Created 2015 - Hello5 Social Network
Published: May, 2019
A near-daily serving of nuts may lower the risk of cardiovascular disease in people with type 2 diabetes, new research suggests. The study, published online February 19 by Circulation Research, relied on diet surveys from more than 16,000 people before and after they were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, a condition that elevates the risk of heart disease. Researchers asked them about their nut-eating habits over a period of several years. People who ate five servings of nuts per week had a 17% lower risk of cardiovascular disease compared with those who ate less than a serving per week.
Chock full of unsaturated fat, fiber, and minerals, nuts can help control blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol. Tree nuts, which include walnuts, almonds, and pistachios, seemed to offer the strongest benefits in the study. Peanuts, which aren't technically nuts but legumes, weren't quite as healthy. While this study can't prove cause and effect, eating a small handful of unsalted nuts on most days will likely help your heart, even if you don't have diabetes.
Right now the world is experiencing an epidemic that is projected to get much, much worse. It’s an epidemic of dementia, affecting 50 million people and millions more of their caregivers — staggering numbers that are projected to triple by 2050.
The dementia crisis is such a massive worldwide issue that the World Health Organization (WHO) announced a strategic public health action plan, including compiling an organized database of quality dementia research and creating guidelines for the prevention of dementia. The guidelines have just been published, a 96-page document that is summarized here, as well as in this post.
Dementia is a progressive, heartbreaking deterioration of brain functioning associated with aging. While there are different causes, the most common — Alzheimer’s and vascular dementias — are now thought to be closely related to, and greatly impacted by, the same diet and lifestyle factors.
Your diet and lifestyle can lower your risk of dementia
Several key protective health habits are highly recommended:
Regular physical activity — any activity, for at least 150 minutes per week, is number one on the list of evidence-based actions you can take. Exercise clearly lowers the risk of dementia, even Alzheimer’s. Studies show that people who exercise more are less likely to develop dementia of any kind, and this stands even for adults with mild cognitive impairment.
Eating a plant-based diet is crucial. There is substantial research evidence showing that eating a diet high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, healthy fats, and seafood is associated with a significantly lower risk of cognitive decline and dementia. This approach to eating is often referred to as the Mediterranean-style diet, but it can be adapted to any culture or cuisine.
The WHO also recommends avoiding toxic, inflammatory foods like processed grains (white flour, white rice), added sugar, sodium, and saturated fats like butter and fatty meat. It’s important to note that the WHO does not recommend taking any vitamins or supplements for brain health, because there is no solid evidence showing that these have any effect whatsoever. Just eat a healthy plant-based diet and avoid unhealthy foods as much as possible.
The WHO also issues strong recommendations to avoid or quit smoking and to minimize alcohol use, especially in those who already have cognitive concerns.
They mention additional lifestyle factors that have less evidence but may also help: getting enough good sleep, positive relationships, and social engagement have been shown to protect cognition.
What’s fascinating about these dementia prevention guidelines is how similar they are to those for heart disease prevention.
How is heart health related to cognitive health?
We have long known that the diseases and conditions that clog the arteries of the heart also clog the arteries of the rest of the body, including the brain. It all boils down to damage of the arteries, the blood vessels that are critical for blood flow and oxygen delivery to the organs. Arterial damage leads to arterial blockages, which lead to heart disease and heart attacks, strokes, peripheral vascular disease, and vascular dementia.
Meanwhile, Alzheimer’s disease used to be thought of as a different process, because the brains of people with Alzheimer’s seemed to be full of tangled tube-shaped proteins (neurofibrillary tangles). However, more and more research is linking Alzheimer’s dementia to the same risk factors that cause heart disease, strokes, peripheral vascular disease, and vascular dementias: obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes.
The evidence is substantial: studies show that people with these risk factors are significantly more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease. Meanwhile, studies also show that people with Alzheimer’s disease have significantly reduced brain blood flow, and autopsy studies show that brains affected by Alzheimer’s can also have significant vascular damage.
