Watch Out Your Waist, Ladies!

Weight used to be a health concern for people because many diseases may be developed as a result of overweight. However, a recent large United States study suggested women with large bellies may die earlier of cancer and heart disease than other women, regardless of their weight.

In the medical journal “Circulation”, researchers from the National Institutes of Health and Harvard Medical School reported that middle-aged and older women who were abdominally obese (with a waistline of 35 inches or more) were more likely than those thinner one to die of heart disease or cancer during the study period.

In the past, studies have shown that abdominal obesity appear to be at risk of clogged arteries, diabetes and high blood pressure, and it has also been linked to certain cancers like kidney cancer and colon cancer.

Over a period of 16 years, the researchers tracked more than 44,000 women in the United States and found that those with abdominal obesity had doubled their chances of dying of heart disease or stroke, as compared with women who had waistlines smaller than 28 inches. Meanwhile, women with largest waists had a 63 percent higher risk of dying of cancer than those women with small waists.

Furthermore, the study also found that the risk of a large waist were independent of a woman’s overall body mass index (BMI). In fact, those women with waistlines of 35 inches or more were subject to a higher risk of dying of heart disease or stroke.

While maintaining a healthy weight remains important in the prevention of chronic diseases and premature death, and should continue to be encouraged, it is also essential to keep a healthy waist size to prevent abdominal obesity.

Excess abdominal fat has been regarded by experts as unhealthy because of its metabolic effects. Too much fat in the abdomen would raise cholesterol levels, promote insulin resistance (a precursor to Type-2 diabetes), and spur body-wide inflammation. People with these conditions may just end up with heart disease and certain cancers.

Why Overweight Diabetics Should Go For Low-Carbohydrate Diet?

By following low-carbohydrate (low-carb) diet, overweight Type-2 diabetics can actually keep their weight and blood sugar under control over the long term. Diabetes, if not handled appropriately, can easily lead to heart disease and many other medical disorders.

Swedish researchers from the Blekingesjukhuset diabetes clinic in Karlshamn, Sweden limited carbohydrate intake of the participants in their study to 20 percent of total calories. The most significant effect of this low-carb diet is the absence of hunger. As explained by the researchers, the reduction in food intake will naturally force the body to use its own stores of fat for fuel resulting in weight reduction.

Starch-rich bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, and breakfast cereals were strictly prohibited, and the carbohydrate intake of 80 to 90 grams a day was limited mainly to vegetables, salad and crisp bread. This would actually minimize the glucose spikes making necessary for diabetics to take insulin.

Previously, the researchers had already found that the weight loss and glucose control were superior among the 16 obese diabetics who followed a low-carb diet compared with 15 similar patients who adopted a diet containing 55 to 60 percent of energy from carbohydrates over a 22-month period.

The current study recorded a total of 44 months of follow up data. In the findings, which were published in May 2008 in the BioMed Central journal Nutrition and Metabolism, they reported that 5 out of the 16 patients have retained or reduced body weight since the 22 month point and all but only one have lower weight at 44 months than at start. They further revealed that the glucose levels also dropped soon after the start of the diet and have stayed down over the 44-month period.

In conclusion, the advice given to obese patients with Type-2 diabetes who followed a 20 percent carbohydrate diet with certain restriction in calorie intake has a lasting effect on the body weight and glycemic control.

Why Women Should Watch Their Level of Thyroid Function?

Thyroid is one of the largest endocrine glands in the body. Its function is to control how quickly the body burns energy, how sensitive the body should be to other hormones, and makes proteins.

In April 2008, researchers form Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine those women, who had slightly low thyroid function, might subject to a higher risk of dying of heart disease. Even women with normal thyroid function but at the low end of the range were more likely to die of heart disease.

Thyroid function can be measured indirectly, by checking a hormone called thyrotropin, or thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH for short). TSH is released by another gland known as the pituitary gland. High TSH level is an indication that implies low thyroid function, which can cause symptoms such as sluggishness, hair loss, weight gain and a feeling of being cold.

Clinically, an estimated 10 percent of older women are suffering from low thyroid function, but this can be corrected by taking a daily thyroid hormone pill.

