How Can Mothers’ Work Status Be Linked To Childhood Obesity?

Childhood obesity epidemic has long been a headache for most countries around the world. Obese children are likely to be fat as they become adults and they are therefore facing a higher risk of developing Type-2 diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure), stroke and heart disease.

Many factors can lead to childhood obesity, and one of them is mothers’ work status. Researchers from Melbourne's Murdoch Children’s Research Institute together with the University of New England and the Australian National University carried out a study to find out whether the childhood obesity epidemic was linked to mothers' increased participation in the workforce. They published their findings on March 3, 2010 in the ‘Journal of Social Science and Medicine’.

The researchers examined the weight and lifestyle of some 2,500 children when they were 4 or 5 and again when they were 6 or 7. They revealed in their report that between 18 and 20 percent of children were either obese or overweight.

According to the findings, mothers who work part-time were more likely to have healthier children than those who worked full-time or who were not working at all. These children watched less television, ate fewer snacks and were more physically active. On the other hand, mothers with full-time jobs might not have enough time to encourage physically active play or prepare home-cooked meals.

Nevertheless, the researchers cautioned public that the findings might oversimplify actual situation. For example, stay-at-home mothers might be difficult to juggle family time when there is more than one young child at home.

While the study indicated that work status indirectly contributed to children’s lifestyle, some health experts argued that these things are controllable. Whether the mothers are working, they could still control how much television their child watches and what types of snacks they can eat. Others quoted parental distress, postpartum depression and lack of social support as variable that could account for children having less-healthy lifestyles.

More Pregnant Women Are Having Strokes!

It is unlikely that women would have stroke during pregnancy or shortly after giving birth. However, researchers from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia have spotted a big jump in such events over the past 12 years.

The findings, which were published on July 28, 2011 in ‘Stroke’ (Journal of the American Heart Association), showed that there was a total of 4,085 pregnancy related stroke hospitalizations in the United States during the period between 1994 and 1995, and that number rose 54 percent to 6,293 between 2006 and 2007. The data used in the study came from a large national database of 5 to 8 million discharges from 1,000 hospitals.

Some increase was expected, but the figures found in the findings indeed surprised the researchers. Overall incidence is still low as latest data indicated that just three-quarters of a percent of women in America had a stroke during pregnancy or within 3 months of giving birth.

One factor could be responsible for the rise is that more women are overweight when they become pregnant, which can raise the likelihood of complications from diabetes and high blood pressure. Nevertheless, it was wished that more research should be designed and carried out to find the cause of the rise.

Stroke risk is usually low for a relatively healthy person. As pregnancy by itself is a risk factor for stroke and more pregnant women already have some kind of risk factor for stroke like obesity, hypertension (high blood pressure), diabetes or congenital heart disease, the overall risk will simply be doubled.

It was also observed that doctors do not have enough guidance on the best medication for pregnant women, especially for those with an increased risk for stroke. This is because norms on clinical studies usually exclude pregnant women in clinical trials as most drugs pose a hazard to the unborn fetus.

The researchers suggested developing a comprehensive, multidisciplinary plan that would enable doctors and patients to follow guidelines that could accurately monitor and provide care before, after and during childbirth.

Can Heart Attack Damage Be Repaired?

Heart attack is a common name for myocardial infarction (MI) or acute myocardial infarction (AMI). When a person has a heart attack, some heart cells will die because of interruption of blood supply to a part of his or her heart. If a heart attack victim is not dealt with immediately, he or she might end up with death. That is why it is the leading cause for death for men and women worldwide.

Even if the victim is lucky enough to survive the heart attack, the damage to the heart muscle can never be repaired. He or she could have complications such as blood clots, heart failure, heart rupture, heart valve damage, irregular heartbeats and inflammation of the heart.

Good news is that doctors might be able to help the human heart repair itself in the near future. Researchers the Institute of Child Health in London had discovered cells in the hearts of mice that can make new muscle after a heart attack, and found a way to reactivate these cells that help build the heart in an embryo but generally go dormant in adulthood.

The findings, which were published on June 9, 2011 in the journal ‘Nature’, suggested that it might be possible to develop a drug for patients who are at risk of heart attack to keep those dormant cells ready in case of a heart attack.

