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Specialty: Consumer Health News
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Total 273 results found since Jan 2013.

UK heart disease and stroke death rates now lower than cancer
Conclusion This valuable research informs on the burden of cardiovascular disease and associated mortality across European countries. It demonstrates that CVD is still the most common cause of death across Europe, but rates have been falling over the past 10 years. This fall means that in several European countries, including the UK, cancer rates now overtake CVD death rates in men. Generally, CVD disability and burden of disease seems to be greater in Eastern European countries. The WHO mortality data and population data are quite up-to-date and should be reliable, though as the researchers say, there was a lack of high ...
Source: NHS News Feed - August 15, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Heart/lungs Cancer Neurology Source Type: news

'Netflix and kill?' Binge watching box-sets linked to blood clots
Conclusion This study used data from a large Japanese cohort study to assess the link between the number of hours spent watching the television and the risk of death from pulmonary embolism. The study found that a greater number of hours watching the television increased the risk of death from pulmonary embolism. The main strength of this study is the very large sample size and long follow-up periods. However, there are a number of limitations: this study design is not able to prove cause and effect, so while there appears to be a link, we cannot be sure the cause of mortality is from television watching even thoug...
Source: NHS News Feed - July 26, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Heart/lungs Lifestyle/exercise Source Type: news

'Nine out of 10 strokes preventable,' claims study
Conclusion This valuable research aims to clarify which preventable risk factors are associated with stroke risk – knowledge that could have an effect on addressing this important global health problem. The study's strengths are that it is based on a large sample size of nearly 27,000 people from 32 countries and of different socioeconomic backgrounds. The researchers made careful attempts beforehand to calculate how many participants they would need to include to be able to reliably detect differences in risk factors. There was little missing data across the total sample – for the various different risk factors as...
Source: NHS News Feed - July 18, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Neurology Medication Source Type: news

Obesity 'now a leading cause of death; especially in men'
Conclusion The effect of being overweight or obese on length of life has been discussed a lot in recent years, mainly because of studies which seemed to show people might live longer if they have a BMI in the overweight range, and that even moderate obesity did not raise the risk of death. However, this study suggests the previous findings were due to confounding factors – such as smoking and pre-existing diseases – which masked the link between BMI and length of life. The overall conclusion is that weight does matter, especially for men and younger people, who seem most affected by the link between BMI and early deat...
Source: NHS News Feed - July 14, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Obesity Lifestyle/exercise Food/diet Source Type: news

'Stop demonising butter,' say researchers
Conclusion This systematic review and meta-analysis assessed the long-term association between butter consumption and major health conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and death. The nine identified studies found little to no evidence that butter consumption increased the risk of death, cardiovascular disease, heart disease or stroke. Perhaps surprisingly, though, there did seem to be a protective effect against the risk of type 2 diabetes. This review has both strengths and limitations that may affect the reliability of the findings. The researchers used careful search methods that aimed to identify onl...
Source: NHS News Feed - June 30, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Food/diet Heart/lungs Source Type: news

Heart attacks linked to media statin reports ... reports media
Conclusion This study aimed to estimate the effect on the use of statins in the UK after a six-month period of intense media coverage about the risks and benefits of the drugs. It found that patients were more likely to stop taking statins after exposure to the high media coverage compared with before the six-month period. However, there was no effect for people who had been newly prescribed statins. As the researchers acknowledge, interrupted time series studies like this one cannot confirm a causal link between the media coverage and the observed likelihood of stopping statin treatment. We cannot know the exact reasons...
Source: NHS News Feed - June 29, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Heart/lungs Medication Medical practice Source Type: news

Migraines linked to increased heart disease risk in women
Conclusion This study shows a strong link between migraine and cardiovascular disease, extending the link already found between migraine and stroke. However, many questions remain. We don't know if the results are relevant to men who have migraines, as all the people in the study were women. We also don't know if the results apply to non-white populations, as most of the women in the study were white. Previous studies on stroke have shown that the group at highest risk is who get an "aura" before a migraine – sensation(s) that tells them the migraine is on its way. But this study did not ask people about aura...
Source: NHS News Feed - June 1, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Heart/lungs Neurology Source Type: news

Study: 'mini strokes should be treated immediately with aspirin'
Conclusion The study supports current recommended practice that people with a TIA or ischaemic stroke caused by a blood clot are treated with aspirin as soon as possible. NHS experts are considering whether to recommend that you take aspirin yourself while waiting for medical help. The reason this isn't recommended at present is that some people will have had a haemorrhagic (bleeding) stroke, and aspirin can make the bleeding worse. For people who've had a full stroke, an urgent brain scan is usually performed to exclude bleeding as a cause and check it's safe to proceed with anti-clotting treatment. The risk of trans...
Source: NHS News Feed - May 19, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Neurology Medication Source Type: news

