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Source: Harvard Health Blog
Condition: Diabetes
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Total 36 results found since Jan 2013.
Tossing flossing?
The burning question in the news last week was this: should you bother flossing?
The answer for decades has been “of course.” And it’s likely you’ve heard something similar from your dentist. I know I have.
But, while the importance of flossing may have been widely accepted, the evidence supporting it turns out to be surprisingly thin. At least that’s the conclusion of health experts who developed the recently released Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2015-2020. These guidelines are issued every five years by the U.S. Department of Health and Humans Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture “…to reflec...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - August 17, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Robert H. Shmerling, MD Tags: Dental Health Prevention Source Type: news
E-cigarettes: Good news, bad news
Follow me at @JohnRossMD
Americans are confused about electronic cigarettes. A recent poll showed that the public was about evenly split between those who thought that electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes, were less harmful than conventional cigarettes, and those who believed that e-cigarettes were as bad as or worse than regular cigarettes.
Unfortunately, there is no long-term safety data about e-cigarettes. What information we do have suggests that e-cigarettes have a complex mix of potential harms and benefits.
E-cigarettes: Less deadly than regular cigarettes
First, the good news: e-cigarettes are almost certainly le...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - July 25, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Ross, MD, FIDSA Tags: Behavioral Health Cancer Lung disease Prevention Smoking cessation Source Type: news
For the good of your heart: Keep holding the salt
Your doctor has probably told you to cut back on salt, especially if you have high blood pressure. For years we’ve understood that excess salt raises blood pressure and increases deaths from heart disease. The guilty element is sodium, which pairs with chloride to form common salt. So when the journal Lancet recently published a study reporting that low dietary sodium was associated with an increased risk of heart disease and death, controversy was predictable.
A wealth of rigorous scientific studies supports a link between excess sodium intake and high blood pressure, heart attacks, and strokes. Yet the Lancet paper rep...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - July 11, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Naomi D. L. Fisher, MD Tags: Healthy Eating Heart Health Hypertension and Stroke Prevention Source Type: news
Farewell to the fasting cholesterol test?
At a recent meeting I offered a visitor lunch which she declined with obvious regret. She was hungry, and it was noon. But she was headed to her annual physical, and eating beforehand would mean returning another morning for a fasting cholesterol level. Most of us can relate to her annoyance, but thankfully this may soon be a thing of the past.
Doctors have traditionally ordered cholesterol tests to be drawn after an overnight fast. But this requirement causes a significant burden on both sides of the health care equation. Most people hate to fast. Skipping meals is particularly difficult for active people, people with dia...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - June 16, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Naomi D. L. Fisher, MD Tags: Health Heart Health Prevention Screening Tests and procedures Source Type: news
What to do when blood test results are not quite “normal”
Picture this: you’re reading the results of your recent bloodwork, and you notice some numbers are teetering on the edge of the normal range. Should you be concerned? “It’s tricky, because in some tests, a borderline result makes no difference. In others, it might indicate an important change in health that we need to follow or act on,” says geriatrician Dr. Suzanne Salamon, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.
About normal ranges and interpreting the numbers
When you look at a printout of your lab results, you’ll find the normal ranges for each blood test next to your personal results. For example, if ...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - June 2, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Heidi Godman Tags: Tests and procedures blood test Source Type: news
What to do when blood test results not quite “normal”
Picture this: you’re reading the results of your recent bloodwork, and you notice some numbers are teetering on the edge of the normal range. Should you be concerned? “It’s tricky, because in some tests, a borderline result makes no difference. In others, it might indicate an important change in health that we need to follow or act on,” says geriatrician Dr. Suzanne Salamon, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.
About normal ranges and interpreting the numbers
When you look at a printout of your lab results, you’ll find the normal ranges for each blood test next to your personal results. For example, if ...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - June 2, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Heidi Godman Tags: Tests and procedures blood test Source Type: news
Diabetes drug pioglitazone could get personal: Neither panacea, nor peril
When I was in training, one of my beloved mentors declared, “I never use a drug until it’s been on the market for 20 years.” I was young enough then that I couldn’t fathom being a doctor for 20 years, let alone waiting two decades to use a new drug. As my career has progressed, I’ve seen many new drugs released to the market. Some of them are truly miraculous, bringing people longer, healthier, and more productive lives. Many of them have not withstood the test of time. More than a few have even been taken off the market. Even though the Food and Drug Administration diligently reviews each new medicine before it...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - May 5, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Lori Wiviott Tishler, MD, MPH Tags: Diabetes Drugs and Supplements pioglitazone thiazolidinediones Source Type: news
Decline in dementia rate offers “cautious hope”
“The number of Americans with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias will grow each year as the size and proportion of the U.S. population age 65 and older continue to increase. The number will escalate rapidly in coming years as the baby boom generation ages.”