17,311 women and 8,002 men were studied and these subjects had no known thyroid disease, cardiovascular disease or diabetes at the beginning of the study. Over the next 8 years, it was found that 1.3 percent of the women and 2.3 percent of the men died of heart disease. What strike the researches was that the higher the TSH levels, the higher the risk of heart death. The link, however, was only significant in women but not men, and it was true even for levels that had been considered normal and healthy.

This study clearly shows that mortality resulted from coronary heart disease increases in women with increasing levels of thyrotropin within the reference range. The results also indicate that relatively low but clinically normal thyroid function may increase the risk of fatal coronary heart disease.

In fact, thyroid hormones may affect the heart and arteries in several different ways: they affect heart and blood vessel muscle cells, cholesterol and other functions. As such, doctors are advised to take seriously readings of thyroid hormone levels.

Although patients who get replacement thyroid hormones do lose weight, show improved cholesterol levels and see improvements in artery health, there is no study ever conducted to determine whether replacing thyroid hormone might actually affect heart disease risk.

The researchers also recommended more studies to see if treating low thyroid function could reduce the risk of heart disease.

Healthy Elderly Lifestyle is the Key to Long Life!

Aging population is an impending phenomenon not only in United States but also in many other countries. If one wants to live longer in good health with good physical function, he or she has to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

For 25 years, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston tracked about 2,400 male doctors whose average age was 72 when they took part in the study in the early 1980s.

Published on February 11, 2008 in the Archives of Internal Medicine, the study found that those, who exercised 2 to 4 times a week, did not smoke, maintained normal body weight and blood pressure, and avoided diabetes, had a 54 percent chance of living to 90. People having at least one or any combination of these factors were also beneficial, but those who did nothing had only a 4 percent chance of reaching the age of 90.

According to the researchers, people who lived to at least 90 enjoyed better physical function and mental well-being late in their lives than those who died at a younger age. In fact, genetics accounts for only about 25 to 30 percent in determining how long people can live, with other factors playing a bigger role.

In another study appearing in the same journal by Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center, the researchers looked at 523 women and 216 men age 97 or older. They found that about a third of these participants lived to this advanced age despite having developed age-associated disease before age 85 such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, dementia, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, Parkinson's disease or stroke.

In quantifying how certain behaviors affect longevity, another British study, which tracked 20,000 people, revealed in January 2008 that those who exercised, avoided smoking, drank moderately and ate many fruit and vegetables lived 14 years longer on average than people who did none of these things.

It is rather difficult for an individual to initiate lifestyle changes. He or she may prefer to take a pill, which is much easier. Therefore, the onus is on an individual! If there were anything that one could do for a healthy lifestyle, then it would be ‘do not smoke and do exercise’!

Which is Superior, Angioplasty or Bypass?

I always hear people around me debating about the superiority of angioplasty and coronary artery bypass grafting. Some insisted angioplasty is good because it carries lesser risk than bypass, while others argued that bypass could prevent heart patients from getting a repeat procedure or surgery over a longer period.

Coronary Angioplasty (or angioplasty, in short) is a technique to treat coronary heart disease and angina. It involves opening narrowed or blocked blood vessels known as coronary arteries of the heart.

Angina is chest pain or discomfort that occurs when an area of the heart muscle does not get enough oxygen-rich blood. A person with angina may feel pressure or squeezing in the chest. The pain may also occur in the shoulders, arms, neck, jaw, or back.

While angioplasty is a procedure, coronary artery bypass grafting (in short, bypass) is a type of heart surgery. It is sometimes called CABG ("cabbage"). During the operation, the surgery reroutes, or "bypasses," blood around clogged arteries by using a segment of a healthy blood vessel from another part of the body to improve blood flow and oxygen to the heart.

In October 2007, a new study revealed that bypass is indeed better than angioplasty at relieving chest pain and preventing the need for a repeat procedure. On the other hand, both angioplasty and bypass could provide patients with heart disease who need a procedure or surgery to clear their clogged coronary arteries the similar 10-year survival rates.