Are broken bones, loneliness and poor sleep really hidden killers?
Conclusion As the researchers say, the WHO definition of health encompasses physical, mental and social wellbeing – not just the presence or absence of disease. But how often are these extra dimensions taken into account when assessing a person's health status? In this sample of older adults, just looking at their disease status puts the majority of them into an apparently "robust" health group. Yet when you consider the additional dimensions of psychological health and wellbeing, you seem to get a much better indication of those who were at higher or lower risk of dying or being incapacitated in the coming...
Source: NHS News Feed - May 18, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Lifestyle/exercise Medical practice Source Type: news

Exercise benefits you - even in polluted city air
Conclusion This modelling study aimed to assess exposure to air pollution through physical activity and the associated health risks around the world. The study found the background pollution level required to reach the tipping point is only present in less than 1% of cities, according to the WHO. In an average city physical exercise will remain beneficial up to seven hours a day for cycling or 16 hours for walking. In highly polluted areas this became as low as 30 minutes a day for cycling and 90 minutes of walking. The main limitation of this study is that it is only a model and we do not know how true to life the findi...
Source: NHS News Feed - May 6, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Heart/lungs Lifestyle/exercise Source Type: news

Short bursts of intense exercise 'as good' as endurance training
Conclusion The idea that a 10-minute workout could have the same benefits as spending 45 minutes in the gym is tempting. The researchers found it may improve specific markers of health, in one group of young men. However, this is a small study in a specific population, and we don't know whether it would have comparable effects in older people or women. Also, we don't know the long-term effects of this type of training programme on people's health. Studies that look at the effects of an intervention, whether it's exercise, diet or medicine, on health measures such as insulin resistance and oxygen uptake, can only give us a...
Source: NHS News Feed - April 28, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Lifestyle/exercise Heart/lungs Diabetes Source Type: news

Med diet best for heart disease (but some junk food won’t hurt)
Conclusion This study showed 3% fewer people with CHD, at high risk of major cardiovascular events, who reported eating the healthiest Mediterranean-style diets, had either died, or had a non-fatal heart attack or stroke over a three-year period than those with less healthy diets. Western diet scores were not related to major cardiovascular events. The study was large, worldwide and its methods quite robust, all boosting the believability of the findings. It is possible that unmeasured factors explain all or part of the findings, but the study made a concerted attempt to minimise the chance of this through adjusting for i...
Source: NHS News Feed - April 25, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Heart/lungs Food/diet Source Type: news

Daily low-dose aspirin may help combat cancer
Conclusion The systematic review looked at 47 studies and attempted to combine the results, looking for evidence of a beneficial effect of low-dose aspirin on risk of death in people already diagnosed with cancer. The few RCTs identified – the best-quality evidence – did not provide conclusive evidence that aspirin improves survival rates. The rest of the studies were observational in nature, so cannot prove that aspirin reduces the risk of death from cancer. The only significant results were for a 24% reduction in risk of death from colon cancer, and a possible 11% reduced risk of death from prostate cancer. However,...
Source: NHS News Feed - April 22, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Cancer Medication Source Type: news

Fruit may be good for you, but don’t ditch the statins
Conclusion The study adds to evidence that fresh fruit is likely to be good for our cardiovascular health, although we can't be sure from this study that it definitely prevents deaths, heart attacks or strokes. Observational studies cannot prove that one factor causes another, even when they are as big as this study, because other unmeasured factors could be responsible for the results. In this case, a major potential confounder that the researchers failed to take into account was whether the participants were taking any medication – they only excluded people taking blood pressure tablets. The link with statins, made by ...
Source: NHS News Feed - April 7, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Food/diet Heart/lungs Source Type: news

'Dying of heartache?' Heart problems linked to bereavement
Conclusion The study found that people were more likely to have AF for the first time in the weeks immediately after a bereavement, but that this raised risk does not last. Despite the headlines, this does not mean that anyone who's had a bereavement is at immediate risk of "dying of a broken heart". Atrial fibrillation is treatable and not usually life-threatening. Because this was an observational study, we cannot rule out the possibility that factors such as family history of atrial fibrillation or lifestyle factors could have affected the results, although the researcher's conclusion that this is a small poss...
Source: NHS News Feed - April 6, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Heart/lungs Mental health Source Type: news