In the study, researchers found that if the cells, which are found in the outer layer of the mouse heart, were injected with a particular substance and the animals were given a heart attack, the cells migrated to the injury part and made new muscle. The heart worked better as shown by several indicators found. Nevertheless, it was not clear if that was due to the new muscle or other known effects of the injected substance.

While it is generally agreed that very little in the cardiac world has translated from mice to man, some cardiac experts believe the new study would stir the field of heart regeneration studies that would eventually generate some positive findings to benefit people with heart disease.

Strokes Could Happen During Sleep!

Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the United States, after heart disease and cancer.

While some stroke can be deadly, most of the strokes can probably be treated if victims act quickly. Clot-busting drugs are used to prevent permanent disability after a stroke. However, victims must receive the treatment within a 4-and-a-half-hour window after the stroke symptoms begin.

When a person has a stroke during sleep, he or she could not possibly know when stroke occurred. As such, they could not receive the treatment if he or she slept for more than 4 and a half hours.

A study conducted by researchers from the University of Cincinnati reported nearly 15 percent of people who had a stroke while they slept making them not eligible for clot-busting treatment. Their findings were published online on May 9, 2011 in the journal ‘Neurology’.

The researchers reviewed medical records from people who went to emergency rooms in Ohio and Kentucky in 2005 in order to investigate how many strokes occur during sleep, and whether they differ from strokes that begin while people are awake.

Among the identified 1,854 people who had suffered the most common kind of stroke, in which blood flow to the brain becomes blocked, 273 (almost 15 percent) said they woke up with symptoms.

There were no major differences between strokes that occurred while people were asleep and awake. But people who had wake-up strokes were slightly older and their strokes were somewhat more severe.

None of the patients who woke up with symptoms got the clot-busting drug known as tPA (tissue Plasminogen Activator). In fact, one third of these victims could have received the drugs if time had not been an issue. They also did not have any other reasons like high blood pressure or a recent surgery that would disqualify them from receiving tPA.

According to the researchers, doctors are reluctant to give iPA to stroke patients after the crucial time window because the treatment comes with a risk of bleeding in the brain. Meanwhile, research had not shown any benefits if it is given long after symptoms began.

Perhaps, scientists should find out how to estimate when wake-up strokes actually occurred so that doctors could determine those who wake up with stroke symptoms to receive iPA.

Why Pregnant Mother Should Not Smoke?

Tobacco smoking is bad for the health. It would lead to many chronic diseases including lung cancer, hypertension (high blood pressure), heart disease, stroke, erectile dysfunction and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease).

The harm often extends not only to the smokers themselves but also to others, especially the family members and friends. Studies have shown that people might develop similar diseases through secondhand smoke.

Smoking is no longer the privilege for men. Many women have picked up this habit as well.

Around 15 percent of women smoke while pregnant in many Western countries. What these female smokers do not know is that a wide range of childhood health problems, including behavioral and neurocognitive problems and sudden infant death had been linked to smoking during and after pregnancy.

A recent study by researchers from the University of Sydney found that pregnant mothers who smoke could cause changes to their unborn babies that can lead them to have lower high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol. HDL is commonly referred to as ‘good cholesterol’ that plays a key role in protecting against atherosclerosis.

Atherosclerosis is a condition in which the artery wall thickens because of accumulation of fatty materials. It could cause heart problems and even heart attack.

Published on June 21, 2011 in the European Heart Journal, the Australian researchers reported that by the age of 8, children born to mothers who smoked in pregnancy had level of HDL cholesterol at around 1.3 millimoles per liter (mmol/L), which was lower than those born to mothers who had not smoked, with about 1.5 mmol/L.

The participants were 405 healthy 8-years-old children (born between 1997 and 1999) who had been enrolled before birth into a randomized controlled trial that was investigating asthma and allergic disease. Data were collected before and after they were born, including information on mothers' smoking habits before and after pregnancy, exposure to passive smoke, and data on height, weight, waist measurement and blood pressure.

Ultrasound scans were used to measure the arterial wall thickness and blood samples were taken from 328 children, who agreed, to measure lipoprotein levels. There was no effect on the thickness of the children's arterial walls, but it was found that there was an effect on levels of HDL cholesterol.

The findings suggested that smoking created an unhealthy set of characteristics on babies while they are developing in the womb, which might cause them prone to develop heart disease and stroke later on. The effect seemed to last for at least 8 years and the risk of getting heart disease for smokers’ children could be 10 to 15 percent higher.

