Wearing Patch 6 Months May Help Smokers Quit

If you're trying to quit smoking, wearing a nicotine patch for up to six months - far longer than is generally recommended - may increase
your chances of staying smoke-free, a new study has found.

Even with the longer treatment, however, your chances of successfully quitting are only about one in seven, according to the study, which was funded by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

"There's an assumption that nicotine dependence is an acute disease that can be treated with short-term therapy," says Caryn Lerman, one of the study's authors and the director of the Tobacco Use Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "Smokers should talk to their health-care provider about whether it makes sense for them to continue on the nicotine patch for an extended period of time as an alternative to returning to smoking."

The patch reduces cravings and withdrawal symptoms by releasing a slow and steady dose of nicotine through the skin. The latest guidelines from the U.S. Public Health Service recommend that smokers who are trying to quit use the patch for eight weeks or less, although some brands of patches are designed to be used for up to 10 weeks.

In the new study, published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, 568 adult smokers who were otherwise healthy wore a 21-milligram nicotine patch (Nicoderm CQ brand) for eight weeks. At that point, half of the smokers continued to wear the nicotine patch for an additional 16 weeks, while the others wore an identical placebo patch for the same amount of time.

After 24 weeks, 32 percent of the participants who received the nicotine patch for the duration hadn't smoked in the previous week, compared to just 20 percent of those who received the placebo patch. (Whether the participants had smoked that week was verified by checking a breath sample for carbon monoxide.)

The longer nicotine treatment also proved more effective when a stricter measure of quitting was used. At the 24-week mark, 19 percent of the people who wore the patch throughout hadn't smoked even one cigarette since quitting, compared with 13 percent in the placebo group.

People who wore the patch for a full 24 weeks were also more inclined to try to quit again if they temporarily fell off the wagon, the researchers found. "If somebody has a slip and smokes a few puffs or even has a whole cigarette, they'll be more likely to return to abstinence if they're on the nicotine patch," Lerman says.

After one year, however, there was no significant difference between the two groups in the percentage of study participants who remained smoke free. Just 14 percent of the people in either group hadn't smoked a cigarette in the previous week - underscoring just how hard it is to kick the nicotine habit.

Many smoking-cessation experts have come to believe that wearing the patch for eight to 10 weeks is insufficient for most smokers. In its 2008 guidelines, the U.S. Public Health Service called for more research into the effectiveness of longer-term nicotine replacement therapy. Lerman and her colleagues are now conducting another study in which quitting smokers will wear the patch for an entire year.

There's no evidence that wearing the patch for an extended period is unsafe, says Robert A. Schnoll, the lead author of the current study. The two groups of participants in the study showed no significant differences in side effects, he points out. And, Schnoll says, "Everyone would agree that it's safer than smoking."

Nicotine patches deliver a relatively pure dose of the drug, while cigarettes contain chemical additives that have been shown to cause cancer.

Jonathan Foulds, the director of the Tobacco Dependence Program at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, in New Brunswick, says the study's findings should prompt experts to reconsider how they help people quit smoking.

"We should tailor the duration of pharmaceutical treatment for smoking cessation to the client's needs, rather than what the box says," says Foulds, who wasn't involved in the study. "It's clear that what the box says may not be long enough for some patients."

Foulds has his patients stay on the patch until they go a full two weeks without any cigarette cravings or withdrawal symptoms. At that point, he weans them off the patch by using progressively smaller sizes.

"There's nothing magical about 24 weeks," he says. "The point is that staying on [nicotine replacement therapy] helps you stay off cigarettes - and, it seems, the longer the better."

Every smoker is different, according to Lerman. Some can quit with brief treatment, she says, but others will need to stick with nicotine replacement therapy for a longer time. People who experience very severe withdrawal symptoms, for example, are likely to be better off with longer-term use, she says.

Source: www.cnn.com

Mixing herbal remedies and heart drugs is dangerous

People who take herbal remedies while using heart drugs may face higher risk of cardiac problems, a medical report warns.

Some herbal medications affect the activity of prescription drugs for heart troubles, dampening or enhancing their effects, says report author Dr. Arshad Jahangir, a consultant cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona.

Herbs, if mixed with drugs, could make blood pressure medications and rhythm-controlling medications less effective and might cause serious heart rhythm problems and bleeding, according to the report published in the February issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Even grapefruit juice, recommended as an aid in weight-loss programs, is problematic in interfering with enzymes that break down drugs in the digestive system, including the statins used to lower cholesterol levels and amiodarone used to treat and prevent abnormal heart rhythms, Jahangir says.

Using herbal remedies among the elders is specially problematic because they
typically have more than one disease and take multiple medications.

While up-to-date statistics are not available, it appears that more than 15
million Americans are using herbal remedies and the number is growing, according to Jahangir.

However, many patients have not realized the danger and fail to inform doctors of their use of herbal remedies.

Douglas Mackay, vice president of the Council for Responsible Nutrition, an
industry association, encourages patients to inform their doctors of their herbal remedies.

"Many herbal supplements offer healthful benefits and fiber, garlic, and hawthorne provide heart health benefits, and the potential risk for a drug interaction can be eliminated by speaking openly with your doctor," he says.

