Being Fit Can Lower Stroke Risk February 22, 2008
Posted by healthandsurvival in Fitness, Survival, Wellness, medicine.Tags: Drugs, exercise, Fitness, health, Life, medicine, stroke, Wellness
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Study: Being fit can lower stroke risk
Being merely moderately fit — walking briskly half an hour a day — can lower the risk of having a stroke, according to a new study whose findings apply to women as well as men.
Much of the previous research on stroke and fitness has been on men and relied on participants to report their physical activity, said Steven Hooker, who heads the University of South Carolina’s Prevention Research Center in Columbia and led the study. About a quarter of those in the new study were women, and everyone had a treadmill test to measure his or her fitness level.
“It seems that benefits we’ve been observing in men for many years … are also observed in women,” Hooker said.
He said even those who were moderately fit had a lower risk of stroke. Most people can reach that fitness range by walking briskly for 30 minutes a day, five times a week, said Hooker, who presented the findings Thursday at the International Stroke Conference in New Orleans.
Stroke is the nation’s third-leading cause of death. It occurs when blood flow to the brain is stopped when a blood vessel is blocked by a clot or bursts. Hooker said physical activity can help prevent blood clots and the buildup of artery-clogging plaque.
For their research, Hooker and his colleagues used data from a study of more than 61,000 adults at the Cooper Aerobics Center in Dallas. After taking a treadmill test, the participants periodically answered health surveys. The latest research divided the group into four levels of fitness and looked at how many of them had strokes, following them an average of 18 years.
Overall, there were 692 strokes in men and 171 in women.
The study found that men in the most fit group had a 40 percent lower risk of stroke than the least fit men. The most fit women had a 43 percent reduction in their risk of stroke compared with women in the least fit group.
For moderate levels of fitness, the risk reduction ranged from 15 to 30 percent for men and 23 to 57 percent in women.
The lower risks held true even when taking into account other risk factors for stroke such as smoking, weight, high blood pressure, diabetes and family history.
Fitness is “a strong predictor of stroke risk all by itself,” Hooker said.
The study’s participants were mostly white, well-educated and middle-income or higher; other populations should be studied, he said. Fitness tests were only done when people entered the study so the researchers didn’t know if their fitness level changed over time.
In its stroke prevention guidelines, the American Stroke Association recommends at least 30 minutes of physical activity of moderate intensity on most days of the week. The new study “is certainly consistent with all of the recommendations that we already have in place,” said Dr. Larry Goldstein, a spokesman for the group and director of the Stroke Center at Duke University.
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On the Net:
American Stroke Association: http://www.strokeassociation.org
Too Often, Taking Drugs Is Like Playing Roulette February 22, 2008
Posted by healthandsurvival in Drugs, Wellness, health, medicine.Tags: Drugs, healthcare, Life, medicine, news, prescription, Wellness
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PEOPLE’S PHARMACY
Too Often, Taking Drugs Is Like Playing Roulette
By JOE GRAEDON and TERESA GRAEDON
February 15, 2008
Taking medicine is often a gamble. You are betting that the benefits will outweigh the risks. But do you realize a payoff is far from certain?
Drug companies rarely have to prove that their pills actually produce the desired outcome. All they have to show is that the medication moves the needle on some gauge or lab test.
These numbers are called surrogate endpoints. They are things like blood pressure, cholesterol or blood sugar. If you have hypertension, elevated cholesterol levels or diabetes, it is assumed that getting the numbers down is good enough. But the real aim is reducing the risk of kidney disease, strokes and heart attacks. Few drugs are proved to accomplish those goals.
Imagine going to a casino. If you want to play poker or roulette, you buy chips. Those chips are your surrogate money. If you win, you get to cash the chips back in for real money.
Any gambler would be outraged if the casino refused to trade the chips for cash at the end of a successful night. No casino would last long if it didn’t pay up.
Drug companies, though, get away without delivering on the eventual outcome because such studies are expensive and take a long time to complete. It is far easier just to prove that your pills lower cholesterol or blood sugar — and that is all the Food and Drug Administration requires.
Several recent studies suggest that such surrogates are no longer adequate. A huge diabetes study financed by the federal government was halted prematurely because the results were so disappointing.
The ACCORD trial (Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes) was designed to lower blood sugar aggressively in high-risk diabetes patients. To everyone’s surprise, those who got the most intensive treatment with insulin and oral medications were more likely to die than those on standard therapy.
Researchers were shocked that better blood-sugar control did not result in an improved outcome as expected. In fact, just the reverse occurred. It would be like winning the lottery and discovering you had to pay money instead of taking your winnings.
Another study, Allhat, shocked the cardiology community when it revealed that an inexpensive diuretic outperformed newer, fancier drugs in preventing heart attacks and heart failure. All the drugs lowered blood pressure, but most doctors expected the more expensive drugs to provide a survival advantage. Some of the most popular pills actually increased the risk for heart failure.
These disappointments are reminiscent of another recent setback. The Enhance study was supposed to prove that lowering bad LDL cholesterol aggressively with a combination pill called Vytorin (Zetia plus simvastatin) would reduce clogging of carotid arteries. Vytorin did work better than simvastatin alone to reduce LDL. But to everyone’s surprise, the lower cholesterol numbers did not lead to cleaner arteries.
The study was not large enough to tell scientists whether the drug would reduce the likelihood of heart attacks or strokes. Those studies will take years to complete. In the meantime, the unexpected outcome of the ACCORD trial should make everyone wary of just assuming that lower numbers by themselves mean better health and longer survival.