Another Cause For Children Obesity!

Childhood obesity is a serious issue as obese children are at a much higher risk of developing many chronic diseases including diabetes, heart disease, hypertension (high blood pressure), stroke and even certain types of cancer later in their life.

Sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy diet have been crowned as the main culprits responsible for childhood obesity. However, researchers from Temple University had recently found a new cause.

In a paper published in the ‘Journal of Pediatrics’, they reported that toddlers who still drank from bottles at age of 2 were 33 percent more likely than other children to be obese at the age of 5.

Of the 6,750 children studied, 1 in 5 was still using a bottle at the age of 24 months, either at night or all the time. For those who were long-term bottle users, roughly 1 in 5 was obese at the age of 5, comparing to about 1 in 6 that has been weaned earlier.

After looking into other factors that could affect a child's risk of obesity, including mother's weight, family income and education, and if the child had ever been breastfed, the researchers found that prolonged bottle-feeding by itself could induce a 33 percent increase in children's risk of obesity.

According to researchers, the bottle might be providing a source of comfort, rather than meeting nutritional needs. Nevertheless, the extra calories could be substantial. For instance, for an average 2-ear-old girl, an 8-ounce bottle of whole milk fed at bedtime would provide 12 percent of her calorie needs for the day.

Though the findings could not conclude long-term bottle-feeding is directly responsible for the increased risk of obesity, they did suggest that weaning babies around 12 month old could help prevent weight gain.

In fact, pediatricians already advise parents to wean their children when they are about 12 to 14 months old, or even earlier. This is mainly because extended bottle-feeding, especially overnight, is believed to boost the risk of cavities and might contribute to iron deficiency.

It Is Food Choice That Make You Fat!

What you eat is what you get! Unhealthy eating can cause people to develop chronic diseases including Type-2 diabetes, high cholesterol, heart disease and stroke.

Many people believe eating less and exercise more can achieve good health! But in reality, this seems to be too simplistic because researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health found that slight changes in eating habits, like eating an extra serving of potato chips or fries each day, could raise a person’s weight over the years.

After examining data on diet and lifestyle of 3 large studies including more than 120,000 nurses and health professionals from around the United States over a period of 20 years, the researchers argued that overall food choice appears to have the strongest link to how much a person gains weight.

While the United Nations praising potato as a good source of Vitamin-C, several B Vitamins and Minerals, including iron, potassium, phosphorus and magnesium, the researchers reported on June 22, 2011 in the ‘New England Journal of Medicine’ that people who ate an extra serving of French fries every day gained an average of 1.5 kilos over a 4-year period. Those who consumed on an extra serving of potato chips daily gained an average of 770 grams every 4 years, and an extra serving of potatoes prepared in any non-chip form was found to contribute to an average weight gain of 590 grams over 4 years.

Similar results were seen in people who consumed extra sugary drinks (0.45 kilos) and unprocessed meat (0.43 kilos) and processed meat (0.42 kilos).

On the other hand, people ate more of certain foods like yoghurt, vegetables, fruits and whole grains, did not gain weight. Over the period of 4 year, people who ate an extra serving of vegetables each day lose 0.1 kilos. Similar results were discovered in people who ate extra serving of yoghurt (0.37 kilos), fruit (0.21 kilos) and nuts (0.26 kilos).

In conclusion, the study found that quality of food is more important than quantity to prevent long-term weight gain, and that small lifestyle changes did make the difference between staying slim and becoming overweight.

Be Happy To Lower Heart Disease Risk!

Are you happy with your life? If your answer is yes, then probably you will be at a lower risk of getting heart disease.

Researchers from Harvard School of Public Health in Boston found that people who were most content with their lives had 13 percent lower risk of heart disease. Their findings were published online on July 4, 2011 in the ‘European Heart Journal’.

According to them, participants' level of satisfaction with their job, family, sex life and with themselves was linked to their risk of coronary heart disease. The higher the satisfaction, the greater the risk reduction.

About 8,000 British government workers were asked about 7 specific areas of participants' everyday lives, including love relationships, leisure activities, standard of living, job, family, sex and one's self. They rated their satisfaction level in each area on a scale of 1 (very dissatisfied) to 7 (very satisfied).