Source: News.Xinhuanet.com

Five-day Limit for Post-sex Pill

A recently licensed type of emergency contraception may offer women protection from pregnancy even when taken five days after sex.

Scottish researchers found that ulipristel acetate worked well after the three-day limit of the most commonly used drug, levonorgestrel.

At present ulipristel - unlike levonorgestrel - is only available with a prescription.

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service welcomed the study.

Emergency contraception uses hormones to either prevent the release of an egg by the ovary in the hours after sex, or stop it implanting into the the womb.

Levonorgestrel is available from pharmacies, either with a prescription, or sold directly to over-16s.

A study by specialists working for NHS Lothian tested the effectiveness of levonorgestrel and ulipristel (which was licensed for use last year) using a sample of more than 1,600 women from the UK, Ireland and the USA.

A total of 2.6% of the levonorgestrel group became pregnant despite taking the drug, compared with 1.8% in the ulipristel group.

In a much smaller group of women who received emergency contraception more than three days after sex, there were no pregnancies among women who had taken lipristel compared with three pregnancies among those taking levonorgestrel.

The levels of side effects were roughly the same in both two drugs.

'Time window'

However, researchers said that the newer drug cannot be sold 'over-the-counter' at pharmacies because it did not yet have the established safety record of levonorgestrel.

Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service described the new type of drug as "exciting news".

She said: "It offers a longer time window for use than the traditional, emergency contraception pill.

"Different hormones are involved to the ones traditionally used in contraception, so it may be that these will prove to have other contraceptive uses in future.

"However, accessibly is key to the uptake of any time-sensitive medication and since this pill is not currently available over-the-counter and is significantly more expensive to buy than the traditional 'morning after pill', it may be that many women who could benefit from it are not able to access it."

Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Low-Carb Diet Effective in Lowering Blood Pressure

A new study initiated by researchers at Veterans Affairs Medical Centre and Duke University Medical Centre, reveals that a low-carbohydrate diet is equally effective for weight loss as the weight loss drug orlistat, but in a surprising twist, a low-carbohydrate diet proved more advantageous in lowering blood pressure, as well than the weight-loss medicine.

Researcher William S. Yancy, Jr., MD, an associate professor of medicine at Duke University Medical Centre, says, “If people have high blood pressure and a weight problem, a low-carbohydrate diet might be a better option than a weight loss medication”.

The study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, involved 146 obese or overweight adults who were randomly segregated into two groups. Among them many were suffering from high blood pressure or diabetes.

A low-carbohydrate was imposed on the first group while the second group received the weight loss drug orlistat thrice a day.

The results revealed weight loss was similar in the two groups. The low-carb diet group lost an average of 9.5% of their body weight and the orlistat group lost an average of 8.5%. However, those in low-carbohydrate group witnessed a fall in their blood pressure, compared to only 21% of those in the orlistat group.

Researchers say weight loss itself typically produces a healthy reduction in blood pressure, but it appears that a low-carbohydrate diet has an additional blood pressure-lowering effect that merits further study.

Source: topnews.us

Sitting Too Much May Be Deadly

Here's a new warning from health experts: Sitting is deadly.

Scientists are increasingly warning that sitting for prolonged periods - even if you also exercise regularly - could be bad for your health. And it doesn't matter where the sitting takes place - at the office, at school, in the car or before a computer or television - just the overall number of hours it occurs.

Research is preliminary, but several studies suggest people who spend most of their days sitting are more likely to be fat, have a heart attack or even die.

In an editorial published this week in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, Elin Ekblom-Bak of the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences suggested that authorities rethink how they define physical activity to highlight the dangers of sitting.

While health officials have issued guidelines recommending minimum amounts of physical activity, they haven't suggested people try to limit how much time they spend in a seated position.

"After four hours of sitting, the body starts to send harmful signals," Ekblom-Bak said. She explained that genes regulating the amount of glucose and fat in the body start to shut down.

Even for people who exercise, spending long stretches of time sitting at a desk is still harmful. Tim Armstrong, a physical activity expert at the World Health Organisation, said people who exercise every day - but still spend a lot of time sitting - may get more benefit if that exercise were spread across the day, rather than in a single bout.

That wasn't welcome news for Aytekin Can, 31, who works at a London financial company and spends most of his days sitting in front of a computer. Several evenings a week, Can also teaches jiu jitsu, a Japanese martial art involving wrestling, and also does Thai boxing.

"I'm sure there are some detrimental effects of staying still for too long, but I hope that being active when I can helps," he said. "I wouldn't want to think the sitting could be that dangerous."

Still, in a study published last year that tracked more than 17,000 Canadians for about a dozen years, researchers found people who sat more had a higher death risk, independently of whether or not they exercised.

"We don't have enough evidence yet to say how much sitting is bad," said Peter Katzmarzyk of the Pennington Biomedical Research Centre in Baton Rouge, who led the Canadian study. "But it seems the more you can get up and interrupt this sedentary behaviour, the better."

Figures from a US survey in 2003-04 found Americans spend more than half their time sitting, from working at their desks to sitting in cars.

