Alcohol and Your Heart
Health benefits of moderate drinking come under fire.One of those things that “everybody knows” about alcohol is that a drink or two per day is good for your heart. But maybe not as good for your heart as no drinks at all.Joint first authors Michael V. Holmes of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College in London, and Caroline E. Dale at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in London, recently published a multi-site meta-analysis of epidemiological studies centering on a common gene for alcohol metabolization. The report, published in the UK journal BMJ, brings “the hypoth...
Source: Addiction Inbox - August 25, 2014 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
CoQ10: Powerful Supplement for Health
Discussion of the Evidence, Scope, Benefits and Risk. Please take a look at this discussion as I’m certain it will help answer some important questions. In addition, some very informative research about coenzyme Q10 can be found in the science section of our website.
Coenzyme Q10 is one of the most fundamentally important nutritional supplements I recommend and use in my clinical practice not just for patients with heart disease, but to support brain health and general health as well. We generally recommend 100mg daily, and 200mg daily for those on statins, beta-blockers, or tricyclic antidepressants.
The post CoQ10: Pow...
Source: Renegade Neurologist - A Blog by David Perlmutter, MD, FACN - August 19, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: gbadmin Tags: Science Supplements beta-blockers blood pressure Cardiovascular disease Cholesterol CoQ10 heart lipitor migraines Statins toprol zocor Source Type: blogs
AGEs Contribute to the Development of Osteoporosis
Osteoporosis is the characteristic loss of bone mass and strength that occurs with aging, with proximate causes that include an imbalance in the distinct populations of cells responsible for bone creation and destruction, as well as the general decline in stem cell maintenance activities that occurs for every tissue in the body. For root causes you have to look to cellular and molecular damage of the sort listed in the SENS research programs, which include an accumulation of sugar-based metabolic waste molecules called advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs). These gum together important proteins in the extracellular matrix ...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 7, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
The Day I Made Peace with an Errant Organ
Here’s my theory: few health crises in life are as traumatic as surviving a cardiac event. I developed this theory while I was busy having my own heart attack in the spring of 2008.
For starters, heart attack symptoms often come out of the blue (in fact, almost two-thirds of women who die of coronary heart disease have no previous symptoms. Having a heart attack can feel so unimaginably terrifying that almost all of us try desperately to dismiss or deny cardiac symptoms. And according to a 2013 report published in Global Heart, the journal of the World Heart Federation, women are twice as likely to die within on...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - August 6, 2014 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Chronic Conditions Consumer Health Care Patients Source Type: blogs
Who Will Take Care of You at Home if You’re Seriously Ill?
It turns out that the hilarious British spoof on the horrors of the Man-Cold might be truer than we ever imagined. The joke reality here is that when a husband gets sick, his wife is naturally expected to become his doting caregiver, but when a wife gets sick, she may feel distinctly on her own.
A study presented last month at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America actually reported that the risk of divorce among married couples rises when the wife – but not the husband — becomes seriously ill.
Study author Dr. Amelia Karraker, a researcher at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Resear...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - July 11, 2014 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: DW Staff Tags: Advocacy Caregiving Chronic Conditions Consumer Health Care Source Type: blogs
Myocardial Infarction and World Cup Football
On twitter someone proposed the question: Could a football match in the World Cup series elicit myocardial infarction?
Je hoort weleens dat er na een stroomstoring meer geboortes zijn. Zijn er ook meer hartaanvallen tijdens belangrijke voetbalwedstrijden?
— malou van hintum (@malouvh) July 5, 2014
It can, a quick look at pubmed showed some interesting publications.
One from the BMJ. They showed that admissions for myocardial infarction increased on the day England was eliminated from the 1998 World Cup by Argentina in a penalty shoot-out and on the two subsequent days. Their conclusion was: Intense emotional react...
Source: Dr Shock MD PhD - July 8, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Walter van den Broek Tags: General Medicine myocardial infarction Source Type: blogs
At Merck's Urging, a Federal Judge Threatens to Sanction a Lone Professor for Trying to Reveal Evidence about Vioxx
We have written often, and most recently this week, about the limp posture taken by US law enforcement and regulatory agencies in the face of misbehavior by large health care organizations. At best, official action often results in legal settlements which let companies pay fines, sometimes large, while the individuals who profited most from the alleged wrongdoing do not suffer any negative consequences. Worse, the legal settlements often allow the companies to continue to deny any culpability, and the legal evidence underlying the settlement, which might let the public at least estimate culpability, is often ke...
Source: Health Care Renewal - June 18, 2014 Category: Health Management Tags: anechoic effect confidentiality clause legal settlements Merck Vioxx Source Type: blogs
Exercise, over-indulgence and atrial fibrillation — seeing the obvious
If you like thinking and writing, few topics are better than the excess exercise and heart disease story. Indeed it is a matter for the curious.
