace laws on fatal heart attacks