Experts said more research is needed to figure out just how much sitting is dangerous, and what might be possible to offset those effects.

"People should keep exercising because that has a lot of benefits," Ekblom-Bak said. "But when they're in the office, they should try to interrupt sitting as often as possible," she said. "Don't just send your colleague an email. Walk over and talk to him. Standing up."

Source: www.smh.com.au

7 Steps for a Healthy Heart

The American Heart Association has, for the first time, identified seven health factors and lifestyle behaviors its research indicates are necessary to keep your ticker in good shape.

“Life’s Simple 7” categorizes cardiovascular health as Poor, Intermediate, or Ideal in each of seven areas.

Published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, the AHA says ideal cardiovascular health for adults is defined by these health measures:

1. Never smoked or quit more than a year ago.
2. A healthy body mass index (BMI), an estimate of body fat determined by a formula using weight and height.
3. Physical activity, and the more the better. The new measure says at least 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity exercise is necessary for ideal health, or 75 minutes weekly of vigorous physical activity.
4. Blood pressure below 120/80.
5. Fasting blood glucose less than 100 milligrams/deciliter, a fasting measure of blood sugar level.
6. Total cholesterol of less than 200 milligrams/deciliter.
7. Eating a healthy diet. Four to five of the key components of a healthy diet are followed. For a 2,000-calorie diet, these include:
   
   • At least 4.5 cups of fruits and vegetables per day
   • At least two 3.5 oz. servings of fish per week, preferably oily fish
   • At least three 1-ounce servings of fiber-rich whole grains per day
   • Limiting sodium to less than 1,500 milligrams a day
   • Drinking no more than 36 ounces weekly of sugar-sweetened beverages

The AHA hopes the seven factors could improve the cardiovascular health of Americans by 20% by the year 2020, and also reduce deaths from cardiovascular-related diseases and strokes by 20%.

Source: www.webmd.com

Chronic sleep loss, sleep debt dangerous

Humans spend about one-third of their lives asleep, so it's no wonder that we often try to cheat the system by rising early and going to bed late.

Many people think they can make up a sleep debt with one or two good nights of rest on the weekend, but new research from Brigham and Women's Hospital suggests this is impossible.

Scientists studied healthy volunteers in a sleep lab for three weeks. The participants kept a schedule that was similar to an on-call doctor - 33 hours awake, followed by 10 hours of sleep.

On average, this translates to less than six hours of sleep per night. They found that volunteers' reaction times improved after they had a chance to sleep - but this improvement steadily wore off over the course of the day.

In the late hours, people's chronic sleep loss caught up with them and caused them to make more errors.

Researchers say the resulting sleep debt creates a dangerous situation for late-night drivers or those who work overnights in a hospital.

Source: www.wkowtv.com

First gene 'linked to aggressive prostate cancer found'

Scientists have discovered the first gene linked to the aggressive form of prostate cancer, raising hope that doctors will someday be able to predict how the disease will progress.

The cancer is often either slow-growing or aggressive, which has led the two types of the disease to be dubbed the ‘tiger’ and the ‘pussycat’.

The difference can be crucial as many prostate cancer treatments carry with them the risk of serious side-effects, including incontinence and impotence.

However, at the moment there is no way to predict which type a patient will suffer.

Although carrying the newly identified gene does not in itself guarantee that a patients’ cancer will be aggressive, the breakthrough raises hopes that doctors could someday discover a number of genes that would allow them to predict the diseases’ progress accurately.

Dr Jianfeng Xu, from Wake Forest University, in North Carolina, who led the study, said: "This finding addresses one of the most important clinical questions of prostate cancer – the ability at an early stage to distinguish between aggressive and slow-growing disease.

"Although the genetic marker currently has limited clinical utility, we believe it has the potential to one day be used in combination with other genetic markers to predict which men have aggressive prostate cancer at a stage when the disease is still curable."

If identified, men who carry the genes could be encouraged to attend screening at a young age, he and his team believe.

More than 35,000 men a year in Britain develop prostate cancer and around one in three go on to die from the disease.

However, many men have such a slow growing form of the disease that they will in all likelihood die from something else before they ever suffer symptoms of their cancer, posing a treatment dilemma for doctors.

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), looked at the genetic make-up of 4,849 men with an aggressive form of prostate cancer and 12,205 with a slow-growing form of the disease.

Researchers discovered a genetic defect which makes carriers up to 25 per cent more likely to develop the aggressive form.

Dr Helen Rippon, from The Prostate Cancer Charity, said: “Distinguishing between aggressive and slow growing forms of prostate cancer is probably the most significant challenge facing research into the disease today.

“However, this marker is not informative enough on its own to form the basis of a new, more reliable test – up to 30 per cent of men with a less aggressive cancer also carry it.

“Nevertheless, this study raises hopes that a panel of several genetic markers might one day be established that together can determine a man’s risk of developing aggressive prostate cancer.”

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Study Links Soy to Lower Sperm Counts

Eating even small amounts of soy products may cut a man's sperm concentration, a study published online last Thursday in the journal Human Reproduction shows.