2015 Alzheimer’s disease Facts and Figures
Despite these alarming projections, a report from a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) offered a few words of encouragement. Researchers from the longstanding Framingham study found that the rate of dementia has declined over the course of three decades.
Framingham researchers had been study...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - March 9, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Beverly Merz Tags: Alzheimer's Disease Behavioral Health Brain and cognitive health Caregiving Healthy Aging Memory Mental Health Prevention cognitive decline dementia Source Type: news
Only the overworked die young
Follow me at @JohnRossMD
Billy Joel was on to something. As the singer-songwriter suggested in “Movin’ Out,” working too hard really can give you a “heart attack-ack-ack…” And, as a recent study has also shown, stroke may be an even bigger problem than heart attack in people who are overworked.
For the study, researchers from University College London compiled data on the relationship between working hours and heart attack risk in over 600,000 workers, as well as similar data on stroke risk in over 500,000 workers. They adjusted their data to compensate for individual workers’ differences due to healt...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - December 14, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Ross, MD, FIDSA Tags: Behavioral Health Heart Health Hypertension and Stroke Prevention Stress overworked Source Type: news
Exercise: You may need less than you think
Regular exercise is one of the cornerstones for maintaining good health. Regular physical activity helps to prevent heart and blood vessel disease, diabetes, dementia, and even some types of cancer. But while the health benefits of exercise are indisputable, there is still a question about exactly how much exercise is needed to promote optimal health.
According to a recent article in The Journal of the American Medical Association by Thijs Eijsvogels and Paul Thompson, the answer may be “not as much as you might think.”
Every little bit of exercise counts
Drs. Eijsvogels and Thompson reviewed several published studies ...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - December 8, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Gregory Curfman, MD Tags: Diet and Weight Loss Exercise and Fitness Health Heart Health Hypertension and Stroke Prevention Source Type: news
Do statins interfere with the flu vaccine?
Statins are powerful, unusual, and, like El Niño and Tom Cruise, not well understood. Statins have a huge upside. They improve survival after heart attacks and lower the risk of recurrent strokes. They are also the only cholesterol-lowering medications that have been clearly shown to reduce heart attacks and deaths in high-risk patients without heart disease. In addition to reducing cholesterol, statins also lower levels of inflammation in the body. Reducing inflammation probably helps statins to prevent heart attack and stroke. However, evidence is emerging that these statin effects may also have a downside, hindering th...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - November 30, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Ross, MD, FIDSA Tags: Cold and Flu Drugs and Supplements Health Heart Health Vaccines flu vaccine statins Source Type: news
Update on the SPRINT trial: Preliminary results pan out
In a previous blog, I reported on the preliminary results from SPRINT, a clinical trial that examined whether a systolic blood pressure target of 120 mm Hg or less would be better than a target of 140 mm Hg in patients with hypertension (high blood pressure). The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health issued a press release with the exciting results. Now, the full paper has been published in The New England Journal of Medicine, and the results appear to be as practice-changing at it initially seemed, demonstrating a stricter blood pressure goal can reduce the likelihood of dying. In ...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - November 9, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Deepak Bhatt, MD, MPH Tags: Health Heart Health Hypertension and Stroke Source Type: news
The type of fat you eat matters!
By: JoAnn E. Manson, MD, DrPH, and Shari S. Bassuk, ScD
Contributing Editors, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
If you saw last month’s news headlines declaring that saturated fat is no longer deemed harmful to your heart, you may be (understandably!) confused. After all, for years, clinicians and scientists have recommended reducing saturated fat for heart health. Is it time to rethink this advice? Hardly. Here’s the deal.
The research that sparked the recent news splash was an analysis by Canadian researchers of up to a dozen long-term observational studies of diet that included a total of 90,000...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - September 22, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Contributing Editors Tags: Health Healthy Eating Fats saturated fats unsaturated fats Source Type: news
The SPRINT trial: A major advance in treating high blood pressure
This study was sponsored primarily by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health. This trial is a wonderful example of the kind of long-term, large-scale clinical trials that are necessary to advance patient care meaningfully. The study results also illustrate the importance of randomized clinical trials — that is, studies in which patients are randomly assigned to one of two treatment arms. Lastly, credit must be given to the participants who consented to be enrolled in the study. They have generously and selflessly contributed to advancing medical science and improving the care o...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - September 16, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Deepak Bhatt, MD, MPH Tags: Hypertension and Stroke high blood pressure Source Type: news