The participants’ health records for coronary related death, non-fatal heart attack and angina, or chest pain were tracked over the next 6 years. It seemed that satisfaction with one’s job, family, sex and self were most paramount for heart disease prevention, after taking into account of other heart disease risk factors including hypertension (high blood pressure) and body mass index (BMI).

Health experts have long regarded depression and anxiety as risk factors for heart disease, but there has not been much evidence found that supported benefits of a positive psychological state like feeling content with one’s life.

The new findings suggested effort to encourage positive psychological states could be as relevant as to lessen negative psychological states for those who are at high risk of heart disease.

Nevertheless, being happy alone might not be enough to keep heart disease away as there are many other risk factors that can cause people to develop heart disease. The basic rules remain: a healthy diet and regular physical activities are still a must for people who wish to be heart healthy.

How Did Movies Affect Teen Smoking?

Smoking is undoubtedly a unwanted habit that should not be encouraged because it can cause smokers as well as people around them (through secondhand smoke) suffer chronic diseases including lung cancer, heart disease, stroke, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary) and erectile dysfunction. It can lead to birth defects, too.

Teens smoke for a number of reasons. Pressure among the peers and smoking habit of parents or relatives tend to influence the teens to follow suit. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), however, indicated that smoking among teens is somehow related to movies with tobacco.

According to their findings that were published on July 14, 2011 in the ‘Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report’, number of movies in the United States in which an actor smoked fell sharply between 2005 and 2010.

55 percent of movies that had huge box office grossing in the United States in 2010 did not have smoking scenes, compared with a third of films that scored huge box office success in 2005.

During the same 6-year period, the number of tobacco incidents in top-grossing movies fell by 56 percent, though there were still some 2,000 scenes where an actor used tobacco either openly, on screen, or implicitly, off-screen. In fact, the percentages of 2010 top-grossing movies with no tobacco incidents were the highest observed in 2 decades.

In 2010, a study released by CDC found that the percentage of middle school students in the United States who smoked fell from 11 percent to 5 percent between 2000 and 2009 and those who experimented with smoking fell from nearly 30 percent to 15 percent.

Meanwhile, use of other tobacco products like cigars, pipes and chewing tobacco was also down among middle school boys aged between 11 and 14. The smoking among high school students was also down though less sharply.

17 percent of high school students smoked cigarettes in 2009, comparing to 28 percent in 2000, while 3 in 10 high school students tried smoking 2 years ago, comparing to nearly 4 in 10 in 2000.

The drop in onscreen smoking might have contributed to the decline in smoking among middle school and high school students.

Why Should Junk Food Advertisements Be Banned?

Children obesity has been a headache for not only developed but also many developing nations. Overweight or obese children will have a higher risk of developing chronic diseases like hypertension (high blood pressure), heart disease, Type-2 diabetes and stroke later in their life.

Inadequate physical activity and unhealthy diet are the 2 main reasons identified by health experts that cause the childhood obesity. Children tend to watch long hours of television and eat a lot of junk foods.

In a paper published in June 2011 in the journal ‘Pediatrics’, researchers from the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom reported that television advertisements for junk food really make children hunger for those treats, especially if they watch a lot of television.

A DVD featuring commercials for fast food and junk food seemed to stimulate the appetites for sweet and high fat fare for children aged between 6 and 13 years old.

The children involved in the study had a greater desire for sweet and fatty foods after viewing the junk-food advertisements compared to days when they watched advertisements for toys. This was especially true for those children who watched a lot of television (defined in the study as over 21 hours a week).

While children wanted more high carbohydrate, high fat foods after watching junk food advertisements, the effects of the advertisements were modest. The researchers argued that in real life, a lot of other factors like parents’ willingness to buy those junk foods could affect the choice of food for the children.

Exposure to television food commercials would enhance high television viewers' preferences for branded foods and increased reported preferences for all food items (branded and unbranded) relative to the low television viewers, according to the researchers.

Children nowadays watch television not only at home but also on their computers as well as mobile phones, which can add up to a lot of hours. There is no doubt that parents should limit the television time of their children, but of course with some help. This is because parents alone cannot counter the food companies who spend huge amount (about $2 billion) every year on fun and irresistible advertisements aiming at kids.

