Clinton releases tax, health records on busy Friday
By LISA LERER, Associated Press
Jul 31, 2015 3:59 PM CDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton is in "excellent physical condition and fit to serve as president of the United States," her physician says — just one in a flood of disclosures about the Democratic presidential candidate that arrived on a busy summer Friday.

Within a three-hour period, the State Department made public more than 2,200 pages of emails sent from Clinton's personal account, her campaign released the information about her health and she planned to unveil eight years of tax returns. Meanwhile, Clinton herself was campaigning at the annual meeting of the National Urban League and calling for an end of the nation's trade embargo of Cuba during a speech in Miami.

Friday was also the deadline for super PACs to file their first financial reports of the 2016 campaign with federal regulators, revealing the names of a slew of billionaires and millionaires paying for the early days of the election fight.

Campaign aides cast the records dump as part of an effort to compete with Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush on the issue of transparency. Clinton is the first 2016 presidential candidate to release her health records, and aides said she planned to release more details about her finances than Bush, the former Florida governor who has already made public 33 years of his tax returns.

The details of Clinton's health came in a two-page letter from Dr. Lisa Bardack, an internist and chairman of the Department of Medicine at the Mount Kisco Medical Group near the candidate's suburban New York home.

The report said Clinton, who is 67, has fully recovered from a concussion she sustained in December 2012 after fainting, an episode that Bardack attributed to a stomach virus and dehydration.

During the course of her concussion treatment, Clinton was also found to have a blood clot and was given medication to dissolve it. She remains on the medicine as a precaution, Bardack wrote.

The blood clot, which was in a vein in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear, led Clinton to spend a few days in New York-Presbyterian Hospital and take a month-long absence from the State Department for treatment.

Republican strategist Karl Rove later cast the incident as a "serious health episode" that would be an issue if Clinton ran for president, fueling a theory the concussion posed a graver threat to her abilities than Clinton and her team let on. Democrats accused Rove of being part of an effort by Republicans to politicize her health.

"First they said she faked her concussion," Bill Clinton quipped in May 2014. "And now they say she's auditioning for a part on 'The Walking Dead.'"

Bardack said testing the following year showed "complete resolution" of the concussion's effects, including double vision, which Clinton wore glasses with special lenses to address.

According to her doctor's assessment, Clinton's cholesterol and blood pressure are in normal, healthy ranges, and she has had the major cancer screenings and exams recommended for someone her age. She has a very common thyroid condition and seasonal allergies, and takes a blood thinner — Coumadin — as a precaution since her fall and the blood clot.

There was no mention of Clinton's height or weight.

"There's no red flags there," said Dr. Mark Creager, director of the Dartmouth-Hitchkock heart and vascular center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and president of the American Heart Association. In terms of heart problems, "She is at low risk for anybody, particularly for somebody in her age group," he said.

At her most recent exam in March, her blood pressure was 100 over 65. Her total cholesterol was 195; her LDL or "bad" cholesterol was 118, and her HDL or "good" cholesterol was 64 — all within healthy levels and not signaling the need for any medications.

The doctor noted that Clinton's father lived into his eighties and her mother into her nineties. She has two brothers, and one had premature heart disease.

Due to that family history, she had full cardiac testing, including an ultrasound exam of arteries in her neck, and all was well.

Clinton's doctor said she exercises regularly — practicing yoga, swimming, walking and weight training — and eats a diet rich in lean proteins, vegetables and fruits. She does not smoke and drinks alcohol "occasionally," Bardack wrote.

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Marilynn Marchione, AP's chief medical writer, contributed from Milwaukee and AP writer Tom Beaumont from in Des Moines, Iowa.

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