Of the 99 men enrolled in the study, those who said they ate the most soy had much lower sperm concentrations than those who reported eating no soy. Soy eaters had, on average, 41 million fewer sperm per milliliter than those who avoided soy products. That association held up after other factors potentially affecting sperm health, such as smoking, alcohol and caffeine intake, age, abstinence time and body mass index were considered.

Still, a man starting with an average sperm count (80 million to 120 million per milliliter) and experiencing such a reduction would measure well above the 20 million that is the minimum count within the normal range, says lead author Jorge Chavarro, a research fellow in the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Consumption of the study's 15 soy-based foods, from miso soup and tofu to soy burgers, ice cream and energy bars, was low, an average of one serving every other day among the highest-consuming group.

Soy contains isoflavones, which have long been tied to infertility in animal studies.

The study is the largest to look at soy's effect on human male fertility; its findings conflict with those of previous studies, one of which found no relationship between the two and another that found soy consumption actually boosted sperm counts.

Given those conflicts, Chavarro says, "I think there is not enough evidence to reach any strong conclusion or advise men one way or the other on whether soy foods can affect their fertility."

Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Hour's exercise 'to lose weight'

Women who want to lose weight - and keep it off - need to be exercising for almost an hour, five days a week, according to US experts.

The University of Pittsburgh study found the 55-minute regime was the minimum needed to maintain a 10% drop in weight.

Only a quarter of the 200 women in the study managed to lose this amount.

A UK expert said it was clear that regular moderate exercise was the way to lose weight, and keep it off.

Approximately two-thirds of adults in the UK are overweight or obese, with some estimates suggesting this could rise to nine in ten by 2050.

Research points to a combination of exercise and calorie control as having the best chance of success in weight loss - although the majority of people who attempt these diets fail to keep the weight off.

The latest research, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine journal, confirms that plenty of exercise is a key ingredient of success.

The Pittsburgh researchers looked at a group of overweight and obese women over a four year period.

They were all told to eat between 1,200 and 1,500 calories a day, and split into four different exercise programmes, varying the intensity and amount of exercise carried out.

After six months, women in all four groups had lost up to 10% of their body weight - but most could not keep this going.

The women who did maintain the 10% loss were those who reported doing more exercise, on average 275 minutes per week.

Hour target

In the UK, everyone is encouraged to manage at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise five days a week, but scientists say that people wanting to maintain weight loss need much more.

Professor Paul Gately, a specialist in exercise and obesity, from Leeds Metropolitan University, said: "This study is excellent - it's the best evidence that this higher level of exercise is needed.

"Thirty minutes a day is good for general health, but if you want to lose weight, you need to be doing more, and if you want to sustain weight loss, you need to be doing even more than that.

"In this country, between an hour and 90 minutes of exercise a day is the recommended level for maintaining weight loss."

He said that "moderate" exercise covered anything that made you slightly breathless, from brisk walking to gardening.

Some US researchers have been looking at novel ways to increase the level of activity among those with "couch potato" lifestyles.

Dr James Levine is helping develop the "Walkstation", a computer terminal with a treadmill instead of a chair.

Writing in the same journal, he said: "Sitting at one's desk uses barely any more calories than staying in bed, but walking at 1mph while working increases caloric expenditure by approximately 125 calories an hour."

Source: news.bbc.co.uk

The Reason Fat People Find It Hard to Lose Weight Is Found

The reason fat people find it hard to lose weight is found.

The difference in the number of fat cells between lean and obese people is established in childhood and, although fat people replenish fat cells at the same rate as thin ones, they have around twice as many.

This remarkable glimpse of what gives us beer guts, love handle and muffin tops could also lead to new approaches to fight the flab, by cutting the overall number of fat cells in the body, as well as providing an insight into why fat people find it so hard to lose weight, because the number of fat cells in a person remains the same, even after a successful diet.

The details of how humans regulate their fat mass is reported today in the journal Nature by a team led by scientists at the Karlolinksa Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, as a second team, led by Imperial College London, reports in the journal Nature Genetics the discovery of a gene sequence present in half the population linked to three quarters of an inch bigger waistline, four lb gain in weight, and a tendency to become resistant to insulin, which can lead to type 2 diabetes.

The fundamental new insight into the cause of obesity comes from an international team lead by Dr Kirsty Spalding, Prof Jonas Frise'n and Prof Peter Arner who found the body constantly produces new fat cells to replace equally rapid break down of the already existing fat cells due to cell death.

They also show, that overweight people generate and replace more fat cells than do lean - and that the total number of fat cells stays equal after a diet program.

Until now, it was not clear that adults could make new fat cells. Some had assumed that they increase their fat mass by incorporating more fats into already existing fat cells in order to maintain their body weight (lean, overweight, obese). However now it seems we constantly produce new fat cells irrespective of our body weight status, sex or age.

"The total number of fat cells in the body is stable over time, because the making of new fat cells is counterbalanced by an equally rapid break down of the already existing fat cells due to cell death", says Prof Arner.

The study was made possible by a method to use radioactive isotopes in fat cells from people who had lived through the brief period of Cold War nuclear bomb testing from 1955 to 1963 to determine the age of the fat cells in the body.

