Heart Disease Prevention - Can Sleep Deprivation Cause Heart Disease And Stroke?

Lack of sleep can make one feel tired, forgetful and sometimes even grumpy. People who have inadequate sleep might not be able to make sound judgment and are prone to causing accidents on the road or at their work places. Long period of sleep deprivation may lead to depression and weight gain, too. That is not all… Read the full article @

Heart Disease Prevention - Can Sleep Deprivation Cause Heart Disease And Stroke?

Heart Disease Prevention - Why Creamy Food Can Make One Fat?

There are artificial emulsifiers that are commercially made, some of which have a chemical structure similar to detergent, according to researchers from Georgia State University, Cornell University, and Bar Ilan University in Israel. Evidence was found in their study that at least some commercial emulsifiers might mess up the balance of good germs in the gut. More details at:

Heart Disease Prevention - Why Creamy Food Can Make One Fat?

Can Metabolic Syndrome Be Diagnosed Early?

Metabolic syndrome, which is a disorder of energy utilization and storage, is the name for a group of 5 risk factors that raises one’s risk for many health problems including diabetes, heart disease and stroke. The 5 risk factors are abdominal (central) obesity, high blood pressure, high fasting blood sugar, high triglycerides level, and low high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol level. When a person is diagnosed with at least 3 out of these 5 risk factors, he or she is said to develop metabolic syndrome.

Because of the rise in obesity rates, metabolic syndrome is becoming more common among adults. It is very likely that it might just overtake smoking as the leading risk factor for heart disease.

At The Endocrine Society's 95th Annual Meeting in San Francisco held on 15-18 June 2013, researchers the University of Virginia, Charlottesville and West Virginia University, Morgantown revealed that they have developed a risk assessment scoring system for diagnosing the metabolic syndrome that might better identify certain adults, especially African Americans, at high risk of developing Type-2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

Current diagnostic criteria do not really consider gender and race making some high-risk individuals not meeting the criteria for the metabolic syndrome. For example, African-American men are less likely to be diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, despite having higher rates of Type-2 diabetes and heart disease.

1 in 5 adult in the United States has metabolic syndrome. If the syndrome could be diagnosed earlier, it can begin preventive treatment sooner before development of Type-2 diabetes and occurrence of a heart attack or stroke. 

The study evaluated data from 6,881 men and women participating in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 1999 and 2010. The participants aged between 20 and 64 and were African American, white or Hispanic.

Results of their analysis confirmed that sex- and ethnicity-based differences, which they previously found in teenagers, persist into adulthood. Using this information, they then created a racial- and sex-specific scoring system for the severity of metabolic syndrome. Numeric values were assigned to each of the 5 metabolic syndrome components, with each component having a different weight for each sex and racial-ethnic group.

For women, waist circumference had a higher weighting in blacks than in whites, while the HDL cholesterol level for African-American men received a higher weighting than blood pressure, indicating it may be a more obvious sign of worsening metabolic syndrome.

According to researchers, their new linear scoring system strongly correlated with other biological markers of metabolic risk. Meanwhile, they plan to create online automatic calculators that patients can use to determine their risk score for severity of metabolic syndrome. They also hope that other researchers will use the risk score to determine patients' progress with time, such as improvement in metabolic risk after drug treatment.

Would Mediterranean Diet Benefit Elderly?

Mediterranean diet is a nutritional recommendation that is built on high proportion of olive oil, fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, whole grains and fish. It follows closely the traditional dietary patterns of people living in the areas surrounding the Mediterranean Sea including Greece, southern Italy and Spain, and is also characterized by a moderate consumption of wine, dairy products, and poultry, together with a low consumption of red meat, sweet beverages, creams, and pastries.

Being low in saturated fat and high in monounsaturated fat and dietary fiber, Mediterranean diet has been praised for increasing longevity and preventing chronic disease and cognitive decline. In fact, initially healthy middle-aged adults in the Mediterranean region have found to have low incidence of fatal and non-fatal heart disease if they adhere closely to the Mediterranean diet.

In 2011, a systematic review found that a Mediterranean diet appeared to be more effective than a low-fat diet in achieving long-term changes to cardiovascular risk factors like lowering cholesterol level and blood pressure.

On April 17, 2013, a group of Spanish researchers reported in the ‘Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences’ that adherence to a Mediterranean diet is associated with a lower risk of hyperuricemia.

Hyperuricemia is defined as a serum uric acid (SUA) concentration higher than 7 mg/dl in men and higher than 6 mg/dl in women. It is associated with metabolic syndrome, hypertension (high blood pressure), Type-2 diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease, gout and, cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. It is believed that the Mediterranean diet might help lower SUA concentration because of its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.