Perhaps it is time for legislation and any relevant authorities to step in!

How Is Waistline Linked To Stroke?

Cerebrovascular disease is a group of brain dysfunctions related to disease of the blood vessels supplying the brain, with hypertension (high blood pressure) being the most important cause. Results of cerebrovascular disease can include a stroke, or occasionally a hemorrhagic stroke.

In Taiwan, cerebrovascular disease ranked third in the 10 leading causes of death, showing stroke could be the immense threat for the health of Taiwanese.

Scientists have found the link between waistline and heart disease. But how about stroke, does it also has some connection with the waistline?

According to a study conducted by the Millennium Health Foundation (MHF) in Taiwan, a one-centimeter increase in waistline raises the likelihood of getting a minor stroke by 2 percent.

Minor stroke, also known as transient ischemic attack (TIA), is a condition showing stroke-like symptoms that generally last for just a few minutes and do not cause any lasting impairment. TIA is, however, a warning sign of possible serious and disabling strokes. Research showed that about one in 20 people who have a TIA will have a major stroke within a few days and one in 10 will have one within 3 months.

From the data collected and released in 2010 by MHF, among 40 percent of the people whose waistlines exceeded the standard range, 70 percent of men and 60 percent of women, had abnormal blood pressure that could possibly lead to stroke. Such result showed the existence of a strong positive correlation between waistline and possibility of getting a minor stroke.

When people enter middle age, they will have their waistline increased by around 10 cm on average, the increase in probability of suffering a minor stroke will therefore amount to 20 percent. Once a person suffers a minor stroke, the chances that he or she would get a severe stroke afterwards is 10 times that of a person without a prior minor stroke.

In order to prevent stroke, MHF suggests people should limit their waistlines to a maximum of 90 cm for males and 80 cm for females.

Another Way To Control Weight

Overweight and obesity are big headache for health experts around the world as these 2 conditions will likely raise a person’s risk of getting diabetes, high cholesterol, hypertension (high blood pressure), and eventually lead to heart disease or stroke. The medical cost involved can be a heavy burden for the governments.

In order to control body weight, one should watch the amount of food he or she eats. Numerous studies have looked at how the portion size can affect on the amount people eat. A new study, conducted by researchers from University of Utah, Salt Lake City, examined at how the bite size will influence the quantities ingested.

In their paper published in July 2011 in the ‘Journal of Consumer Research’, they argued that bigger bites lead to eating less, but only in restaurant settings.

The study was carried out in a popular Italian restaurant in the South-Western United States. 2 sizes of forks were used to manipulate bite sizes: a larger fork that held 20 percent more food than the fork usually used in the restaurant, and a smaller fork that held 20 percent less than the usual one. It was found that diners who used large forks ate less than those who used small forks.

Tables were furnished with either large fork or small fork over 2 lunches and 2 dinners in the restaurant. Servers, including one of the study's researchers, took customers' orders, and weighed the full plate of food that they had ordered before serving it to them.

Each plate was attached with a small sticky note written with details including weight and other information. At the end of the meal, every plate was brought back to the kitchen and weighed again. The results showed that diners who used the bigger fork ate less food than those who used the smaller fork.

Such theory, however, only worked in a restaurant setting. In another study conducted in the laboratory using also Italian food, researchers found that people who used big forks actually eat more. Hence, the study concluded that there are different motivations when people eat in a restaurant or a laboratory.

If you wish to control the amount you eat, perhaps you should ask for or simply bring along a big fork the next time you visit an Italian restaurant!

Can Olive Oil Prevent Stroke?

Olive oil is known to benefit heart disease patients.

Some clinical trials have found that Mediterranean diet, with olive oil as key ingredient, helps control some risk factors for heart disease, including high blood pressure, abdominal obesity and elevated levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol. Besides olive oil, Mediterranean diet also includes plenty of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, fish and moderate amounts of red wine. High olive oil intake is also linked to a lower risk of heart attack, and a longer lifespan among heart attack patients.

Recently, researchers from the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Bordeaux, France even suggested that older people who ate olive oil have a lower risk of stroke than those who did not. Their paper was published on June 15, 2011 in ‘Neurology’, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

They followed 7,625 French people who aged 65 and above from 3 cities (Bordeaux, Dijon and Montpellier) for a period of 5 years. The participants were divided into groups according to their use of olive oil, ranging from people who did not use it at all to those who used it in dressing, cooking and on bread (classified as ‘intensive’).