This was combined with methods to carefully measure the size of the fat cells in relation to the total amount of adipose tissue in 687 people with a large individual variation in body weight who had undergone liposuction and abdominal reconstruction surgery.

Fat cells are replaced at the same rate that they die - roughly 10 per cent every year. The level of obesity is determined by a combination of the number and size of fat cells, which can grow or shrink as fat from food is deposited in them.

Even if obese subjects go on a diet they keep the total number of fat cells in the body constant, but the size of individual fat cells is decreased markedly.

The findings therefore provide a new target for treatment of obesity, namely by attacking the signals and genes in fat cells that control the formation of new such cells.

"The results may, at least in part, explain why it is so difficult to maintain the weight after slimming", adds Prof Arner.

"Until now it was not clear whether there was fat cell turnover in adults," adds Dr Spalding. "Now we have established this does occur, we can target the process.

"Various groups are looking at compounds that might regulate the formation of fat cells but this work is at too early a stage to say when anti obesitiy drugs based on this understanding will be tested on patients, if at all."

Other new insights into how to treat obesity could come from the gene sequence linked to an expanding waist line, weight gain and a tendency to develop type 2 diabetes in the Imperial led study.

Professor Jaspal Kooner, the paper's senior author from the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London, says: "Finding such a close association between a genetic sequence and significant physical effects is very important, especially when the sequence is found in half the population."

The study shows that the sequence is a third more common in those with Indian Asian than in those with European ancestry. This could provide a possible genetic explanation for the particularly high levels of obesity and insulin resistance in Indian Asians, who make up 25 per cent of the world's population, but who are expected to account for 40 per cent of global heart disease by 2020.

The new gene sequence sits close to a gene called MC4R, which regulates energy levels in the body by influencing how much we eat and how much energy we expend or conserve. The researchers believe the sequence is involved in controlling the MC4R gene, which has also been implicated in rare forms of extreme childhood obesity.

Previous research on finding the genetic causes of obesity has identified other energy-conserving genes. Combining knowledge about the effects of all these genes could pave the way for transforming how obesity is managed.

This research, backed by the British Heart Foundation, was carried out with scientists from the University of Michigan and the Pasteur Institute, France.

Last year a British led team found that if people carry one copy of a variant in a gene called FTO, as does half of the general population, it will lead to a gain in weight of 2.6lb or put just over half an inch on their waists and raise their risk of being obese by one third.

If people have two copies of this variant in the FTO gene, which is the case in one in six of the population, then they will gain almost 7lb more than those who lack the variation and are at a 70 per cent higher risk of obesity.

According to the 2001 Health Survey for England, more than a fifth of males and a similar proportion of females aged 16 and over were classified as obese.

Half of men and a third of women were classified as overweight.

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Younger Women Often Miss Signs of Heart Attack

Many younger women ignore or simply don't recognize the warning signs of a heart attack, often because it doesn't resemble the typical "Hollywood heart attack."

So say the authors of a study being presented Friday at the American Heart Association's annual Scientific Forum on Quality of Care and Outcomes Research in Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke, in Baltimore.

"So many women said, 'We wish we had a better stereotype, you never see anything in the media,'" said study author Judith Lichtman, an associate professor of epidemiology and public health at Yale School of Medicine. "I personally would love to see some cutting-edge TV series of, for example, a young person having a heart attack with atypical symptoms."

"The classic image of someone having a heart attack is someone like John Belushi. It's a heavy man clutching his chest. We never think of young women as having heart disease, so the image is not part of their consciousness," added Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, director of Women & Heart Disease at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. "It's so important that we not only tell women that heart disease doesn't necessary have to look like [a Hollywood script], but they have to understand what makes them at risk."

Heart disease is the leading killer of American women, claiming almost half a million lives a year, or about one death per minute. According to background information from the authors, 16,000 young women with heart disease die every year and 40,000 are hospitalized.

Last year, a study from the same group of researchers found that women under the age of 55 often fail to recognize the symptoms of a heart attack until it's too late.

Eighty-eight percent of women in that trial reported traditional symptoms of severe chest pain. Yet only 42 percent suspected something was wrong with their heart.

Only half of the women experiencing heart attack symptoms sought care within the first hour, apparently because they thought their symptoms weren't real or weren't serious.

For this study, researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 30 women aged 55 and older a week after they had been discharged from the hospital following a heart attack.

Many didn't realize the symptoms were due to a heart attack. For example, one woman said she was told she was experiencing symptoms of acid reflux. Others attributed symptoms to fatigue, overexertion or stress.

Often, the symptoms just didn't line up with how heart attacks are presented in the popular media.

"I had probably seen a show or something with somebody having a heart attack," said one woman. "And they fall. They grab their chest. And then they grab their arm... I mean, you don't see anybody saying I have pain in my jaw or especially a heart attack, you don't see them vomiting... I did not know that and it's probably because of television, I would say is why I thought it would just be in the chest."

Similarly, another woman told investigators, "It's like... I didn't have any of the typical heart attack symptoms that you always hear about on TV and the ER hospital shows."

Some delayed treatment because symptoms went away for a while, or because they were too busy or had experienced prior, negative encounters with the health-care system ("...they throw you out, you know," said one woman. "If you don't have the money right there, then in two days you're gone").

