129 Greg Marcus - Understanding Heart Disease With Big Data

Heart Disease is the #1 killer worldwide – across the board and has been for a number of years. We’ve made gains against coronary artery disease, the #1 killer amongst the various types of heart disease, but one particular type of heart disease – the arrhythmias have posed an interesting challenge. We don’t really know many of the causes for certain types of arrhythmias, so many physicians have been following long held beliefs around the topic. Limit caffeine and alcohol intake because of palpitation risk. And some of these “risk factors” are not holding up to scrutiny.

That’s why we talked with Dr. Greg Marcus at UCSF. He’s the director of clinical research for the division of cardiology and has recently launched a number of innovative studies to track heart disease, particularly atrial fibrillation, using big data.

Mother Jones article on caffeine and heartbeats

UCSF study on caffeine and arrythmias

Health eHeart Inquiring Minds Group

Science in the News:

Science Fairs aren’t so fair - Atlantic

Improving Science Fairs - Wired

Science fairs are as flawed as my solar power hot dog cooker - STAT

White House Science Fair

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