Is Hormone Drugs Dangerous To Heart Disease Patients?

Being second most common cancer in men worldwide after lung cancer, prostate cancer kills 254,000 a year globally.

Hormone-based drugs, which block tumor-fueling surges of testosterone, were supposed to help most men with aggressive prostate cancer. Such therapy, however, does have some side effects.

As soon as treatment begins, some patients might experience impotence, hot flushes and sweating, breast tenderness, tumor flare pain. For those patients who are on long-term treatment, other side effects including weight gain, memory problems, mood swings and depression, bone thinning (osteoporosis) and even risk of earlier heart attack, might occur.

A paper that was published on August 25, 2009 in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that such hormone-based drugs might be dangerous for some men with heart disease.

After studying cases of more than 5,000 men diagnosed with prostate cancer between 1997 and 2006, researchers from Brigham & Women's Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston reported that those with more than one form of heart disease or diabetes were most likely to die when they got the drugs along with radiation therapy.

The men in the study received both radiation treatment (either external beam radiation or litter radioactive pellets known as brachytherapy) and one of several hormone-based drugs to suppress testosterone production.

It was found that more than 400 died over a follow-up period of 5 years. Men who had heart failure or heart attack were more than twice as likely to die as those without heart disease or who had just one symptom, such as high blood cholesterol. The finding actually showed that 26 percent of the men with heart failure or who had heart attack died, comparing to 11 percent of others.

The number of dead was just 5 percent of the total number of men in the study. As such, the researchers explained why overall, the hormone therapy still helps many other cancer patients. But they also advised doctors to pay attention to their patients with serious heart disease and should be aware of the possible risk that these patients would have.

In fact, some doctors are starting to give less aggressive treatment for some patients as many prostate tumors are slow-growing and take years to cause harm.

Can Bone Marrow Help Heart Function Better?

Being the leading cause of death around the world, heart disease could be caused by fats that harden and block arteries, and high blood pressure that damages blood vessel. Other risk factors also include high blood cholesterol, overweight, obesity, diabetes, lack of physical activity, smoking, unhealthy diet, etc. Of course, family history of heart disease could be the cause too.

As reported on May 19, 2009 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, some patients with a chronic form of heart disease could feel better with the injection of bone marrow stem cells into their hearts. The infusions helped blood flow, reduced pain and helped patients exercise more.

Bone marrow stem cell therapy is being tested for a range of heart conditions, including for people with blocked arteries that reduce blood supply to the heart.

The study, carried out by Dutch researchers from Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands, examined 50 people, with an average age of 64, who had chronic ischemia (blocked arteries). One group received about 8 injections of bone marrow cells while others got a placebo.

After 3 months, those who received the injections showed signs that their hearts pumped better and had improved blood flow, as compared with the others. Meanwhile, they also got greater improvements in the ability to exercise and scored higher on quality-of-life measurements than those men and women taking the placebo.

With the new findings in hand, the researchers would very likely to carry out trials to see whether the bone marrow stem cell therapy would help heart disease patients live longer.

Overeating During Festive Season Could Be Bad For Health!

After a heavy Christmas dinner, it is not uncommon for one to take another slice of log cake or fruitcake and then followed by a can or two of soft drink. This is no big deal, right? After all, it is Christmas and people are supposed to eat, drink and be happy!

However, do you know that overindulging in food during festive season could be bad for our health? Why is that so?

Food and drink taken during festive season are usually high in fat, sugar and calories. People could have easily taken a significant amount of calories without even realizing it. This might cause a person to add about 2 kgs to 3 kgs of extra weight.

People will put on weight when the amount of calories consumed consistently exceeds the calories utilized. For example, when a person takes in an excess of 250 calories each day (this could easily found in 5 pieces of chocolate chip cookies or a slice of fruitcake) for 2 weeks, his or her weight might just be raised by half a kilogram.

The excess calories would not only make one’s waistline expanded but also cause problems like gastric discomfort or indigestion. More importantly, this could worsen chronic health conditions such as diabetes and high blood cholesterol.

People may argue that these chronic health problems would develop only after many years of being overweight or obese. Nevertheless, patients already diagnosed with diabetes, high blood cholesterol and high blood pressure often find their conditions worsen after a period of overeating. Bear in mind that these conditions could eventually lead to development of heart disease if they are not managed appropriately.

According to doctors, for people having pre-diabetes, which is a state when blood sugar is slightly elevated but not high enough to be classified as diabetes, a sudden weight gain and overindulgence in high calorie food would push them into full-blown diabetes.

Do Children Have High Blood Cholesterol?

About 1 in 5 Singaporean have high blood cholesterol, as reported by a 2004 National Health Survey. Perhaps, these people should be blamed for their love of artery-clogging foods. In fact, some of these people are just teenagers. For example, there is a 13 year-old pupil has a cholesterol level of 320 mg/dl, will you believe?

The American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines stipulated that the acceptable cholesterol level for children and teenagers aged 2 to 19 should be below 170 mg/dl, while the low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol should be kept under 110 mg/dl. LDL is also known as the bad cholesterol that increases the risk of cholesterol deposits within the walls of blood vessels.

It is not uncommon that children or teenagers, like adults, can have high blood cholesterol. As no official figures are available presently on the number of children with high cholesterol, not many parents are aware of the problem.

High blood cholesterol can be a silent killer because the bad effects do not show immediately but much later in life. Therefore, many parents do not realize the danger behind this. In fact, it has been linked to coronary heart disease and stroke. The earlier a person has high cholesterol, the more health problems he or she will encounter in the future.

In general, high blood cholesterol level is due to excessive consumption of foods high in cholesterol, saturated and trans fats. Nevertheless, genes and family history could also be the cause for high cholesterol in young patients. According to the figures provided by Health Promotion Board (HPB), it affects 9.5 percent of Singaporean children.

A recently study, published by National University Hospital (NUH), on 250 severely obese Singaporean children revealed that more than one-third of these children had high LDL cholesterol levels.

Does this mean that all parents must send their kids for cholesterol screen? Not really, parents should start by watching their child’s diet from the time they were young.

Parents should limit their children’s cholesterol intake to no more than 300 mg per day and saturated and trans fats intake to less than 10 and 1 percent of their total daily calorie intake respectively. These recommendations are for children aged 2 and above.

Moreover, parents should encourage their children to adopt positive healthy practices, such as regular exercise and healthy diet as these can help prevent obesity and other chronic conditions like diabetes later in their life.