One woman said she called her doctor about chest pains but was scheduled for a regular appointment in five days. Another woman who went to the emergency room spent an hour trying to find a supervisor to help her after a "rude" nurse just kept telling her to have a seat.

"A lot of women were triaged for a regular visit or, even in the ER, were being looked up for a lot of things other than a heart attack," Lichtman said.

Ironically, for some women, it was actually a relief to know that they were having a heart attack, that finally the mystery was over, Lichtman said.

Lichtman and her colleagues will be looking at this issue in more depth in a U.S. National Institutes of Health-funded study enrolling 2,000 women under 55 and 1,000 men in the same age range.

"A little bit of empowerment goes a long way," Steinbaum said. "Knowing your risk and knowing the potential for heart disease, seeking early care for symptoms that are really unclear and then saying, 'I am at risk for heart disease, please help me' becomes important in the paradigm of how this needs to develop."

Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Chocolate May Cut Diabetes Risk

Scientists are to investigate whether eating chocolate can reduce the risk of heart disease in women with diabetes.

Volunteers - postmenopausal women with type 2 diabetes - will be asked to eat a bar of chocolate a day for a year.

Cocoa is rich in compounds called flavonoids, which are thought to benefit the heart.

The University of East Anglia is using a specially formulated form of chocolate which contains more flavonoids than usual.

This compensates for the fact that many flavonoids are destroyed in the process of turning cocoa into chocolate.

Soy - another source of flavonoids - has also been added to the special bars.

The scientists are testing the theory that adding flavonoids to the diet may give added protection against heart disease on top of that provided by prescription drugs.

Deaths due to heart disease among women increase rapidly after the menopause and having type 2 diabetes increases this risk by a further three-and-a-half times.

If the trial confirms the hypothesis then it could have a far-reaching impact on the advice given to at-risk women.

Additional protection

Lead researcher Professor Aedin Cassidy said: "Despite postmenopausal women being at a similar risk to men for developing cardiovascular disease, to date they are under-represented in clinical trials.

"We hope to show that adding flavonoids to their diets will provide additional protection from heart disease and give women the opportunity to take more control over reducing their risk of heart disease in the future."

The researchers aim to recruit 150 women under the age of 70 with type 2 diabetes who have not had a period for at least a year, and who have been taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs for at least 12 months.

Dr Iain Frame, director of research at the charity Diabetes UK, said: "We certainly don't advise people to start eating a lot of chocolate as it is very high in sugar and fat.

"We would always recommend that people with diabetes eat a diet low in fat, salt and sugar with plenty of fruit and vegetables."

"However, there are compounds found in chocolate, called flavonoids, that are thought to provide some protection from heart disease.

"A successful outcome of this research would hopefully mean being able to offer people at high risk better protection over and above that provided by conventional drugs."

Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Use of Hypertension Drugs Leads to Hip Bone Loss in Older Men

Powerful diuretics, commonly prescribed drugs for heart failure and hypertension, can also steal calcium from the bones and cause significant bone loss in men taking them, study finds.

Between 2000 and 2002, Dr. Lionel S. Lim of Griffin Hospital, in Derby, Connecticut and colleagues tested the bone mineral density levels of 3,269 men older than age 65. Patients received follow-up examinations about 4.6 years later. The researchers collected data on medication use and found that 84 men were continuous users of loop diuretics, 181 were intermittent users and 3,004 were non-users.

At the end of the study, the researchers found that the average annual rate of decline in total hip bone mineral density was -0.78 among continuous users, -0.58 among intermittent users and -0.33 among nonusers.

“Compared with rates of hip bone loss among non-users of diuretics, adjusted rates of loss were about twofold greater among intermittent loop diuretic users and about 2.5-fold greater among continuous loop diuretic users,” wrote Dr. Lim and colleagues in the study.

These findings come to reinforce previous studies, which have found an association between the use of powerful diuretics and increased risk of fractures.

“We conclude that loop diuretic use in older men is associated with increased rates of hip bone loss. Our findings suggest that health care providers should take into account loop diuretic use when evaluating older men for risk factors for bone loss and fracture risk,” the study wrote.

The findings were similar for change at the femoral neck and trochanter, the researchers said.

The study, supported by the national Institute of Health, was published in the April 14 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Source: eFluxMedia.com

Early Dementia Often Caused by Autoimmune Disorders

Dementia in patients who are younger than 45 years of age is often caused by degenerative, metabolic or autoimmune diseases, Dr. Brendan Kelley, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, told attendees at the 60th annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology, being held this week in Chicago.

Kelley and colleagues searched the Mayo Clinic database for patients who began to develop dementia between 17 and 45 years that was not related to trauma, brain infections or mental retardation. They identified 235 such patients receiving care between 1996 and 2006. The average age at dementia onset was 34.7 years.

Neurodegenerative causes accounted for dementia in 29.8 percent of the group, frontotemporal dementia occurred in 13.2 percent and Alzheimer's disease was seen in less than 1 percent," data presented by Kelley showed.