1.2 percent of patients undergoing bypass and 0.6 percent of those being treated with angioplasty incurred strokes. Angina was relieved over a 5-year period in 84 percent of bypass patients comparing with 79 percent of the angioplasty group.

Meanwhile, the researchers also found that 43 percent of patients treated with angioplasty and less than 10 percent of patient undergone coronary bypass required repeat procedures after 5 years.

Nevertheless, as noted by the researchers, emergence of new and refined techniques has made such a comparison to “remain a moving target”. In fact, new studies have already begun to investigate how the availability of drug-coated stents used in angioplasty affects the comparative efficacy of these techniques.

Heavy Mother May Give Birth To Babies with More Fat, Less Muscle!

There are a growing number of obese pregnant women. Meanwhile, more and more North American and European infants weigh 4,000 grams or more at birth, and these heavy infants are more likely to become obese when they grow up. We all know that obesity is a risk factor for developing heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, cancer, etc.

In one of the first studies to compare the body composition of newborn babies to their mothers’ pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI), researchers from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Centre in Oklahoma reported in April 2008 that babies with overweight or obese mothers have more fat and less muscle than those with normal-weight mothers.

The researchers used the Pea Pod (a body composition system made by Concord, California-based Life Measurement Instruments) to measure the percentage of body fat, fat-free body mass, and total fat mass in 72 babies no older than 35 days.

Instead of using several different machines and took hours to complete, the Pea Pod can actually gauge body composition in just 5 minutes. Though the machine is expensive and just 15 are in use worldwide, the researchers predicted that more and more hospitals would begin using them.

In the study, the researchers noted that there was no differences in average birth weight between babies whose mothers with normal BMIs and those whose mothers were overweight or obese.

However, it was found that babies of the 39 overweight or obese mothers had significantly higher percentages of body fat (13.6 verse 12.5 percent), higher fat mass (448.3 grams verse 414.1 grams), and lower fat-free mass (3,162.2 grams verse 3,310.5 grams) than those born to the 33 normal-weight women.

As indicated out in the study, babies who have heavy mothers may face a higher risk of getting diabetes as they have less muscle mass.

While gauging babies’ body composition at birth could indeed provide a clearer picture of their health than weight alone, the most important thing is still to find out what should be done to those babies with a high percentage of body fat. As suggested by the researchers, one good way to encounter this is to encourage their mothers to breastfeed, as research does showed that formula-fed babies tend to be fatter.

Can Alcohol Really Help Prevent Heart Disease?

People who have never drunk alcohol may wish to consider picking up this habit. Does this contradict to the advices that we used to get: drinking alcohol is bad for our health?

In fact, a recent study conducted by the researchers from the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston showed non-drinkers who begin the occasional drinking live longer and are less likely to develop heart disease.

The researchers reported on March 7, 2008 in the “American Journal of Medicine” that people who commenced their drinking in middle age were 38 percent less likely to get a heart attack or other serious heart problem than abstainers were, even if they were overweight, had diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure) or other heart risks.

In the study, medical records of 7,697 people, between 45 and 64, who began as non-drinkers as part of a larger study were studied. Over a period of 10 years, 6 percent of these volunteers began drinking, though the reason for them to start drinking was unknown.

Over the next 4 years, the new drinkers were tracked and when compared them to the persistent non-drinkers, it showed that there was a 38 percent drop in new cardiovascular disease. Even after factoring in heart disease risks like cholesterol, education levels, exercise, high blood pressure, obesity, race and smoking, the findings still held. In fact, some volunteers who had more than one risk factor still benefited from adding alcohol.

Findings also showed that less than one percent of people drank more than what is recommended, a drink or 2 a day by most guidelines. Meanwhile, the researchers also noted that half of these drinkers were wine drinkers only. Actually, wine-only drinkers showed that they received a much bigger benefit.

The same research team has also started a new study in which non-drinkers would be randomly assigned to start either having a glass of wine a day, a glass of grape juice, or grape juice spiked with antioxidants, compounds believed to help prevent heart disease.

Nevertheless, people are advised not take the findings as an excuse for them to drink freely.