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.

CT scans, X-rays, MRIs, ultrasounds — you name it, people are getting them far more often than necessary, leading to extra stress and excess treatments.

And in the case of those CT scans and X-rays, patients are being dosed with high levels of radiation for no reason at all.

Well, docs now say they’ve noticed all this too — and they’ve come up with a novel justification for it: The patients are making them do it!

It’s as if a patient might walk in with a gun and say, “doc, I have a headache — give me a brain scan and give it to me right now… OR ELSE.”

Obviously, that’s not happening… but a new survey finds that many doctors are basically afraid of their own patients — and that’s why they’re ordering up all those tests.

Researchers say their survey of 627 family physicians and internists finds that 42 percent believe their patients are getting too much medical care — but say they have to go along with it… because 80 percent believe they’ll be sued if they don’t test the hell out of their patients.

They have a point, to a certain extent. Many patients do walk in demanding meds, tests or both.

But whatever happened to “just say no?”

I think I know what happened to it, and it has nothing to do with lawsuits: “No” vanished when docs realized they could buy their own testing equipment and double-dip on their patients, collecting fees and co-pays for the office visit as well as the extra bucks for all those unnecessary tests.

Some of them even admit it — three percent of the doctors who took the survey said money influenced their decisions to order up all those extra tests.

I’m sure the real number is much higher, and many of the docs in the survey even admitted that as well… sort of: Thirty-nine percent say OTHER doctors would cut back on those tests and scans if they didn’t stand to gain extra money from them.

In other words, “I’m honest — but those other guys are crooks.”

No wonder the healthcare system is a wreck.

The connection between emotional overload and heart attack has been known since… well, forever.

But in case you had any doubt, a new study puts it to rest: Heart attack survivors with anger and stress issues have a dramatically higher risk of a second attack.

The researchers gave psychological tests to 228 heart attack patients — including 200 men — to measure levels of anger and stress, then tracked them for 10 years.

Or most of them, anyway — because of the 51 patients who suffered a second heart attack in that time, 28 died… and I think you already know who was more likely to be among them.

Overall, the researchers say more than half of the patients who scored high for either stress or anger eventually suffered either a fatal or nonfatal second heart attack, while more than 75 percent of the patients with low scores managed to avoid it.

Breaking it down, anger turned out to be worse than stress — although not by much. The researchers say patients with
high anger scores were 2.3 times more likely to have a second heart attack than those with low scores.

Patients who battled stress, on the other hand, were 1.9 times more likely to suffer a second attack, according to data presented at the European Society of Cardiology’s annual meeting.

But of course, the important thing here isn’t the study — we’ve known all along how anger and stress can wreck havoc on your health, especially when it comes to your heart.

What’s more important is that both anger and stress are completely within your control — and if you’ve been living with too much of either (or both), it’s time to turn yourself around, whether you’ve already experienced a heart attack or are still working your way towards one.

I know that’s easier said than done — some old habits really do die hard, after all. But if you don’t make those changes to your own life, those habits might not be the only things that die.

It’s a breath of fresh air for asthma sufferers — and yet that’s all it is: Air.

Believe it or not, plain old air delivered via an asthma inhaler can actually bring as much relief as an inhaler filled with a common asthma med.

And that’s nothing to wheeze at.

Researchers asked 39 asthma patients to make 12 visits to a medical clinic, spaced between three and seven days apart, to try one of four treatment options at each visit: an inhaler with the drug albuterol, an inhaler with plain air, sham acupuncture, or nothing at all.

By the end of the study, everyone had tried everything three times. And after each treatment (or lack of treatment), the volunteers were given tests to measure lung function and asked to rate their level of improvement on a scale of 1 to 10.

The only thing that didn’t work much was no treatment at all — and even that left some patients feeling at least a little better, with an average reported improvement of 21 percent.

The drug, empty inhaler and sham acupuncture, on the other hand, led to improvements of 50 percent, 45 percent and  6 percent, respectively — a difference the researchers say was not statistically significant.

The drug did win when it came to more objective measures — it actually did a much better job of opening the airways, boosting lung function by 20 percent versus 7 percent for everything else (including no treatment at all).

But here’s the thing: The patients didn’t actually feel the difference — and that’s what really counts, right?

It’s not the first case of fake treatments leading to real relief: Other studies have shown that placebos can work for everything from pain to depression to stomach disorders.

One groundbreaking study found that placebos can even work when people know they’re taking one.

But for a condition like asthma, a placebo alone often won’t be enough.

Asthma is often triggered or worsened by weight, allergies (including food sensitivities) and stress — and if you can get all three under control, you’ll find yourself breathing easier than ever.

You might reach the point where you won’t need an inhaler anymore — even if it’s just an empty one.