For many years, Bill Garten lived what he calls "the casino life."
As an electronics technician, Garten worked on slot machines and was often asked to drive across the Upper Midwest on a moment's notice to verify that machines had properly awarded big jackpots. The lifestyle meant a steady diet of greasy food along with smoking, stress and not much exercise.

In the end, Garten lost his unhealthy wager, suffering two major heart attacks and related health problems that left him with few options for his angina chest pain. But now, he's starting to feel like a winner, thanks to an experimental stem cell treatment.

"I attribute my health and my quality of life to the stem cells," said Garten, 61, who lives in the central Minnesota town of Jenkins.

Garten's story helps explain why doctors at the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation are pushing ahead with studies of the heart treatment. Even so, doctors are being careful not to overstate the potential benefits of the treatment.

They point out that stem cell therapies have generated a lot of hype over the years that just hasn't panned out.

"People are over-skeptical right now, simply because the initial results of the initial trials were not that spectacular," said Dr. Catalin Toma, a heart expert at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. ¡°The expectations were set too high.¡±

"One of the problems when you start a therapy like this is that there's just so much hype that people want too much,"said Dr.