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Specialty: Consumer Health News
Source: NHS News Feed

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Total 273 results found since Jan 2013.

Nut eaters may have a longer life expectancy
Conclusion This study found that eating nuts is associated with a reduced risk of death from any cause, and that the more frequently nuts were eaten, the lower the risk of death. Eating 28g of nuts seven or more times per week was associated with a 20% reduced risk of death. The researchers say that previous studies found that increased nut intake was associated with a reduced risk of several diseases (including type 2 diabetes mellitus, colon cancer, high blood pressure and diverticulitis), and that nut consumption has been linked to reductions in various risk factors for chronic diseases. Seeing whether nut consumption w...
Source: NHS News Feed - November 21, 2013 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Heart/lungs Food/diet Lifestyle/exercise Source Type: news

Aspirin at bedtime 'cuts' morning heart attack risk
Conclusion So far this study has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Therefore it is not possible to fully assess the quality and methods of this study. Despite the media headlines, and the conclusions of the abstract, the researchers did not measure directly whether aspirin taken at bedtime reduced heart attacks. They measured whether it reduced two risk factors for heart attacks – blood pressure and platelet activity. Taking aspirin at bedtime had no effect on a person’s blood pressure compared with taking it in the morning. They did find that it reduced platelet reactivity, though, by 22 aspirin rea...
Source: NHS News Feed - November 20, 2013 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Heart/lungs Medical practice Source Type: news

Scan could detect those on brink of heart attack
Conclusion This is a valuable study which shows the promise of using PET-CT with radioactively labelled sodium fluoride (NaF) as a way of identifying fatty deposits in the heart arteries that could be at risk of rupturing and causing a heart attack. The results confirmed that the marker used in this study (NaF) was better than the chemical marker normally used in PET-CT scans (FDG). The technique has the principal value of being a non-invasive technique compared with coronary angiography, which is the standard method used to look at blockages in heart arteries. As it does not involve surgical intervention, this could ha...
Source: NHS News Feed - November 11, 2013 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Heart/lungs Medical practice Source Type: news

Being bilingual may slow the onset of dementia
Conclusion This consecutive series of people treated at a specialist dementia clinic in India found that people with dementia who are bilingual developed dementia later than people who were monolingual. It is highly plausible that activities engaged in over a lifetime that increase our cognitive ability – such as understanding two or more languages – may have a protective effect against cognitive decline. However, this study cannot prove that being bilingual is directly protective against developing dementia. This study only characterised differences within a group of people who all developed dementia, rather than loo...
Source: NHS News Feed - November 8, 2013 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Lifestyle/exercise Neurology Older people Source Type: news

ACE inhibitor use may be linked to kidney failure
Conclusion ACE inhibitors and ARAs are recognised as a potential risk factor for AKI in some patients. This particular study has tried to estimate the possible size of the problem, but its findings should be viewed with some caution. As the authors point out: some of the conditions these drugs are prescribed for are themselves a risk factor for AKI changes in hospital coding and better recognition of AKI could explain the rise in admissions an ageing population leads to both increased prescribing of these drugs and an increased risk for AKI increased use of these drugs may be a marker for increased use of other...
Source: NHS News Feed - November 7, 2013 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Medication Heart/lungs Source Type: news

Can DIY and gardening help you live longer?
Conclusion This study found that in a population-based sample of older adults (aged 60), high levels of non-exercise physical activity, or ‘an active daily life’ was associated with better levels of cardiovascular risk factors. When followed over time, it was found an active daily life was associated with approximately 30% reduced risk of both a cardiovascular event (stroke, angina, heart attack) and death from any cause. These associations were seen after adjusting for regular exercise, and for a number of other factors that could explain the association seen (confounders). This study was a cross-sectional and cohort...
Source: NHS News Feed - October 29, 2013 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Lifestyle/exercise Heart/lungs Source Type: news

Global stats show rise in strokes in younger people
Conclusion This study is comprehensive in its global coverage of stroke and is based on the largest stroke dataset available to date. It is also the first to provide systematic regional and country-specific estimates of the burden of the disease.  As the authors point out, the main limitations include a scarcity of high-quality data from low-income and middle-income countries especially, which may affect the reliability of some of the figures. Other limitations include a potential underestimation of the burden of stroke. This may have come about because "silent strokes", which are those not based on diagnosis u...
Source: NHS News Feed - October 24, 2013 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Medical practice Neurology Lifestyle/exercise Source Type: news

