{"id":197,"date":"2021-01-28T01:57:20","date_gmt":"2021-01-28T01:57:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hannonchiropractic.com\/blog\/?p=197"},"modified":"2021-01-28T01:57:21","modified_gmt":"2021-01-28T01:57:21","slug":"what-your-ears-can-tell-you-about-cardiovascular-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hannonchiropractic.com\/blog\/what-your-ears-can-tell-you-about-cardiovascular-disease\/","title":{"rendered":"What your ears can tell you about cardiovascular disease"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a group of disorders of the heart and blood vessels including coronary heart disease, heart attack, arrhythmia, cerebrovascular disease, peripheral arterial disease, deep vein thrombosis, and more.\u00a0 Symptoms of a possible CVD event are pain or discomfort in the center of the chest and\/or in the arms, left shoulder, elbows, jaw, or back.\u00a0 Other common symptoms of CVD are sudden weakness of the face, arm, or leg most often on one side of the body, numbness of the face, arm, or leg, especially on one side of the body, confusion, difficulty speaking or understanding speech, difficulty seeing with one or both eyes, difficulty walking, dizziness, low energy, loss of balance or coordination, severe headache with no known cause, and fainting or unconsciousness.\u00a0 When it comes to CVD many of us are familiar with the typical risk assessments that raise your risk of CVD such as past or current smoker, high blood pressure, low HDL levels on blood work, family history of CVD, obesity, birth control medications, higher stress levels, inflammation, alcohol consumption, inactivity, elevated CRP, elevated lipo(a), elevated homocystine, elevated fibrinogen, high fasting insulin, and diabetes.\u00a0 But, almost no one knows about diagonal earlobe creases (DELC) or Frank’s sign; Frank\u2019s sign is named after Sanders T. Frank, M.D., who discovered it in the 1970s while examining a patient with heart disease.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stats on CVD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johns Hopkins University reports some interesting stats on CVD. \nCVD causes about 2,200 deaths per day averaging one death every 40\nseconds, 1 out of every three deaths results from CVD, CVD costs about $315\nbillion per year and is increasing, CVD causes more deaths than cancer, chronic\nlower respiratory diseases, and accidents combined.  The CDC stats show that the number of adults\ndiagnosed with heart disease is 28.4 million which accounts for 11.7% of the\npopulation.  CVD accounts for 18.6\nmillion doctor office visits per year, 1.9 million outpatient hospital visits\nper year, and roughly 1 million ER visits per year.  There are 614, 348 deaths per year caused by\nCVD and CVD is ranked the #1 cause of death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What exactly is the Frank’s Sign?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Identifying Frank’s Sign is\nquite simple really.  Look at your ears\nand focus on the lobe part.  If you see a\ndiagonal crease or wrinkle you have a Frank Sign or DELC; specifically the\ncrease starts higher, from the tragus, and extends down and outward to the rear\nedge of the auricle.  There is some\ncontroversy about this sign, but in my years of experience it is a pretty good\nindication someone might have some type of CVD and the need for further\nevaluation and testing.  There are many\nstudies looking into this sign and its relationship to CVD, but no one quite\nunderstands how or why these creases form. \nOne study found an increased risk of CVD cause of death with Frank’s\nsign.  They found that Frank’s sign\nincreased the risk of death 1.5 times in men and 1.7 times in non-diabetic\nwomen.1<\/sup> Another study discussed Frank’s sign as being associated\nwith higher risk of major adverse cardiac events in patients with known CAD, a\nmarker of generalized atherosclerotic disease, carotid-intima media thickness,\nsubclinical atherosclerosis in people without CVD, and ischemic stroke.2<\/sup>\nWhile another study showed that these DELC’s proved to be an indication of CVD\neven without the common other CVD risk factors, in other words it is a good\nstand alone indicator of CVD by and in of itself.3<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In summary, CVD is one of the number one killers in our country and many of the risk factors can be prevented through healthy lifestyle.\u00a0 The World Health Organization states “Most cardiovascular diseases can be prevented by addressing behavioral risk factors such as tobacco use, unhealthy diet and obesity, physical inactivity and harmful use of alcohol”.\u00a0 Know the risk factors that you have personally.\u00a0 Have a healthcare professional guide you on your personal risks and how to minimize these risk factors through lifestyle modifications, clean eating, stress reduction, sleep and exercise.\u00a0 Be proactive on this often times the first sign of a heart attack is a heart attack.\u00a0 Until next time where we will continue our journey of healthy living and clean eating together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Br Heart J. 1989 Apr;\n61(4): 361-364 Diagonal earlobe creases and fatal cardiovascular disease: a\nnecropsy study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Circulation. 2014;130:92-93. Bilateral\nEarlobe Creases and Coronary Artery Disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Wang Y, Mao L, Jia E, et al. Relationship between diagonal earlobe creases and\ncoronary artery disease as determined via angiography. BMJ Open 2016;6:e008558. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a group of disorders of the heart and blood vessels including coronary heart disease, heart attack,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[103,101,100,64,17,102,104,105,46,18],"class_list":["post-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-arrhythmia","tag-cardiovascular","tag-cardiovascular-disease","tag-chiropractic","tag-chiropractic-tips","tag-cvd","tag-dvt","tag-ear-crease","tag-heart","tag-hesperia-chiropractor"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hannonchiropractic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hannonchiropractic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hannonchiropractic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hannonchiropractic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hannonchiropractic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hannonchiropractic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":434,"href":"https:\/\/www.hannonchiropractic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions\/434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hannonchiropractic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hannonchiropractic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hannonchiropractic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}