Two studies published last week in the British journal Heart addressed the relationship of exercise and heart disease. (See references below.) Although these studies garnered mainstream media attention they added little to what is already known. Namely, that moderate exercise is protective and excessive exercise is detrimental. This has been dubbed the J-curve of exercise. You could also call it…obvious.
I’ve been to this place so many times, I was going to leave it al...
Source: Dr John M - May 18, 2014 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr John Source Type: blogs
On The Pulse - 14th February 2014
Falling mortality from coronary heart disease (Source: OnMedica Blogs)
Source: OnMedica Blogs - February 14, 2014 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs
High Spending, Poor Results
By Quinn Phillips
Last week, Diabetes Flashpoints looked at how health insurance in the United States operates, compared with several other rich countries. The United States is notable both for its widespread reliance on employer-provided insurance, and for its wide variety of insurance types for different groups within the country — in most developed countries, young children and seniors, the rich and the poor, are covered by the same system. So what does our hodgepodge of systems in the United States cost, and what outcomes does it create? The data paint a picture that isn't very pretty.
There are two ways to measu...
Source: Diabetes Self-Management - January 1, 2014 Category: Diabetes Authors: Quinn Phillips Source Type: blogs
Exercise Directly Affects Heart Risk
By Diane Fennell
The risk of cardiovascular complications in people who have Type 2 diabetes is directly related to how frequently and how long they exercise, according to a new study from researchers in Sweden. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in people with Type 2.
Studies have proven that people with Type 2 diabetes have up to five times the chance of developing heart disease or stroke compared to people without diabetes, and research has also indicated that physical activity is directly linked with the risk of developing a cardiovascular condition.
To evaluate whether the risks of coronary hear...
Source: Diabetes Self-Management - November 29, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: Diane Fennell Source Type: blogs
23 And Me And the FDA
As everyone will have heard the personal-genomics company 23 and Me was told by the FDA to immediately stop selling their product, a direct-to-consumer DNA sequence readout. Reaction to this has been all over the map. I'll pick a couple of the viewpoints to give you the idea.
From one direction, here's Matthew Herper's article, with the excellent title "23 And Stupid". Here's his intro, which makes his case well:
I’d like to be able to start here by railing against our medical system, which prevents patients from getting data about our own bodies because of a paternalistic idea that people can’t look at blood test re...
Source: In the Pipeline - November 27, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Regulatory Affairs Source Type: blogs
Confused Thinking about New Cholesterol Guidelines - Were Conflicts of Interest to Blame?
For years, clinical practice guidelines promulgated by prominent health care organizations have been hailed with accolades as received wisdom. However, there is increasing reason to be skeptical of such guidelines. Many guidelines are not based on rigorous application of the principles of evidence-based medicine, and often seem to arise from the personal opinions of their authors. This is particularly troublesome when those authors have conflicts of interest, and when the organizations that sponsor guideline development have institutional conflicts of interest. Back in 2011, an Institute of Me...
Source: Health Care Renewal - November 22, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: American College of Cardiology American Heart Association conflicts of interest evidence-based medicine guidelines logical fallacies Source Type: blogs
Study: Lower Your Cholesterol and Raise Your Risk of Death Following Mainstream Diet Advice
You've been hearing for decades about how a healthy diet is one that lowers your intake of saturated fats and replaces them with "healthy" unsaturated oils. This, you have been told, will lower your cholesterol and your risk of having a heart attack.What you probably didn't hear is that a study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) February of this past year found that though the first claim is true--swapping out saturated fats for vegetable oils will lower your cholesterol--if the oil you use instead of saturated fat is full of omega-6 fatty acid, like safflower oil or corn oil, the second claim is completely fal...
Source: Diabetes Update - November 14, 2013 Category: Diabetes Source Type: blogs
Promising GSK Heart Drug Misses Primary Endpoint In 15,000 Patient Trial
GlaxoSmithKline announced today that the first of two large pivotal phase 3 trials with a new drug, darapladib, had failed to meet its primary endpoint. Full results of the trial will be presented at a scientific meeting. The STABILITY trial (STabilisation of Atherosclerotic plaque By Initiation of darapLadIb TherapY) tested the effect of darapladib, an investigational Lp-PLA2 inhibitor, in more than 15,000 patients with chronic coronary heart disease. GSK reported a nonsignificant 6% relative risk reduction associated with the use of darapladib in the time to first occurrence of any major adverse cardiovascular event (...
Source: CardioBrief - November 12, 2013 Category: Cardiology Authors: Larry Husten Tags: People, Places & Events Policy & Ethics Coronary disease Darapladib GlaxoSmithKline Human Genome Sciences Lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 myocardial infarction STABILITY Source Type: blogs