Researchers are now focusing on why this is — what is the connection? It appears that good brain blood flow is key for clearing those tubular proteins that can accumulate and become tangled in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, and so one solid hypothesis is that anything that reduces brain blood flow can increase the risk for Alzheimer’s, and conversely, anything that increases blood flow can reduce the risk for Alzheimer’s.
What’s the take-home message?
Even if someone has a family history of dementia, particularly Alzheimer’s dementia, and even if they already have mild cognitive impairment (forgetfulness, confusion), they can still reduce their risk of developing dementia by simply living a heart-healthy lifestyle. That means a minimum of 150 minutes per week of activity, a plant-based diet aiming for at least five servings of fruits and vegetables daily, avoiding toxic foods like processed grains, added sugars, sodium, and saturated fats, avoiding or quitting smoking, and curbing alcohol use as much as possible.
Selected resources
WHO Dementia Prevention Guidelines Executive Summary
AHA/ACC Guideline on the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease
Association of obesity, diabetes, and hypertension with cognitive impairment in older age. Clinical Epidemiology, July 25, 2018.
Vascular and metabolic factors in Alzheimer’s diseases and related dementias. Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology, March 2016.
Defining the relationship between hypertension, cognitive decline, and dementia: a review. Current Hypertension Reports, March 2017.
Mediterranean diet, cognitive function, and dementia: A
systematic review of the evidence. Advances in Nutrition,
September 2016.
People who increased their daily servings of red meat over an eight-year period were more likely to die during the subsequent eight years than those who did not increase their red meat consumption, according to a new study led by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The study also found that decreasing red meat and simultaneously increasing healthy alternative food choices over time was associated with lower mortality.
A large body of evidence has shown that greater consumption of red meat, especially processed red meat, is associated with higher risk of Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, certain types of cancers, including those of the colon and rectum, and premature death. This is the first longitudinal study to examine how changes in red meat consumption over time may influence that risk.
For this study, researchers used health data from 53,553 women in the Nurses’ Health Study and 27,916 men in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study who were free of cardiovascular disease and cancer at baseline. They looked at whether changes in red meat consumption from 1986 to 1994 predicted mortality in 1994 to 2002, and whether changes from 1994 to 2002 predicted mortality in 2002 to 2010.
Increasing total processed meat intake by half a daily serving or more was associated with a 13 percent higher risk of mortality from all causes. The same amount of unprocessed meat increased mortality risk by 9 percent. The researchers also found significant associations between increased red meat consumption and increased deaths due to cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, and neurodegenerative disease.
The association of increases in red meat consumption with increased relative risk of premature mortality was consistent across participants irrespective of age, physical activity level, dietary quality, smoking status, or alcohol consumption, according to the researchers.
Study results also showed that, overall, a decrease in red meat together with an increase in nuts, fish, poultry without skin, dairy, eggs, whole grains, or vegetables over eight years was associated with a lower risk of death in the subsequent eight years.
The researchers suggest that the association may be due to a combination of components that promote cardiometabolic disturbances, including saturated fat, cholesterol, heme iron, preservatives, and carcinogenic compounds produced by high-temperature cooking. Red meat consumption also was linked recently to gut microbiota-derived metabolite trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO), which might promote atherosclerosis.
“This long-term study provides further evidence that reducing red meat intake while eating other protein foods or more whole grains and vegetables may reduce risk of premature death,” said senior author Frank Hu, Fredrick J. Stare Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology and chair, Department of Nutrition. “To improve both human health and environmental sustainability, it is important to adopt a Mediterranean-style or other diet that emphasizes healthy plant foods.”
The first author of the study is Yan Zheng, a former postdoctoral associate in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard Chan School and now a professor at Fudan University, Shanghai, China. Other Harvard Chan School authors include Yanping Li, Ambika Satija, Mercedes Sotos-Prieto, Eric Rimm, and Walter Willett. The study cohorts were supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, and the current study was supported by grants from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, and the Boston Obesity Nutrition Research Center.