Autoimmune-inflammatory causes, including multiple sclerosis, accounted for 21.2 percent. Inborn errors of metabolism were identified in 10.6 percent.

At the last evaluation, the cause of dementia was still unknown in 44 patients (18.7 percent) despite exhaustive evaluations, Kelley reported.

Inborn errors of metabolism were more common in individuals with symptoms appearing before age 30. Neurodegenerative causes were more common in dementias occurring after age 35.

"Some of the important causes, such as lupus, metabolic disorders, Huntington chorea, among others, can occur in very young children," Kelley told Reuters Health. "Only 4 of the 235 cases in our series resembled Alzheimer's type dementia."

"It is important to increase awareness that dementia can and does occur in young patients," Kelley continued. "This is important for social services and other aid-giving organizations to know."

"Symptoms in younger patients have more of a neuropsychiatric focus, with a lot of psychiatric features," he said. These patients can be misdiagnosed with psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia.

The causes of young-onset dementia are more often hereditary or genetic than they are in older patients with dementia.

"We are now looking to determine which clinical features are more classic...which clinical features to focus on," Kelley said. "This is a single disorder with multiple underlying causes. Treating the causes may correct to some extent the disorder."

www.reuters.com

Hypertension Prevents Migraines

Despite being the cause of many serious health problems, high blood pressure seems to have great benefits when it comes to migraines, as new research showed.

Dr. Eling Tronvik of the Norwegian National Headache Center at Trondheim University Hospital in Norway and his colleagues found that high blood pressure seems to reduce the chances of migraine, besides decreasing the quantum of chronic pain in other parts of the body.

It was long believed that migraines and other types of headaches are more common among people with high blood pressure, but studies conducted in the 1990s did not support this belief.

“This is a paradox. Several earlier studies have linked increasing blood pressure to a decrease in chronic pain in general, and this study suggests that the same is true for migraines,” Dr. Tronvik told WebMD.

The study’s data included information on blood pressure, use of blood pressure medications and headache frequency for 51,353 adults living in Norway in the 1980s and 1990s.

The biggest benefit was found in people with the highest pulse pressure, a measurement of the difference between the diastolic and systolic pressure at the moment the heart beats. They had up to 50 percent fewer headaches.

People with high systolic pressure also appeared to do better.

Things looked differently for people who took medicine to control their blood pressure, even though these drugs are often given to migraine sufferers.

“Higher pulse was linked to up a 50 percent reduction in the amount of headache and migraine for both men and women. The finding was not as strong, however, for people who were taking blood pressure medication, which are sometimes used to treat migraines,” Dr. Tronvik said.

How is that possible? Dr. Tronvik explained that high systolic blood pressure and pulse pressure are related to stiff arteries, which affect something called baroreflex arch.

“Both animal and human studies suggest that stimulation of the baroreflex arch can inhibit pain transmission. So changes in blood pressure may affect headache and migraine.”

However, Dr. Tronvik said, no matter how well high blood pressure prevents headaches, people should not abandon their hypertension medications. “High blood pressure is a huge problem in this country, and far too few people are controlling it as they should.”

The findings of the study were published in Tuesday’s issue of Neurology.

eFluxMedia.com

Pneumonia 'linked' to pollution

High levels of pollution may have contributed to the deaths of thousands of people in England from pneumonia in recent years, a study suggests.

A team at the University of Birmingham examined death rates from the disease and pollution levels in 352 local authorities between 1996 and 2004.

Writing in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, they reported a "strong correlation" between the two.

But the researchers conceded that social factors may also be at play.

Calculations were made by looking at how many deaths there were in each locality in excess of the national average.

These figures were then cross-checked with a range of pollutant levels, including engine exhaust emissions.

Culprit car

In total, 386,374 people died of pneumonia during the eight years examined, but there were significant regional variations. Lewisham in London had the highest number of deaths per head, Berwick-on-Tweed the least.

In the 35 local authorities with the highest rates of pneumonia, there were 14,718 more deaths than the national average.

These areas also tended to see higher rates of some cancers, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and rheumatic heart disease.

"High mortality rates were observed in areas with elevated ambient pollution levels," said Professor George Knox, who wrote the report. "The strongest single effect was an increase in pneumonia deaths."

He added: "Road transport was the chief source of the emissions responsible, although it was not possible to discriminate between the different chemical components".

The team estimated that the annual number of excess deaths - or those which could be attributed to the pollution - could approach those of the 1952 London smog, which killed 4,000 people.

But lung specialists said more detailed research was needed before a clear link between pneumonia and exhaust fumes was declared.

"What this paper does show, however, is that there is clear geographical variation in deaths from pneumonia, lung cancer and COPD," said Richard Hubbard of the British Lung Foundation.

"This would suggest that social factors such as deprivation and smoking, and possibly pollution, are important and that there is great potential to prevent deaths from lung disease."

Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Satisfactory Sex Can Be Achieved In A Matter Of Minutes

Survey findings released this week dispel the commonly held fantasy that satisfactory sex requires a significant time commitment. The survey, conducted at Penn State by the Society for Sex Therapy and Research, revealed that satisfactory sex for couples typically lasts 3 to 13 minutes. Movies, television, books and the internet have convinced many couples that if they aren’t having sex “all night long:” their sexual life is in the pits and they are missing out on something significant.