During the period of study, there were 148 strokes. Those intensive users suffered stroke at a rate of 0.3 percent per year, comparing with just over 0.5 percent among non-users and 0.4 percent among moderate users.

After adjusting for factors like body weight, physical activity and overall diet, the risk of stroke for ‘intensive’ olive oil users were found to have 41 percent lower than that of those who never ate olive oil.

Based on the findings, it seemed that a new set of dietary recommendation should be issued to prevent stroke in people who are 65 and above. Olive oil can be an inexpensive and easy way to help older people prevent from getting stroke.

People should choose olive oil and other unsaturated fats over saturated fats that are found largely in meats and dairy and trans fats that were found in some processed foods such as crackers, cookies and chips.

Would Meditation Help Heart Disease Patients?

Any practice in which the practitioner trains his or her minds or self-induces a mode of consciousness can be called meditation. As it is generally an inwardly oriented, personal practice, people can usually practice it by themselves. While meditation has been practiced since thousands of years ago for various reasons, it is now commonly used for relaxation and stress reduction.

Since 1960s, meditation has been the subject of scientific research. There were more than 1,000 published studies that linked various methods of meditation to changes in bodily processes including metabolism, blood pressure, and brain activation.

Meanwhile, popularity of meditation has grown steadily. A 2007 study by the United States government found that about 9.4 percent of adults (over 20 million) had practiced meditation within the past 12 years, up from 7.6 percent (more than 15 million people) in 2002.

In a paper published on June 27, 2011 in the ‘Archives of Internal Medicine’, researchers from the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa reported that meditation would cut the rate of death, heart attack and stroke by half.

The 9-year study on the effects of meditation of heart disease patients was funded by the National Institute of Health, and the stress-reducing technique used is Transcendental Meditation.

Trial was conducted at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee in collaboration with Schneider’s Institute. The study tracked 201 African American men and women, with an average age of 59. These participants had narrowing of arteries in their hearts. While staying on the prescribed medications, they were randomly assigned to either a meditation group or a control group that was given conventional health education classes.

A comparison of results from the 2 groups showed that those who practiced Transcendental Meditation had the risk of death, nonfatal heart attack and stroke decreased by 47 percent. Significant drops in blood pressure, stress and anger found among people in the meditation group might help explain the results.

Researchers felt that more studies should be carried out to confirm the results. They also pointed out that meditation should not be a substitute for drug therapy for heart disease patients.

The study, nevertheless, highlights a hope that health conditions of heart disease patients could be improve if these patients are taught how to effectively reduce psychosocial stress.

Is Chest Pain A Definite Sign for Heart Attack?

When someone is having a serious pain in the chest, the first thing that comes to our mind is: is he or she having a heart attack (or myocardial infarction)?

Serious pain in the chest seems to be an obvious sign of a heart attack. Researchers from the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, however, did not appear to agree.

In their paper published in August 2011 in the ‘Annals of Emergency Medicine’, they pointed out that a high degree of pain does not indicate that someone entering the emergency room with chest pains is having a heart attack.

After examining and following for 30 days more than 3,000 patients who arrived at the UPenn hospital emergency department complaining of chest pain, the researchers found that most severe chest pain was not a good predictor for identifying patients who were having heart attack or who were more prone to having one over the next month. Meanwhile, they also stressed that a patient who does not have severe chest pain does not mean that he or she is not having a heart attack.

The results of their study showed that pain that lasted more than an hour was not a useful sign of heart attack versus other conditions, and the pain of a heart attack also does not always settle in the chest area but might be in the chest, arm, jaw back or abdomen.

According to the researchers, failure to diagnose acute myocardial infarction accounted for 30 percent of malpractice claims paid out, with 2 to 5 percent of patients who were having heart attack being inappropriately discharged from emergency departments.

Though pain severity was not a good predictor, it could correctly identify people who had such symptom and arrived at the emergency department in an ambulance. This might be due to the fact that people tend to ignore chest pain until it is serious enough to call for emergency services.

While the cause of chest pain might or might not be a heart attack, people who have such experience should not ignore it because something serious must have emerged.

Heart Disease Can Be Caused By Childhood Hardship!

