Corner Bar? More Like Coronary Bar!

Imagine, for a moment, that it's the end of a very long week. Work's been killer. And you haven't found much comfort at home either. You've been on the move nonstop since Monday morning, and what you really want right now is a nice beer at your local neighborhood bar. Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came. 

A cold beer after work may be one of life's great and simple pleasures, but you can always trust scientists to ruin the fun, and the concept of the local bar and/or restaurant is no exception. Enter a group of epidemiologists from Tulane University in New Orleans and their research into the relationship between heart health and proximity to ready-to-eat food environments. 

Specifically, the researchers pulled data from the UK Biobank – a massive database containing health information from over 500,000 adults – over a 12-year period, ultimately including 13,000 cases of heart failure. With that data collected, they measured the patients' proximity to ready-to-eat food establishments: bars and pubs, restaurants, and fast-food restaurants, as well as the density of those establishments.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, people who lived in high-density restaurant environments had a greater risk of heart failure pretty much across the board. Those who had high densities of bars and restaurants with 1 km of their home had a 16% greater risk of heart failure, compared with those who had no such outlets nearby. People who lived within 500 meters of a bar or pub had a 13% greater risk of heart failure, compared with those who lived more than 2 km from one.

While the finding linking heart failure and exposure to bars and restaurants is new, the authors noted that it is in line with expectations, since other studies have found similar links with disorders such as type 2 diabetes and obesity. To combat this, the researchers suggested improving access to healthier food choices and physical fitness facilities would likely reduce the increased risk of heart failure that goes along with unhealthy food and sweet, delicious beer. 

Now, whether or not people will choose to go to a salad bar instead of a beer bar is ... questionable, especially in England, land of the pub right down the street. And it just goes to show that, even in the Big Easy, land of Mardi Gras, every party needs a pooper.

CPR Bowl LVIII: Taylor Swift vs. The Bee Gees

It's Taylor Swift's world right now, we're just living in it. Just look at the past few weeks: Announcing new albums, winning the Super Bowl, hosting academic conferences, there truly is no corner of this world Ms. Swift doesn't have a connection to.

Okay, fine, I'm exaggerating her influence slightly. She's not actually hosting Swiftposium 2024, held this past week in Melbourne, nor will she be making an appearance. No, it was just hundreds of scholars and scientists from nearly 80 legitimate academic institutions from all over the world gathered to "critical dialogue about Swift’s popularity and its profound implications for a range of issues including gender, fandom, popular culture, literature, the economy, the music industry, and more."

Now that we've set the scene, let's backtrack a bit and talk about CPR. It's an important skill for people to learn; while it may not be able to jump-start a stopped heart on its own, CPR can keep the blood flowing and brain functioning well enough until proper medical equipment arrives. People in cardiac arrest who receive CPR are twice as likely to survive than those who don't. Simply put, CPR saves lives.

A crucial aspect of CPR is, of course, the chest compressions, which need to be delivered at a rate of 100-120 beats per minute. Do you know what else is delivered at a similar rhythm? Music. Specifically, the Bee Gees song Stayin' Alive, which has been used as a metronome for CPR for decades. It's 103 bpm, right in the optimal range, and of course, you can't beat that title for relevance. 

Unfortunately, Stayin' Alive is nearly 50 years old at this point, which means its moving even out of the "dad rock" realm and into the world of "stuff your grandparents liked." The world understands The New York Times' effect on man, and we've moved on to new artists and new philosophical dilemmas. Which means CPR instructors need new music to act as a guide for kids who've never heard of the Bee Gees. 

That's why a group from Monash University created a Spotify playlist of 54 Taylor Swift songs at the crucial 100-120 bpm range, perfect for CPR. It makes sense. It's tough to think of a more popular artist today than Taylor Swift, and love her or loathe her, younger people will absolutely know her music. 

“If you can utilise something that people love and use it to empower them to feel confident in learning a skill that could save someone, then that’s really powerful,” said Dr. Stephen Nicholls, director of the Victorian Heart Institute, who presented the playlist at Swiftposium 2024. “There’s a CPR-suitable song for every Swifty Era.”

And indeed there is. While nothing can beat "Stayin' Alive" for sheer on-the-nose accuracy, Taylor Swift songs such as Long Live, Soon You'll Get Better, and King Of My Heart are certainly appropriate enough to keep cardiac arrest patients alive. There are a few questionable choices though; I'm not so sure I'd want to perform CPR to the tune of You're Losing Me, Is It Over Now? or perhaps worst of all, You're On Your Own, Kid. "Oops, sorry, I'd save you, but the song says you're on your own, and what Taylor Swift says goes."