Saturated fat link with heart disease questioned
This article is one doctor's opinion based on his own knowledge, research and experience. However, it is fair to say there is an ongoing debate about how far cholesterol is a risk factor for heart disease, especially in people who are otherwise healthy. There is also a similar debate about the use of statins in people who have no evidence of cardiovascular disease. This is alongside ongoing research into the components of LDL and the different types of lipoproteins known to increase risk the most. None of this relevant new evidence is covered by the news reporting.   What should you eat? There is no need to change curren...
Source: NHS News Feed - October 23, 2013 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Heart/lungs Food/diet QA articles Source Type: news

Researchers claim that sleep detoxes the brain
Conclusion This fascinating research has suggested that sleep helps potentially toxic substances to be removed from the brain. How sleep restores us and helps our brains to function is reported to not be well understood. Although this research was in mice rather than humans, despite the difference in size, this type of basic biological function is seems to be very similar to what happens in all vertebrate animal species. Further research in humans will help to confirm this. As yet, whether there could be a link between changes in this normal function in the removal of amyloid beta or other potentially damaging substances ...
Source: NHS News Feed - October 18, 2013 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Lifestyle/exercise Neurology Source Type: news

Aircraft noise linked with stroke and heart problems
Conclusion With debate currently taking place about the expansion of airports around London, the possible effects of aircraft noise on health is an important area for research. But as the authors point out, this study has several limitations. In particular, although the authors took account of confounders such as ethnicity, deprivation and smoking rates at the area level, they had no information on these factors at the individual level. So results at area level are not applicable to all individuals within these small areas. In addition, the risk of coronary heart disease may have been affected by large south Asian populati...
Source: NHS News Feed - October 9, 2013 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Heart/lungs Source Type: news

Walking ‘could save 37,000 lives a year’ report claims
The benefits of walking have been reported across the UK media. The BBC reports that “walking more 'would save thousands' of lives in the UK”. These stories have been prompted by the "Walking Works” report (PDF, 3.4MB). It provides an overview of current evidence on physical inactivity, and makes the case for encouraging more people to take up walking as a form of physical activity. It lays out that a large proportion of the population is not meeting physical activity guidelines and that if more people did so, this could potentially save 37,000 lives a year in England. It also discusses the specific benefits o...
Source: NHS News Feed - October 7, 2013 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Cancer Lifestyle/exercise QA articles Source Type: news

Can sleeping too much cause chronic diseases?
Conclusion This 2010 survey data from middle aged and older adults from 14 US states suggests an association between shorter and longer than optimal sleep duration and three chronic diseases. The optimal amount of sleep recommended varies by different organisations, but tends to be either seven to eight or seven to nine hours a night for an adult. However, though the study benefits from its large sample size of over 50,000 adults it has significant limitations. Cross sectional study design Most importantly, the cross sectional study design which has assessed sleep duration and disease presence at the same time cannot prov...
Source: NHS News Feed - October 4, 2013 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Lifestyle/exercise Heart/lungs Diabetes Source Type: news

Could exercise be as effective as medication?
Conclusion The researchers found that there are very few trials that directly compare exercise with drug therapy for any condition. They were only able to find enough trials to be able to analyse results for four major conditions. They found that exercise reduced death rates for people after a stroke (although this analysis has limitations and should be interpreted cautiously), and that drug therapy with diuretics improved death rates for people with heart failure. They did not find any difference between exercise and drug therapy for death rates after a heart attack or in people with pre-diabetes. There were several limit...
Source: NHS News Feed - October 2, 2013 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Lifestyle/exercise Heart/lungs Medication Source Type: news

Statin use linked to small increase in cataracts risk
Conclusion This research using a large cohort of people from a military healthcare system finds that overall, use of statins for over 90 days was associated with a slight increase in a person’s risk of developing cataracts. Further analyses suggested that the risk was higher among people who did not have any additional diseases. From this the researchers suggest that risk may be higher when statins are given for what is called primary prevention, i.e. given to people with risk factors for cardiovascular disease but who have not yet suffered any cardiovascular disease events such as a heart attack or stroke. The study h...
Source: NHS News Feed - September 20, 2013 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Medication Older people Heart/lungs Source Type: news

New heart op could save 'thousands of lives'
Conclusion This was a well-designed study which showed that over the course of two years, the risk of another non-fatal or fatal heart attack is reduced in heart attack patients who have preventive stents inserted in narrowed arteries at the same time as a procedure to insert stents into the blocked coronary artery that caused their heart attack. However, an important point to note is that the study results do not apply to all patients who have had a heart attack. The study only looked at the group of patients who had a specific type of heart attack – a STEMI – and needed an emergency stent placement operation. ...
Source: NHS News Feed - September 3, 2013 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Heart/lungs Genetics/stem cells Source Type: news