One of the easiest, and maybe most effective, ways to gauge your health can be done in 30 seconds with two fingers. Measuring your resting heart rate (RHR) — the number of heart beats per minute while you’re at rest — is a real-time snapshot of how your heart muscle is functioning.
It’s easy to do. Place your index and middle finger on your wrist just below the thumb, or along either side of your neck, so you can feel your pulse. Use a watch to count the number of beats for 30 seconds and double it to get your beats per minute. Repeat a few times to ensure an accurate reading. While a heart rate is considered normal if the rate is between 60 and 100 beats per minute, most healthy relaxed adults have a resting heart rate below 90 beats per minute.
Your resting heart rate, when considered in the context of other markers, such as blood pressure and cholesterol, can help identify potential health problems as well as gauge your current heart health.
“In certain cases, a lower resting heart rate can mean a higher degree of physical fitness, which is associated with reduced rates of cardiac events like heart attacks,” says Dr. Jason Wasfy, director of quality and analytics at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital Heart Center. “However, a high resting heart rate could be a sign of an increased risk of cardiac risk in some situations, as the more beats your heart has to take eventually takes a toll on its overall function.”
In fact, research has found that a resting heart rate near the top of the 60 to 100 range can increase your risk for cardiovascular disease and even early death.
For example, a 2013 study in the journal Heart tracked the cardiovascular health of about 3,000 men for 16 years and found that a high resting heart rate was linked with lower physical fitness and higher blood pressure, body weight, and levels of circulating blood fats. The researchers also discovered that the higher a person’s resting heart rate, the greater the risk of premature death. Specifically, an RHR between 81 and 90 doubled the chance of death, while an RHR higher than 90 tripled it.
While a low resting heart rate often suggests greater physical fitness, some situations can make your RHR too low, which may cause occasional dizziness or fatigue. “This may be the result of the electrical nodes of the heart aging, or not transmitting electrical signals correctly,” says Dr. Wasfy. “You should report these symptoms to your health care provider.”
Dr. Wasfy recommends checking your resting heart rate a few times per week and at different times of the day. Keep in mind that the number can be influenced by many factors, including stress and anxiety, circulating hormones, and medications such as antidepressants and blood pressure drugs.
Talk with your doctor if your resting heart rate is regularly on the high end. There are ways to lower it and keep it within its proper range. One example is keeping your cholesterol levels in check. High levels restrict blood flow through the arteries and damage blood vessels, which can make your heart beat faster than normal to move blood through the body.
Another reliable way to lower your resting heart rate is to exercise. “Even small amounts of exercise can make a change,” says Dr. Wasfy. However, the intensity of the exercise is key. One study that involved 55-year-old adults found that just one hour per week of high-intensity aerobic training (about 66% of maximum effort) lowered RHR more efficiently than a low-intensity effort (33% of max effort).
Tips for measuring your resting heart rate
Do not take your RHR within one to two hours after exercise or a stressful event. Your heart rate can stay elevated after strenuous activities.
Wait at least an hour after consuming caffeine, which can cause heart palpitations and make your heart rate rise.
The American Heart Association recommends checking your resting heart rate first thing in the morning (but before you get out of bed).
Source: The University of Pennsylvania
White coat hypertension, a condition in which a patient’s blood pressure readings are higher when taken at the doctor’s office compared to other settings, was originally attributed to the anxiety patients might experience during medical appointments. However, over the years, research has suggested the elevated readings might be a sign of underlying risk for future health problems.
A new study led by
researchers from Penn Medicine, published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine,
revealed that patients with untreated white coat hypertension not only
have a heightened risk of heart disease, but they are twice as likely to
die from heart disease than people with normal blood pressure.
Researchers also found that patients with white coat hypertension who were taking medication to treat their high blood pressure, called antihypertensives, did not have an increased risk of heart disease or cardiovascular-related death compared to those with normal blood pressure readings.
“Studies suggest that about one in five adults may have white coat hypertension. Our findings underscore the importance of identifying people with this condition,” said the study’s lead author Jordana B. Cohen, MD, MSCE, an assistant professor in the division of Renal-Electrolyte and Hypertension and a senior scholar in the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics.