While a number of risk factors including diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure), overweight, smoking and high alcohol intake can lead to heart disease, childhood hardship can well be one of them.

Researchers from New Zealand's University of Otago revealed in the paper they published in August 2011 in ‘Archives of General Psychiatry’ that children who are abused, lose a parent or suffer other hardships might be at a higher risk of getting heart disease later in their life.

Among more than 18,000 adults in 10 countries, the researchers found that those who said they had faced childhood adversities such as abuse, death of a parent, or a parent’s alcohol or drug abuse had a higher chance of getting heart disease, arthritis, asthma, diabetes and other conditions. Similar pattern was seen among people who said they had suffered from depression, anxiety or other mental health conditions before the age of 21.

Though the findings did not prove that serious stresses in childhood would directly cause poor physical health later on, there were a few reasons behind the link between the two.

According to researchers, early adverse experiences could affect people’s behavior and lifestyle. Some people might just adopt smoking, drinking or over-eating as a way of dealing with the stresses. Likewise, young people with depression or other mental disorders might use smoking or drinking as a way to self-medicate. It is possible that severe childhood stress might have more direct biological effects.

Meanwhile, participants reported at least 3 childhood adversities had a higher risk of all 6 physical health problems that were assessed in the study. They had twice the risk of heart disease, compared with men and women with no adversities.

Similar results were seen among adults who said they had mental health conditions, especially depression, post-traumatic stress disorder or panic disorders, before the age of 21. Their risks of heart disease, asthma, arthritis and chronic back pain or headaches were between 43 percent and 66 percent higher than risks in adults with no early mental health disorders. Current psychological status, however, did not appear to account for the link.

Why People Have Hypertension?

Hypertension, more commonly known as high blood pressure, could lead to hardening of arteries (atherosclerosis) and development of heart failure. That is why it has long been regarded as a major risk factor for heart disease. According to World Health Organization (WHO), around a billion people worldwide, including more than 200 million Chinese, suffer from hypertension.

When the cause of hypertension can be identified, the condition is called secondary hypertension. Kidney disease is the highest risk factor for this type of hypertension. For majority of the hypertensive patients, the causes are not known, though several factors including smoking, high salt intake, stress, sedentary lifestyle, overweight or obese, high alcohol consumption, aging and genetics are believed to play an important role. This kind of hypertension is known as essential hypertension.

Recently, researchers from Beijing Chaoyang Hospital’s Cardiology Center identified a common virus known as human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) that could be responsible for causing hypertension. HCMV infects most adults but is repressed by the body’s immune system and rarely causes any symptoms. Their findings, which linked HCMV to essential hypertension, were published in August 2011 in the medical journal ‘Circulation’.

Such findings might present a new strategy for preventing and treating cardiovascular disease. However, the researchers pointed out that their research was still in its early stage and more tests with a wider scope of patients should be carried out. Once conclusive evidence of the relationship is obtained, better medical vaccines and remedies for hypertension could then be made available to treat millions of patients around the world.

Another recent study conducted by the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans found that hypertension plays a part in 2.3 million cardiovascular deaths in China each year. Among these victims, 1.3 million were premature deaths. This means that victims died before the age of 72 in men and 75 in women, the average lifespan in China in 2005.

What Is the Link Between Westernization and Heart Disease?

As a result of ‘Westernization’, the number of South Koreans with multiple risk factors for heart disease and diabetes has steadily increased. Westernization is the conversation to or adoption of western cultures including technology, politics, economics, lifestyle, diet, language and values.

A study published online on April 19, 2011 in the journal ‘Diabetes Care’ reported that one-third of Korean adults have risk factors associated with diabetes and heart disease. Since the late-1990s, Korea has become more westernized. Researchers from Gil Medical Center in Incheon intended to look at Korea's changing rate of metabolic syndrome, a collection of risk factors for Type-2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

Based on a periodic government health study on Korean adults aged 20 and above, the researchers found that 25 percent of Korean adults had metabolic syndrome in 1998. But by 2007, the figure had risen beyond 31 percent, which was closed to the rate of 34 percent seen in the United States at that time.

Such hike was seen amid a period of fast economic growth in Korea, together with the adoption of the less-than-healthy lifestyle often accompanying with it. Korean are eating more ‘Western’ food, watching more TV and having less exercise than a decade ago.

