Mushroom Magic: A Natural Remedy For High Blood Pressure?
Conclusion
So there you have it, folks!
Mushrooms aren’t just delicious; they’re also potentially a secret weapon in our fight against hypertension.
By incorporating mushrooms into your diet, you’re not just treating your taste buds, but you’re also taking a proactive step towards better heart health.
But remember, while mushrooms and their bioactive compounds show great promise, they’re not an alternative to medical treatment.
They’re a dietary intervention, a way to supplement the efforts you’re already making to manage hypertension.
As always, if you have c...
Source: The EMT Spot - May 13, 2023 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Michael Rotman, MD, FRCPC, PhD Tags: News Source Type: blogs
Beyond heart health: Could your statin help prevent liver cancer?
Liver cancer is hard to treat. It’s a top-five cause of cancer-related death worldwide and a growing cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. Since liver cancer is often found at a late stage, when treatment has limited benefit, there has been increasing interest in prevention. That’s where statin medications might come in.
Liver cancer is usually caused by chronic liver disease, so an important way to prevent liver cancer is to treat the underlying trigger. For example, curing hepatitis C infection — an important cause of chronic liver disease — reduces the risk of liver cancer. However, if the liver d...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - January 27, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Irun Bhan, MD Tags: Cancer Drugs and Supplements Health Source Type: blogs
Intellectual Suicide
Physician suicide is an enormous problem. We lose approximately 400 doctors and trainees annually to suicide. This is a tragedy, pure and simple. Not limited to the human carnage of the equivalent of an entire medical school class or more, but, to quote Dr. Pamela Wible, “Each year more than one million Americans lose their doctors to suicide.”
What does it mean, then, when physicians who are trained in medicine — defined as the application of scientific principles to the diagnosis and treatment of human ills — turn away from reality to accept the magical thinking of pseudoscience? I submit that it...
Source: Musings of a Dinosaur - June 13, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: notdeaddinosaur Tags: Medical Source Type: blogs
Test your medicine knowledge: 58-year-old man with type 2 diabetes
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians.
A 58-year-old man is evaluated during a routine appointment. He is asymptomatic. He was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes mellitus 4 years ago and has hypertension, dyslipidemia, and obesity. His medications are enteric-coated low-dose aspirin, lisinopril, fluvastatin (20 mg/d), and metformin.
His calculated 10-year risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) using the Pooled Cohort Equations is 10%.
On physical examination, blood pressure is 126/78 mm Hg and pulse rate is 72/min. The remainder of the ex...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - October 3, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: mksap Tags: Conditions Diabetes Heart Source Type: blogs
Cholesterol Drugs: New Studies Could Spur Even Wider Use. Is That a Good Thing?
By STEVEN FINDLAY
Chances are that a third of you reading this sentence take a statin, the ubiquitous cholesterol-lowering drugs. I do. Is it a good or bad thing that so many of us are taking these meds? Two studies out this month advance the long-running debate about the widespread use of statins—and they could propel doctors to prescribe the drugs to millions more people.
The cholesterol/statin story starts in the early 1980s. Here’s a quick summary:
By 1985, studies showed conclusively that statins (the best known one then was Mevacor/lovastatin) substantially reduced the risk of another heart attack in people who ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - July 27, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: suchandan roy Tags: THCB LDl Lipitor Statins Steven Findlay Source Type: blogs
New Cures Require New Pricing Policies
One critical incentive for ongoing drug discovery and development is the temporary monopoly pricing that manufacturers can command for novel drugs. Yet this incentive, embedded in current patent and regulatory policy, does not guarantee that manufacturers will deliver novel products with clinically meaningful benefits. Indeed there are many diseases---including Alzheimer’s disease and Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)---that pose significant patient, family, and societal burden but have not benefited from meaningful treatment advances.
