Noel Bairey Merz, M.D., a nationally recognized authority on preventive cardiology and women’s heart health, will receive the inaugural Dr. Carolyn McCue Woman Cardiologist of the Year Award on February 26 in Richmond, Virginia. The award, which includes national publicity and a $10,000 prize, will be presented by the Virginia Commonwealth University Pauley Heart Center. Merz, who lives in the Palisades Highlands, is director of the Women’s Heart Center and the Preventive and Rehabilitative Cardiac Center at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute. In addition, she holds the Women’s Guild Endowed Chair in women’s health and is a professor of medicine at Cedars-Sinai. The McCue Award, which honors the memory of one of the few cardiologists of her time and a pioneer in the field of pediatric cardiology, is meant ‘to encourage and inspire other young women to pursue careers in cardiology,’ said the McCue family.   ’Dr. Bairey Merz has devoted her professional life to improving women’s health,’ said Eduardo Marb’n, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute. ‘Through her research, we now have a much better understanding of the unique nature of heart disease in women.’ ‘Heart disease is the leading killer in women,’ Merz told the Palisadian-Post in a 2006 interview. ‘As a proportion, there are more strokes in women than in men.’ Every year since 1984, more women than men have died of heart disease in the United States. Both sexes suffer large-artery blockage, which means the artery lining becomes hardened and swollen with plaque (calcium and fatty deposits and abnormal inflammatory cells), minimizing or stopping blood flow. An angiography is used to diagnosis this condition. In women’s arteries, the plaque lining is smooth and even, unlike their male counterparts, which means the condition isn’t diagnosed through an angiogram and, quite often, is misdiagnosed because the symptoms for heart attacks in women are different from those in men. ‘Symptoms in women can include persistent chest pain or pressure,’ Merz said. ‘Patients describe it as a constricting band or ‘elephant on my chest’. They have fatigue and shortness of breath. Often the women have already had an angiogram and were told that nothing is wrong.’ Why do more women have small-artery disease? Women have smaller arteries than men and although size might be part of it, more probably it’s sex-related. ‘If you take a male donor and transplant that heart into a female, the arteries will not change, they will stay large,’ Merz said. ‘If you take a female heart and transplant it into a male, the arteries get larger.’ Available tests over the years have been geared towards the male and large-artery blockage. ‘Dr. Merz has made significant contributions to our understanding of how women’s hearts and arteries differ from men’s, and this award is a recognition of her body of work in this field,’ said P.K. Shah, M.D., a long-time colleague and former mentor of Merz, and director of the Division of Cardiology at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute. Merz has authored more than 170 peer-reviewed research papers and has been an invited presenter at more than 300 scientific meetings. ‘Merz truly exemplifies the qualities of McCue,’ said George Vetrovec, M.D., chair of the VCU School of Medicine’s Division of Cardiology. ‘She is a trailblazer, a prolific researcher, an inspiring educator and mentor, and a very fine cardiologist. Her groundbreaking work in both preventive cardiology and women’s heart health has advanced our knowledge base and given serious momentum to these critically important areas of our field.’ Merz and her husband Rob, also a cardiologist, have three daughters: Alexa, a triathlete and senior at Stanford; Caroline, a fencer at Princeton; and Allison, a junior at Harvard-Westlake.=

Here’s a Valentine’s Day story of sorts. For almost nine years, Scott Mischel’s business, Marc Michel Eyewear Studio, had been located at 15314 Antioch. Last December, he relocated his business to 15320 Antioch, on the north side of Salon Ca’ Pello, which his wife, Tiffany D’Nunzio, has owned since 2002. Got that? ‘It was time to upgrade,’ Mischel told the Palisadian-Post. ‘We took three months and we completely redid the store,’ while also adding about 400 square feet by taking over the former Teraine space. Despite the economy’s punishing downturn last summer and fall, Mischel felt the time was right to grow his business. ‘I had the opportunity to obtain a larger space from my landlord, instead of redoing the old store, and I felt this was a positive direction to go in,’ he said. ‘My business has always done well in this community.’   His hunch proved right, because customers have been reacting positively to the move, according to Mischel. Step into the new Marc Michel store (the name is a simplification of the owner’s full name: Scott Marc Mischel), and the place looks inviting: high ceilings, vibrant green-and-white walls, large windows and gallery lighting brightening up the interior. Up on one wall is a mural of three pairs of glasses, two of them shades, in a pop-art design that Mischel himself imagined. He also designed an elegant iron fixture of a pair of retro glasses embedded into one of the counters. An island of wooden boards peeks out in the middle of the store, as if the floor has been ripped open to expose its old bones. The overall effect of this new location: hip, bright, clear, simple, elegant. Mischel sells name-brands”Chanel, Salt, Oliver Peeples, Rayban”as well as harder-to-find designer specs, such as Oliver Goldsmith and Face a Face. But he also takes pride in the fact that he also crafts glasses by hand. ‘I do my own lab work. I try to get a pair that suits a customer’s whole image,’ Mischel was telling the Palisadian-Post, when in walked Gil Grant, a writer/ producer with credits on ’24,’ ‘NCIS,’ and ‘Painkiller Jane.’ ‘Scott is the best,’ Grant tells the Post. ‘Scot and his staff know me, they know the product. I mean, look around. Look at how hip this place is!’ A lean and handsome man of middle-age, Grant picks up his specs’horizontal wire-frames, which Mischel has just finished creating by hand. Sure enough, they fit Grant perfectly, and he’s one happy customer. Mischel and Grant banter for a bit like old friends. In fact, Grant has been patronizing Marc Michel for about 5 years. Thin and hip-looking himself in a casual dark-blue paisley dress shirt and jeans, the store’s owner has been working in the eyewear business for about 30 years. After growing up around Tarzana and Woodland Hills, Mischel began his career in the Valley and learned the ropes by managing various eyewear stores. He discovered Pacific Palisades while dating D’Nunzio, who at the time styled hair at the Hilites studio on Antioch. Upon visiting the town, Mischel knew instantly that he had found the location where he would one day hang his own shingle. He opened his store in July 2000. D’Nunzio herself has been working since she was 13 years old. She grew up in the South Bay and attended the now-defunct Sassoon Hair Academy at the Santa Monica Promenade before working in the Palisades. In 2002, she bought her salon, the year she and Mischel moved from Marina del Rey to the Highlands. ‘It’s very comforting having him right next door,’ D’Nunzio says of working side-by-side with her hubby, though it’s not as convenient as one might think: they don’t carpool to Antioch since they keep different schedules. But have no fear, their collective carbon footprint is relatively minimal: while they may drive to work in separate cars, they reside less than 10 minutes away. On their down time, the couple enjoys walking their Alaskan Malamuts, Oliver and Katie, around the Highlands, and frequenting restaurants on the Westside. But work is where the heart is. ‘He really enjoys people,’ D’Nunzio says of her husband. ‘He enjoys his work and he works long hours.’ Well, you don’t need a pair of glasses to see that. Marc Michel Eyewear Salon is open six days a week from 10 to 6 p.m.; Sundays by appointment. Contact: (310) 230-4569.