“We believe individuals with isolated in-office hypertension – those who are not taking blood pressure medication – should be closely monitored for transition to sustained hypertension, or elevated blood pressure both at home and the doctor’s office.”
High blood pressure, or hypertension, is a defined as a top reading of at least 130 or a bottom one of 80. The condition affects nearly a third of American adults and, if left untreated, increases one’s risk for severe complications, including heart attack and stroke.
To diagnose and manage the condition, recent hypertension guidelines strongly recommend out-of-office blood pressure monitoring, such as at-home monitoring and ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, which requires patients to wear a portable device that records blood pressure readings over a 24-hour period. However, providers have been slow to adopt this practice due, in part, to skepticism over the usefulness of screening for white coat hypertension given the inconsistent findings – from past studies – and uncertainty around its association with heart disease and death.
To identify the cardiovascular risks of white coat hypertension, the researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 27 studies, comprising more than 60,000 patients, that evaluated the health risks associated with the condition.
They found that patients with untreated white coat
hypertension had a 36 percent increased risk of heart disease, 33
percent increased risk of death and 109 percent increased risk of death
from heart disease.
“Our findings support the pressing need for increased out-of-office blood pressure monitoring nationwide, as it’s critical in the diagnosis and management of hypertension,” Cohen said. “Simultaneously, we advise individuals with untreated white coat hypertension to engage in lifestyle modifications, including smoking cessation, reduction in their alcohol intake, and making improvements to their diet and exercise regimens.
We also caution providers not to over-treat individuals with white coat hypertension who are already on blood pressure medication, as this could lead to dangerously low blood pressures outside of the office and unnecessary side effects from medication.”
Researchers noted that future studies are needed to investigate
interventions to reduce the cardiac risk of white coat hypertension. This work was supported, in part, by a grant from the National
Institutes of Health (K23-HL133843). Additional Penn authors on the
study include Matthew G. Denker, Debbie L. Cohen and Raymond R.
Townsend.
Many people skimp on sleep during the week and try to make up for lost time on the weekend. But a study published February 28 in Current Biology shows this strategy won't necessarily reverse the ill effects of sleep deprivation on your body.
The study, conducted in a sleep lab, tested the health effects of three sleep strategies over a two-week period. Participants in one group were allowed to sleep up to nine hours a night. Those in a second group were limited to five hours a night. People in the third group slept five hours nightly during the week, but were allowed to sleep in on Saturday and Sunday.
Researchers found that people who were sleep-deprived — defined as getting less than seven hours a night — experienced changes to their metabolism, showed a 13% drop in insulin sensitivity, and gained an average of three pounds throughout the course of the study. The group allowed to catch up on sleep over the weekend saw no improvement in those markers, and researchers found that their sleep quality actually deteriorated when they went back to their five-hour weekday sleep schedule.
The message is this: Rather than playing catch-up on the weekend,
it's far better to stick to a consistent sleep schedule that allows for
at least seven hours a night.
A gracefully aging face is a beautiful thing, but there are changes that occur with age that we would like to slow down. Age affects every nook and cranny of the body. Along with the wisdom, experience, and accomplishments that come with getting older, there are changes that occur in our outward appearance. Changes in our faces are most at the forefront.
How the face ages
Dozens of changes take place as the years add up, some of them obvious and familiar:
Foreheads expand as hairlines retreat
Ears often get a bit longer because the cartilage in them grows
Tips of noses may droop because connective tissue supporting nasal cartilage weakens.
There are also structural rearrangements going on behind the scenes. When we're young, fat in the face is evenly distributed, with some pockets here and there that plump up the forehead, temples, cheeks, and areas around the eyes and mouth. With age, that fat loses volume, clumps up, and shifts downward, so features that were formerly round may sink, and skin that was smooth and tight gets loose and sags. Meanwhile other parts of the face gain fat, particularly the lower half, so we tend to get baggy around the chin and jowly in the neck.
