An Interesting Proposal For Fast Food Restaurants!

Health experts have long regarded fast food as unhealthy because its high salt and high fat contents are responsible for causing regular patrons of fast food restaurants become overweight and obese.

As we are all aware, overweight or obesity is the root of many other complications including high cholesterol, Type-2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and stroke. Therefore, many fast food restaurants have already started to alter their recipes making them looked “less unhealthy”. For example, some have lowered the salt contents while others might add in more vegetables.

Lately, health professionals had proposed an interesting idea to the fast food restaurants. Researchers from the National Heart and Lung Institute at the Imperial College London suggested in the April 2010’s issue of the American Journal of Cardiology that fast food restaurants should give away free cholesterol-busting statins drugs together with their burgers and fries to their customers as a way to offset the possible heart disease risks caused by the food.

Statins, a family of cholesterol-lowering medications including Crestor and Lipitor, are currently available only by prescription. They have been famous of its ability to lower the amount of unhealthy LDL cholesterol (bad cholesterol) in the blood. Numerous studies have also shown that statins are very effective in preventing a heart attack.

According to the researchers, taking a statin tablet could help reduce the increased risk of developing heart disease because of the high fat content in a medium-sized cheeseburger and a small milkshake.

I am sure many of us would not find the new idea convincing. Even some health professionals are skeptical about the proposal and they caution that one should not take the suggestion literally.

In defending their proposal, the researchers used car seat belt as metaphor. They argued that people are advised to fasten their seat belts while traveling in car because of the increased risks to their health when driving or sitting in a car. Likewise, some people do eat unhealthily so they should be given some drugs to offset the possible bad effects.

Nevertheless, they did admit that statins could not eliminate all the unhealthy effects of burgers and fries. Therefore, the best way to stay healthy is still to avoid fatty food.

Why Certain Foods Cannot Be Mixed With Heart Medications?

Since I was young, I used to hear from people that Chinese Herb can never be taken with Western medications as this could result in disastrous consequences. Frankly, I have no idea on how this would happen.

Recently, I came across an article cautioning people not to mix certain foods with Western medications, to prevent possible harmful effects to the body. Of course, the authors mentioned several types of drugs that should not be mixed with certain foods, but what listed below is pertaining to heart medications.

According to the author, mixing certain foods and drugs, even though it seems perfectly harmless, can be bad for some people. The nature of certain foods, beverages and even dietary supplements may just change the effects of the medications or prevent the drugs from working properly.

Medications taken orally are, like foods, absorbed through the lining of the stomach or small intestine. When both are taken together, the food in the digestive tract might raise or lower the absorption of the medication. People who are prescribed with drugs for heart disease should take note of the followings.

For those on certain cholesterol-lowering drugs, like atorvastatin, lovastatin and simvastatin, grapefruit should not be consumed with the drugs since this could raise their potency.

As explained by the author, components in the fruit do prevent the body from breaking down the medication, which would cause the drug to accumulate in high amounts in the body. This can be very dangerous as such health complications as liver damage or rhabdomyolysis may be triggered. The latter is a rare condition in which severe muscle and kidney damage occurs.

For the similar reason, patients prescribed with calcium channel blockers, drugs that help control high blood pressure, should not take their drugs with grapefruits.

Some foods may alter the chemical actions of a drug in a way that its therapeutic effect on the body is lost. For example, foods like liver and green leafy vegetables that are high in Vitamin-K are capable of clotting blood. If people take too much of them, the effectiveness of certain anti-coagulants (blood thinning drug) would be reduced.

Oatmeal is generally considered as a heart-healthy food that could help reduce bad cholesterol. However, people who are on digoxin should not eat too much of it. Digoxin is a drug that is used by doctors to treat various heart diseases. In fact, fiber in oatmeal and other cereals can affect the absorption of these medications when patients consume in large quantity.

Statin Might Help Many More People to Prevent Heart Disease!

The so-called Jupiter study showed that Crestor can dramatically reduce death, heart attack and stroke in patients having healthy cholesterol level but high level of a protein (C-reactive protein) associated with heart disease. The findings indicated that Crestor reduces heart attack, stroke, need for bypass or angioplasty procedures and cardiovascular death by 45 percent over less than 2 years. The Jupiter study was funded by AstraZeneca, the manufacturer for Crestor.

In a recent study, researchers from Yale University in Connecticut found that Crestor, the world’s top-selling cholesterol-lowering drug, could benefit nearly 20 percent more men and women over the age of 50 and 60 respectively in the United States. Their findings were published on January 13, 2009 in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

Looking at people with high levels of C-reactive protein, the United States researchers examined whether statins would lower their heart disease rates. Survey data from United States government were used to determine how many more people might be helped by statins, also taking into consideration of C - reactive protein levels.

The prevailing guidelines used by United States doctors indicate about 58 percent of men age 50 and older and women 60 and older, or 34 million people, would benefit from taking statins to reduce heart attack and stroke risk.

