Talk about missing the point!

Blood thinners are supposed to reduce the risk of the blood clots that can lead to a heart attack or stroke — but a new drug that’s intended to slash the risk of stroke can actually increase the odds of a heart attack.

That’s not a benefit — that’s trading one deadly risk for another.

The drug, called dabigatran but sold under the brand name Pradaxa, is most commonly given to atrial fibrillation patients, who have a higher risk of stroke to begin with.

It’s also the first in a series of new blood thinners specifically aimed at preventing strokes — but there were problems with it right out of the gate: Even in the studies used to get it approved, that heart risk kept popping up.

Now, a new analysis shows this wasn’t just a fluke, as the drug’s maker no doubt hoped, but a genuine threat that should have anyone thinking twice before popping these pills.

And get this: While the drug is supposed to slash the risk of stroke by a third, the new numbers show that it increases the risk of heart attack and acute coronary syndrome by pretty much the same amount — nearly a third — when compared to the older blood thinners as well as a placebo.

That’s not the only serious problem with Pradaxa. This drug hasn’t been on the market very long, but the FDA is already looking into reports of serious bleeding problems (being the FDA, however, you can bet that “look” is all they’ll do).

I’m sure this sounds like a win for warfarin and the older generation of blood thinners, but warfarin itself is so dangerous it’s actually been used for years as a rat poison — and patients who take it need to be closely watched, lest they end up like those rats.

Like all blood thinners, warfarin can also cause serious bleeding problems, not to mention swelling, bruising, flu-like symptoms and more. It’s even been linked to gangrene.

It’s nuts to take those risks when there are completely natural options on the table — including ordinary fish oil, safe for men and mice alike.

Talk to your doc before making any changes, but a skilled naturopathic physician can wean you off risky meds and help you find the right amount of your safe alternative.

And you can leave the warfarin in the garage for the rats.

“Prehypertension” is a name that sounds like it was invented to scare patients — and it’s definitely succeeded.

No one wants to be “pre” any disease — so while the guidelines don’t call for treating prehypertension with meds, many docs do so anyway… and their scared patients play right along.

Now, they’re being given a new piece of ammunition for those drugs as a study finds that patients who get medicated for this non-condition have a lower risk of stroke.

But as you’ll see in a moment, this ammunition has all the power of a marshmallow bullet.

Researchers carefully selected 16 trials on BP meds that involved more than 70,000 prehypertension patients who were given either meds or a placebo — and they didn’t find what you’d expect for a condition that’s supposedly linked to heart risk.

Meds, as it turned out, made no difference at all when it came to heart attack and even death from heart-related problems — which is more proof you don’t need to worry about “pre” hypertension.

But the researchers say they did find a small difference in the risk of stroke: Just 2.01 percent of patients on meds suffered one versus 2.61 percent of those on the placebo.

Of course, when you’re dealing with very tiny numbers, little differences can sound bigger than they really are — and in this case, it’s a headline-grabbing difference of 22 percent.

The researchers claimed that was significant enough to begin drugging every prehypertension patient — after all, they said, you’d “only” need to drug 169 people for 4.3 years to prevent a single stroke.

That doesn’t sound very small to me, either — and that’s not the only problem with this study. As a meta-analysis, the researchers were able to pick and choose the studies they included… so who knows what studies didn’t make the final cut.

There was also at least one glaring conflict: The lead researcher accepted a pile of money from Ranbaxy — a leading maker of generic meds, including hypertension drugs.

In fact, the same week this study came out, the company unveiled its latest generic: a pill that combines a statin with (drumroll please)… a BP med.

The proverbial broken heart can actually do the job for real: Depressed people have double the risk of heart attack and a much higher risk of heart problems overall than non-depressed people.

A fluke? No way — the link has been made way too often, in too many studies.

And now, the latest research shows how the mental strain of depression can take a physical toll on the body — specifically in ways that can dramatically boost your heart risk.

Researchers gave stress tests to 866 people, about 5 percent of whom were depressed — and these people had a much harder time recovering afterwards.

In fact, it seems like the stress didn’t end with the test: Depressed people had heart rates that kept galloping and blood pressure levels that stayed high well after everyone else returned to normal.

That’s a sure sign of stress on the body — and researchers say these delays in recovery show that the body’s stress response simply isn’t working right.

And you already know what too much stress can do to even the healthiest of hearts.

That’s not the only reason for the link between depression and heart disease. As the researchers behind the new study point out, depressed people tend to have lousy habits — they let themselves go, and eventually it takes a toll on the body.

But there’s also a third option out there — one the new study didn’t look at: meds.

Antidepressant drugs can do a number on the body from top to bottom, and the older tricyclic meds that were used to treat depression in the decades before SSRIs came along in particular have been linked to serious heart problems.

In one study, researchers found that tricyclic antidepressants increased heart risk by more than a third. Another recent study found that both tricyclics and SSRIs increase the risk of stroke in women.

SSRIs have even been linked to sudden cardiac death in women.

And if you already have heart disease, SSRIs might make the condition worse or even hasten your death: A Duke University study from 2006 found that heart patients who took the antidepressants had a 55 percent higher risk of death.

SSRIs have also been linked to everything from personality changes and sexual side effects to headaches, nausea, diarrhea and even suicide — and they don’t even work very well to boot, with many failing to beat placebos in studies.

Clearly depression can’t be ignored. But just as clearly, it can’t be treated with meds, either.

That’s enough on depression — keep reading for the best way to stay happy.

Culture is a funny thing: In some places, you’re considered a little weird if you meditate… in others, you’re weird if you don’t.

Most people here in the West never even consider it at all — but maybe you should, because a growing body of evidence finds that this practice of the mind can have a major impact on the body, including a serious boost in heart health.

In fact, it works so well that researchers from Harvard University and Justuc Liebig University say it’s time for mainstream docs to start working meditation into their clinical practices as a treatment for some of our most common — and overmedicated — conditions, especially hypertension.

While no one has been able to pinpoint how meditation can accomplish so much with so little, the study in Perspectives on Psychological Science breaks the effects down into four key components: attention regulation, body awareness, emotion regulation, and sense of self.

Sounds to me like it’s as mysterious as ever, at least to Western science. In any case, I’m more interested in what it does rather than how it does it — because it’s downright astonishing.

In one recent study on cardiovascular health, the researchers said meditators got so many benefits that it was as if they had been given some powerful new drug.

In that one, the patients who practiced a popular form of meditation were 50 percent less likely to suffer from heart attack, stroke or even death from any cause during that study period than non-meditators.

Powerful new drug? Big Pharma can only wish it had a med this safe and effective!

Another recent study found that meditation can improve concentration and focus, while other studies have found that the practice can slash levels of stress, anxiety, depression and anger while improving memory and cognition and boosting immune system function.

Learning meditation can get pricey — there are expensive courses and fancy retreats you can take. But it doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg to get a new look inside your mind.

In fact, it can even be free. Visit your local library and check out a few books on the subject — you’ll learn everything you need to know to get started.