Contact Joe Graedon and Teresa Graedon at their website: www.PeoplesPharmacy.com.
Copyright © 2008, The Hartford Courant
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Secret Service Tell Police to Stand Down at Obama Rally- February 22, 2008
Posted by healthandsurvival in Society, Wellness.Tags: Life, news, obama, politics, secret service, Survival
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UPDATE: Editor’s note: This story was updated at 4 p.m. Friday. » TAKE ME THERE
DALLAS — Security details at Barack Obama’s rally Wednesday stopped screening people for weapons at the front gates more than an hour before the Democratic presidential candidate took the stage at Reunion Arena.
The order to put down the metal detectors and stop checking purses and laptop bags came as a surprise to several Dallas police officers who said they believed it was a lapse in security.
Dallas Deputy Police Chief T.W. Lawrence, head of the Police Department’s homeland security and special operations divisions, said the order — apparently made by the U.S. Secret Service — was meant to speed up the long lines outside and fill the arena’s vacant seats before Obama came on.
“Sure,” said Lawrence, when asked if he was concerned by the great number of people who had gotten into the building without being checked. But, he added, the turnout of more than 17,000 people seemed to be a “friendly crowd.”
The Secret Service did not return a call from the Star-Telegram seeking comment.
Doors opened to the public at 10 a.m., and for the first hour security officers scanned each person who came in and checked their belongings in a process that kept movement of the long lines at a crawl. Then, about 11 a.m., an order came down to allow the people in without being checked.
Several Dallas police officers said it worried them that the arena was packed with people who got in without even a cursory inspection.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because, they said, the order was made by federal officials who were in charge of security at the event.
“How can you not be concerned in this day and age,” said one policeman.
jld@star-telegram.com
Signs Of A Heart Attack? Do You Know Them February 22, 2008
Posted by healthandsurvival in Diseases, Survival, Wellness, health, medicine.Tags: chest pain, health, heart attack, Life, medicine, news, Wellness
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Just 1 in 4 know heart attack signs
Only about 1 in 4 Americans know the warning signs of a heart attack and what to do first, according to a new government report. That’s a decline in knowledge since the last survey in 2001, which showed nearly 1 in 3 to be well informed.
The study’s lead author, Dr. Jing Fang, called public awareness in the new survey “alarmingly low.” Fang is with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which surveyed residents of 13 states and the District of Columbia.
Heart attack warning signs can include one or more of the following five symptoms: shortness of breath; pain or discomfort in the chest; discomfort in the arms or shoulder; a feeling of weakness or lightheadedness; and discomfort in the jaw, neck or back.
Chest pain is the most common symptom. Women are more likely than men to experience some of the other symptoms, particularly shortness of breath and back or jaw pain, according to the American Heart Association.
Anyone experiencing these symptoms should call 911, the heart association advises.
The groups best informed of heart attack warning signs and what to do about them tended to be white, highly educated, and women. Also scoring well were residents of West Virginia, which has some of the nation’s highest heart attack death rates.
Each year more than 900,000 Americans suffer a heart attack, and about 157,000 of them are fatal. About half the deaths occur within an hour of symptoms occurring, experts say.
Because different people experience different symptoms, it’s important to be aware of all of them, doctors say.
“It’s not always massive chest pain,” said Wayne Rosamond, a University of North Carolina epidemiology professor and expert on heart disease statistics.
Of course, knowing is not the same as doing: Although most of those who got the heart attack symptoms right said they would call 911, other studies show that only about half of heart attack victims go to a hospital by ambulance, Rosamond noted.
Patients’ concerns about lack of health insurance status or other matters may explain why so few go to a hospital, said Rosamond, who was not involved in the new study.
The CDC’s findings were based on a random-digit-dial telephone survey of about 72,000 people in 2005.
In West Virginia, more than 35 percent of respondents from that state knew all five warning signs and that they should call 911, compared with 27 percent in the overall study population.
Iowa and Minnesota also were at the top of the list. The gap between West Virginia and the two other states was not statistically significant.
West Virginia consistently ranks among the states with the highest heart attack deaths rates, and also is a leader in smoking, obesity, high cholesterol and other heart disease risk factors. But it’s not clear whether personal experience was the reason the state’s residents were so well informed. Public health education campaigns or other factors may also explain the result, experts said.
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On the Net:
The CDC publication: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr
The American Heart Association: http://www.americanheart.org
20 Desk Exercises! No More Excuses- February 19, 2008
Posted by healthandsurvival in Fitness, Wellness, health.Tags: desk, diet, health, Life, news, skinny, weight, weight loss
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Are you a deskbound all day long? No time for exercise? Do these 20 desk exercises and get buff!
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Not everyone has the time to make it to the gym during their lunch break. But just because you can’t get out of the office (or your cubicle) doesn’t mean that you can’t get some exercise, or “deskercize” during the day. Here are some suggestions for web workers who want to get a work out and get their work done at the same time.
1. Buns of steel
No, you don’t need a shiny lycra bodysuit or big hair to do this popular glute workout. All you have to do tighten and squeeze your buttocks, hold five to ten seconds, and release. Repeat these squeezes 8-10 times, as many times during the day as you feel up to, and notice your newfound buns of steel in just a few weeks.
2. Upper back stretch
The upper back can be a place where tension accumulates throughout the day. By taking just a few seconds to stretch it out, you can release tension and work your muscles. What you need to do is extend your arms in front of you, grab onto your wrist with the other hand and gently pull your arms forward as you round your upper back. Hold it for twenty seconds and then switch sides…..read more here