Finding from the study indicated that another 19 percent of men and women in those age groups or 11 million people should be taking the drugs. This means that 77 percent of Americans in those age groups or 45 million people should take the drugs

If the result of the study were correct, the majority of people would be recommended to take statin. Nevertheless, the researchers are not prepared to advocate such an expansion of existing guidelines on who should take statin. Instead, they felt that it is important to implement a more in-depth study of further implication that also includes cost-analysis to help future decision-making processes on the preventive measure for the population as a whole.

If You Have High Cholesterol, Take Statin First!

A person with high cholesterol level is subject to high risk of developing heart disease, stroke, or high blood pressure. This is an undeniable fact. Therefore, when your cholesterol level reaches a dangerous high level, your family doctor will almost certainly advise you to take some cholesterol drug to help control the level. Then, the next question is which drug to take?

On March 31, 2008, a new study reported by American College of Cardiology (ACC) that patients having trouble controlling their cholesterol levels should first take stronger doses of statin drugs before trying Vytorin. The findings reinforced earlier findings that Vytorin worked no better than an older, cheaper statin in reversing the progression of heart disease.

Vytorin combines the statin Zocor with another cholesterol medicine, Zetia (or ezetimibe), is marketed by a joint venture of Merck and Schering-Plough. Vytorin is claimed to be the only product that can help block the absorption of cholesterol coming from food, and reduce the cholesterol made naturally by the body. Vytorin can lower LDL (bad) cholesterol, total cholesterol and triglycerides (fatty substances in the body), as well as raise HDL (good) cholesterol. Nevertheless, it has not been shown to reduce heart attacks or strokes more than Zocor alone.

In the views of the group, representing heart specialists, the results of this new study should be taken into consideration while the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) is working to update its national cholesterol treatment guidelines. The new study, known as “Enhance”, actually mirrored the results obtained in January that found that Vytorin failed to show that it is any better than a cheaper generic statin in reducing the thickness of artery walls in patients with an inherited form of heart disease.

Because of the lack of beneficial evidence, an ACC expert panel recommended that doctors should first put patients on a high-dose statin, and then try other drugs before reaching for Vytorin or Zetia.

The results also suggests it is necessary to stick to the current American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Guidelines, which recommend statins to the maximally tolerated dose or to goal as first-line treatment for patients with coronary artery disease.

Is Cholesterol Tied To Stroke Or Heart Disease?

A group of researchers reported in the Lancet medical journal that "lower total cholesterol was associated with lower death rates from coronary artery disease (also called ischemic heart disease) among men and women of all ages studied."

Being a leading cause of worldwide death, coronary artery disease is caused by fatty deposits that clog arteries. The deposits build up in the arteries, which supply the heart with blood, will narrow the arteries and reduce the blood flow to the heart. This can lead to heart attack and other conditions.

The researchers' initial aim for their study was to establish whether high cholesterol raises the risk of stroke but what they found at the end of their research was that "lower cholesterol levels were not linked to reduced stroke deaths."

Definitive previous research established that drugs called statins, which lower low density lipoprotein cholesterol (also called LDL or 'bad cholesterol) substantially reduce stroke risk. However, based on the researchers' analysis of 61 previous studies involving almost 900,000 adults, conducted mostly in western Europe and North America, people with lower total blood cholesterol levels had a lower heart disease death rate.

The study tracked on people who aged between 40 and 89, and found that about 34,000 of them died of heart disease and 12,000 died of a stroke. The study, nevertheless, did not separate those died of ischemic stroke (caused by blocked arteries) from haemorrhagic stroke (caused by a burst blood vessel).

Surprisingly, the study could not establish any relationship between total cholesterol levels and risk of stroke death, especially at older ages and among people with higher blood pressures.

The researchers could not really understand what is going on. And they stressed that they need to know more about cholesterol and more about stroke sub-types to find out the reasons behind this. In the meantime, they do not want people already on a statin thinking that they should stop taking the drug because if their cholesterol gets lower, then they are at a higher risk of stroke. That is absolutely not the case.

Can Magnetic Scan Monitor Cholesterol?

According to a study, a modified magnetic scan can identify whether cholesterol-lowering statin drug are actually unblocking the clogged arteries.

The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan has been used to monitor blocked arteries. However, the results can only be seen after more than one year. The improved version of MRI by Hopkins team has a better sensitivity with extra coil rings being placed around the chest of the 29 patients in the study. An antenna was also inserted through the nose and down to the oesophagus of each patient to amplify the signal. After six months of statin treatment, the modified MRI scan could actually show thinning of atherosclerotic plaque.

No doubt statins can reduce plaque formation by as much as 40 percent and death rate by 30 percent, but to some people, it can cause serious side effects such as muscle pain or even heart damage. The modified MRI scans could help determine whether benefits outweigh risks early in the course of statin treatment.