And, of course, there are the wrinkles. Those deep ones in the forehead and between the eyebrows are called expression, or animation, lines. They're the result of facial muscles continually tugging on, and eventually creasing, the skin. Other folds may get deeper because of the way fat decreases and moves around. Finer wrinkles are due to sun damage, smoking, and natural degeneration of elements of the skin that keep it thick and supple.
What can I do about my aging face?
Even if you have great genes and look much younger than you are, age-related changes in our facial appearance are unavoidable. Those changes reflect our joys and challenges in life. One approach is to simply celebrate our age and appearance for what they are.
Not everyone is comfortable with that, and some might like to postpone embracing those changes. The age-defying facelift, which surgically removes excess tissue and lifts sagging skin in the lower part of the face, is one way to try to stem the tides of time. Facelifts have improved, so the results tend to look more natural. But the surgery is expensive (the surgeon's fee alone is just under $7,000, on average), and other procedures may be needed to achieve the desired results. The facelift procedure is only the 20th most popular cosmetic procedure, and now there are plenty of alternatives for altering the aging face.
Although most of these rejuvenating procedures are nonsurgical, they're not inexpensive — especially when you factor in the need for repeat treatments.
Here is just a sample of some of the things that you can do — or get done — to give your face a more youthful appearance:
Sun protection. Protecting your face from the sun is the single best way of keeping it youthful. Much of the damage comes from the UVA part of the light spectrum, so you need to put on sunscreen that protects against it and UVB light, which causes sunburn. Wearing a wide-brimmed hat is also a good idea.
Creams and lotions. Moisturizers soothe dry skin and may temporarily make wrinkles less noticeable. Moisturizers for the face contain water to make them less greasy, and many have substances — glycerin, for example — that may help bind water to the skin. Exfoliant creams can improve the appearance of older skin by getting rid of dead skin cells that don't slough off as readily as they did when we were young.
Several prescription creams (Avita, Avage, Renova, Retin-A) have been shown to reduce wrinkles and so-called liver spots caused by sun exposure. These FDA-approved creams contain retinoids, compounds related to vitamin A that seem to work by inducing collagen production in the dermis and altering melanin, the pigment that causes liver spots. There are several varieties of retinoids. Tazarotene and tretinoin are the ones used in the FDA-approved products.
Botulinum toxin injections. These injections are used to treat the expression lines of the forehead and between the brows. They work by partially immobilizing the muscles that form expression lines so the skin smoothes out, although some deep expression lines may not go away. Botox is the familiar brand name. Other FDA-approved botulinum toxins are Myobloc and Dysport.
Dermal fillers. Dermal fillers are used to treat lines created by lost collagen and fat. After botulinum toxin injections, dermal filler injections are the most common cosmetic procedure performed in the United States. Prime locations for the injections are two sets of parentheses: the pair of lines that extend down from the nose to the corners of the mouth, known as the nasolabial folds, and another pair that extends down from the corners of the mouth to the chin, known as marionette lines.
Many different materials are used as dermal filler. Collagen has fallen out of favor. Currently, the most popular one is hyaluronic acid, a complex sugar found naturally in many tissues. Hyaluronic acid is more expensive than collagen, but lasts longer — up to six months in the nasolabial folds. Like botulinum toxin injections, the effect of the dermal filler shots wears off after several months — how long depends on the injection site — but with repeat injections it seems to last a little longer.
Laser treatments. Lasers can be used to home in on certain pigments: brown, if the goal is to get rid of freckles and liver spots, red if the target is broken capillaries. They're also used for wholesale resurfacing of facial skin. The uppermost layers are stripped away, and with them, wrinkles from sun damage and scars from acne. The energy from some "nonablative" resurfacing lasers passes through the outer layer of the skin to work at a deeper level, in the dermis, to stimulate inflammation, which leads to collagen formation.
Skin needs time to recover after most laser treatments. It can take a couple of weeks to heal, depending on the type and extent of the treatment. The nonablative treatments tend to heal a bit faster