The survey included information garnered from psychologists, physicians, social workers, marriage/family therapists and nurses who have collectively seen thousands of patients over a period of several decades. According to the survey data, 3-7 minutes of intercourse is categorized as “adequate,” 7-13 minutes is “desirable,” 1-2 minutes is “too short” and 10-30 minutes is “too long.”

“A man’s or woman’s interpretation of his or her sexual functioning as well as the partner’s relies on personal beliefs developed in part from society’s messages, formal and informal,” the researchers said. “Unfortunately today’s popular culture has reinforced stereotypes about sexual activity. Many men and women seem to believe the fantasy models of large penises, rock-hard erections and all-night-long intercourse.”

“This seems to be a situation ripe for disappointment and dissatisfaction,” said lead author Eric Corty. “With this survey, we hope to dispel such fantasies and encourage men and women by providing realistic data about acceptable intercourse, thus preventing sexual disappointments and misfunctions.”

Source: medheadlines.com

Cell Phones Bad For Your Health – Again

We’ve heard the pros and cons before, but a new Australian study claims cell phones could be worse for your health than smoking or asbestos.

It’s the issue that won’t go away. Are cell phones detrimental to your health? Will the electromagnetic radiation cause brain tumors? Studies have said yes, studies have said no.

Now a new paper from a staff specialist neurosurgeon at the Canberra Hospital and associate professor of neurosurgery with Australian National University Medical School, Vini G. Khurana, entitled "Mobile Phones and Brain Tumors – A Public Health Concern", looks at the results of previous reportage in both the academic and popular press.

Khurana’s warning is quite dire:

“It is anticipated that this danger has far broader public health ramifications than asbestos and smoking, and directly concerns all of us, particularly the younger generation, including very young children.”

The latency time, he believes, “may be in the order of 10-20 years.” He feels that “the link between mobile phones and brain tumours should no longer be regarded as a myth. Individual and class action lawsuits have been filed in the USA, and at least one has already been successfully prosecuted, regarding the cell phone-brain tumour link.”

However, it’s worth noting that many studies have yet to establish a link between the use of cell phones and cancer.

Source: digitaltrends.com

Emotion Makes Nose a Sharper Smeller

Know how a whiff of certain odors can take you back in time, either to a great memory or bad one? It turns out emotion plays an even bigger role with the nose, and that your sense of smell actually can sharpen when something bad happens.

Northwestern University researchers proved the surprising connection by giving volunteers electric shocks while they sniffed novel odors.

The discovery, reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science, helps explain how our senses can steer us clear of danger. More intriguing, it could shed light on disorders such as post-traumatic stress syndrome.

"This is an incredibly unique study," said Dr. David Zald, a Vanderbilt University neuroscientist who studies how the brain handles sensory and emotional learning. "We're talking about a change in our perceptual abilities based on emotional learning."

Scientists long have known of a strong link between the sense of smell and emotion. A certain perfume or scent of baking pie, for instance, can raise memories of a long-dead loved one. Conversely, a whiff of diesel fuel might trigger a flashback for a soldier suffering PTSD.

Could an emotionally charged situation make that initial cue be perceived more strongly in the first place?

The research team recruited 12 healthy young adults to find out.

Volunteers repeatedly smelled sets of laboratory chemicals with odors distinctly different from ones in everyday life. An "oily grassy" smell is the best description that lead researcher Wen Li, a Northwestern postdoctoral fellow in neuroscience, could give.

Two of the bottles in a set contained the same substance and the third had a mirror image of it, meaning its odor normally would be indistinguishable. By chance, the volunteers correctly guessed the odd odor about one-third of the time.

Then Li gave the volunteers mild electric shocks while they smelled just the odd chemical. In later smell tests, they could correctly pick out the odd odor 70 percent of the time.

MRI scans showed the improvement was more than coincidence. There were changes in how the brain's main olfactory region stored the odor information, essentially better imprinting the shock-linked scent so it could be distinguished more quickly from a similar odor.

In other words, the brain seems to have a mechanism to sniff out threats.

That almost is certainly a survival trait evolved to help humans rapidly and subconsciously pick a dangerous odor from the sea of scents constantly surrounding us, Li said. Today, that might mean someone who has been through a kitchen fire can tell immediately if a whiff of smoke has that greasy undertone or simply comes from the fireplace.

But the MRI scans found the brain's emotional regions did not better discriminate among the different odors, Li noted. That discrepancy between brain regions is where anxiety disorders may come in. If someone's olfactory region does not distinguish a dangerous odor signal from a similar one, the brain's emotional fight-or-flight region can overreact.

Researchers say that is a theory not yet tested.

For now, Northwestern neuroscientist Jay Gottfried, the study's senior author, says the work illuminates a sense that society too often gives short shrift.

"People really dismiss the sense of smell," said Gottfried, who researches "how the brain can put together perceptions of hundreds of thousands of different smells. ... Work like this really says that the human sense of smell has much more capacity than people usually give it credit."

Source: www.foxnews.com