This is not the first study to link Westernization to health problems in Asian countries undergoing rapid economic growth. A recent study in urban Indian also found steadily increasing rate of obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes among young adults who were followed for 7 years. The researchers who conducted the study accused declining levels of physical activity and high smoking rate as the culprits for causing such health problems.

Meanwhile, several other recent studies in South and Southeastern Asia have also highlighted heart disease and diabetes as growing problems. A World Bank study on India and other South Asian countries had warned that people in the region get their first heart attack at the age of 53, which is 6 years earlier than people anywhere else.

To prevent from ending up with such health problems, people must change their lifestyle. For instance, they should perform regular exercise and adopt a healthy diet with low sodium (salt), carbohydrates and fat.

What Are The Causes of Preeclampsia?

Preeclampsia is a medical condition in which a pregnant woman, who has previously had normal blood pressure, develops hypertension (high blood pressure) and has significantly high amount of protein in her urine. If this condition is not treated, it could lead to serious and even fatal complications for both the mother and the baby.

When one has preeclampsia, the only cure is delivery of baby. However, if this woman were diagnosed with the condition too early in the pregnancy, she and her doctor would face a dilemma. The baby needs more time to mature but the mother needs to have delivery to avoid serious complications to her and her baby.

Even if the mother and the baby survive, the mother could later have a higher risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke and diabetes. Meanwhile, the baby is often born prematurely and can suffer complications later in life.

Researchers from Britain's Cambridge and Nottingham Universities announced that they have discovered a mechanism that raises blood pressure in preeclampsia and argued that their work might help the search for new drugs for hypertension. They also believed that they had deciphered the first step in the main process that controls blood pressure: release of a hormone known as angiotensin, from its source protein, angiotensinogen. Their findings were published in the journal ‘Nature’ in October 2010.

Drugs currently used to treat high blood pressure include ACE inhibitors that block the production of angiotensin or angiotensin receptor blockers (ARB), which prevents angiotensin from taking effect in the body once it is released. These drugs work well for standard hypertension but the pregnant women could not take these drugs because they are potentially dangerous to the developing baby.

The study, primarily focused on preeclampsia, also opened new leads for future research into the causes of hypertension in general. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), hypertension itself is the biggest risk factor for causes of death worldwide. Hypertension is also a risk factor for heart disease.

The cost of treating pregnant women with preeclampsia is estimated to be $45 billion a year in the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. An estimated 75,000 women in developing countries die of it each year.

Do You Want Your Heart Disease Risk Doubled?

While cigarette smoking can induce numerous medical disorders to smokers themselves, people who are exposed to smokers’ tobacco smoke are also at a high risk of getting similar medical disorders. One of the disorders is heart disease, one of the leading killers in the world.

Researchers from the University College London reported that people who are around smokers and breathe in a lot of smoke are twice as likely to die from heart disease as those who are exposed to lower levels of secondhand smoke. Their study, which covered more than 13,000 people in England and Scotland, was published on June 29, 2010 in the ‘Journal of the American College of Cardiology’.

A saliva test was used to measure the amount of secondhand smoke people have been exposed to and the participants were followed for an average of 8 years, keeping track of who developed heart disease and who died.

It was found that 32 out of about 1,500 people who had never smoked but were exposed to high levels of secondhand smoke died of heart disease. In comparison, only 15 out of about 1,000 people who never smoked but with low exposure. Their analysis, which was restricted to never-smokers only, showed that high secondhand smoke exposure was linked to more than a 2-fold increased risk of dying from heart disease.

High level of exposure, according to the definition set by the researchers, would be equivalent to living with a smoker and exposed to secondhand smoke almost every day.

This is definitely not the first study to reveal such association. In a 10-year study published in 1997 in the journal ‘Circulation’, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health reported that women who never smoked but regularly exposed to other peoples’ smoking in home or work had their risk of heart disease almost doubled.

More than 32,000 healthy women who never lighted up a cigarette were tracked. These women, aged between 36 and 61 when the study began, suffered 152 heart attacks, 25 of them fatal.

In order to prevent heart disease, smokers are urged to give up this unhealthy and selfish habit for the sake of their loved ones. Meanwhile, people staying with smokers should strive to help them quit smoking so as to lower the risk of heart disease for all in the house.