Meanwhile, the American public appears increasingly wary of the unintended conseque...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - April 16, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Rena Conti Tags: Health Policy Lab costs drugs Pharma pricing Source Type: blogs
How Manipulated Clinical Evidence Could Distort Guidelines - the Case of Statins for Primary Prevention
This study excluded many patient for whom the statins were not contraindicated or warned against: uncontrolled hypertension; type 1 or type 2 diabetes mellitus on insulin or with a HgBA1C at least 10%; and body weight more than 50% "desirable limit for height." (Based on the official contraindications and warnings for commonly used statins, e.g., see contraindications for Lipitor here, active liver disease, pregnancy for likely to become pregnant, nursing mothers, hypersensitivity to the medicine; and warnings: use of cyclosprine or strong CYP3A4 inhibitors, uncontrolled hypothyroidism, renal impairment.) Thus ...
Source: Health Care Renewal - December 3, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: American College of Cardiology American Heart Association clinical trials conflicts of interest evidence-based medicine guidelines manipulating clinical research review articles Source Type: blogs
Can Statins Prevent Dementia?
A study of nearly 58,000 patients found that high potency statins had the strongest protective effects against dementia.
+Alzheimer's Reading Room
High doses of statins prevent dementia in older people, according to research presented at the European Society of Cardiogists by Dr Tin-Tse Lin from Taiwan.
The study of nearly 58,000 patients found that high potency statins had the strongest protective effects against dementia.
“Statins are widely used in the older population to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. But recent reports of statin-associated cognitive impairment have led the US Food and Drug Admi...
Source: Alzheimer's Reading Room, The - September 2, 2013 Category: Dementia Authors: Bob DeMarco Source Type: blogs
Berberine Works But May Very Well Be Harmful
I have been getting a lot of email of late about the supplement Berberine, which appears to be the latest miracle cure being sold to those people with diabetes who believe that completely unregulated herbs imported from countries with long histories of food and drug adulteration are somehow safer and "more natural" than the tightly regulated pharamceuticals.Berberine does appear to work to lower blood sugar. The problem is that we really know very little about how it does it or what its long term effects are on the body. I see many mentions on sites promoting berberine supplements of the fact that berberine has a lon...
Source: Diabetes Update - August 14, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: Jenny Source Type: blogs
Merck’s Combination Of Ezetimibe And Atorvastatin Back On NDA Path
A combination tablet containing the cholesterol-lowering drugs ezetimibe and atorvastatin is back on the path to possible FDA approval, according to Merck, which already markets Zetia (ezetimibe) and Vytorin, the combination of ezetimibe and simvastatin. Merck has repeatedly stumbled in its efforts to gain FDA approval of the proposed new drug, which has been dubbed “Son of Vytorin.” The new drug application (NDA) submission was first rejected by the FDA in 2009 and, again, last year. Merck said yesterday that the FDA had accepted Merck’s resubmission of its NDA, which included additional data provided ...
Source: CardioBrief - January 3, 2013 Category: Cardiology Authors: Larry Husten Tags: Prevention, Epidemiology & Outcomes cholesterol ezetimibe FDA food and drug administration LDL cholesterol lovastatin Merck New Drug Application vytorin Source Type: blogs
Merck’s Combination Of Ezetimibe And Atorvastatin Combo Back On NDA Path
A combination tablet containing the cholesterol-lowering drugs ezetimibe and atorvastatin is back on the path to possible FDA approval, according to Merck, which already markets Zetia (ezetimibe) and Vytorin, the combination of ezetimibe and simvastatin. Merck has repeatedly stumbled in its efforts to gain FDA approval of the proposed new drug, which has been dubbed “Son of Vytorin.” The new drug application (NDA) submission was first rejected by the FDA in 2009 and, again, last year. Merck said yesterday that the FDA had accepted Merck’s resubmission of its NDA, which included additional data provided ...
Source: CardioBrief - January 3, 2013 Category: Cardiology Authors: Larry Husten Tags: Prevention, Epidemiology & Outcomes cholesterol ezetimibe FDA food and drug administration LDL cholesterol lovastatin Merck New Drug Application vytorin Source Type: blogs