7,447 male participants aged between 55 and 80 years old were examined in the 5-year study. These men were free from cardiovascular disease but had either Type-2 diabetes mellitus or were at risk of coronary heart disease. They were assigned to 1 of the 3 intervention diets: 2 were Mediterranean diets enriched with extra virgin olive oil or mixed nuts, and 1 was a control low-fat diet.

Only 4,449 participants were included in the analysis. Their concentrations of uric acid at baseline were available (of these, 1,551 were assigned to the Mediterranean diet plus olive oil group, 1,407 to the Mediterranean diet plus nut group, and 1,491 to the control low-fat diet group).

The findings of the study revealed positive health effects of a Mediterranean diet in older adults. The rates of reversion were higher among hyperuricemic participants at baseline who had greater adherence to the Mediterranean diets. Meanwhile, the researchers also found that the reversion of hyperuricemia was achieved by adherence to the Mediterranean Diet alone, without weight loss or changes to physical activity.

Why Nut Consumption Is Good For Heart?

While nuts such as almonds, walnuts, Brazil nuts, hazelnut and macadamia are rich in oil content, they are also ideal sources of nutrients. Several studies have reported that people who consumed nuts regularly were less likely to suffer from heart disease and stroke. There were many other researches linking consumption of nuts to lower bad cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein or LDL), too.

 

On September 12, 2011, researchers from the University of Barcelona and the Human Nutrition Unit of the Rovira i Virgili University found the association between eating nuts and higher levels of serotonin in the bodies of patients with metabolic syndrome. Their findings can be found in the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) ‘Journal of Proteome Research’.

 

Serotonin, which helps transmit nerve signals and lower feelings of hunger, makes people feel happier and improves heart health. Only one ounce of mixed nuts (raw unpeeled walnuts, almonds and hazelnuts) can produce good effects.

 

According to researchers, the increased rate of obesity around the world indicates that more people have metabolic syndromes. As estimated by the World Health Organization (WTO), metabolic syndrome affects 20 percent of the adult population. In the United States, the prevalence of metabolic syndrome is close to 25 percent in adults.

 

Symptoms of metabolic syndrome include excess abdominal fat, high blood sugar and high blood pressure, which in turn raise the risk of developing Type-2 diabetes and heart disease. Health experts believe changes in diet might help patients reduce excess weight. Among the changes, regular consumption of nuts has been recommended to fight the metabolic abnormalities associated with metabolic syndrome.

 

The study looked at 22 people with metabolic syndrome who were given a nut-enriched diet for 12 weeks. The researchers compared them to another group of 20 people who were told to avoid nuts.

 

After analyzing the broad spectrum of compounds excreted in the patients' urine, researchers found that consumption of nuts had boosted patients' levels of serotonin metabolites in urine and suggested the role of serotonin in the beneficial effects of nuts.

 

Researchers claimed that their study provided the first evidence in humans of the beneficial effects of nut consumption in reducing levels of substances in the body associated with inflammation and other cardiovascular risk factors in patients with metabolic syndrome.

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 Else Can Cause Obesity?

While many studies have blamed the increasingly sedentary lifestyle and the availability of low-cost high-calorie foods to be the culprit for obesity epidemic in the developed countries, there might be other reasons behind this.

Researchers from Emory University School of Medicine and the University of Colorado at Boulder found that the bugs that help digest food could also cause the body to gain weight if they are not properly regulated. If wrong kinds of bacteria were dominant, they could cause a low-level inflammation leading to a pre-diabetic condition and an elevated appetite, as explained in a paper published on March 4, 2010 in the Journal “Science”.

In the study, researchers examined mice that were genetically engineered to be deficient in a key immune system protein, namely TLR5, which helps cells sense the presence of bacteria. Such protein plays an important role in the intestinal community, meaning it knows not to apply too much force and does not harm the good bacteria.

In the absence of TLR5, the immune system can still regulate bacteria but it just could not do it properly. When the bacterial composition changes, a low level inflammation sets in and insulin receptors are desensitized.

To justify the theory, a series of experiments were preformed on mice. The results showed that if the TLR5-deficient mice were given unrestricted diets, they ate 10 percent more and gained 20 percent more weight than the normal mice. Even if their food was limited, the TLR5-deficient mice were still less sensitive to insulin than the normal mice.

The TLR5-deficient mice also developed metabolic syndrome, which could cause weight gain, high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels, and it could raise the risk for developing diabetes and heart disease.

While the study was limited to mice, experts still believe they might applicable to humans as well. The findings suggested that excess caloric consumption is not only the result of undisciplined eating style but also changes in appetite and metabolism caused by the intestinal bacteria.

Inactive Kids Are At Risk of Heart Disease As Teens!

Childhood obesity has been a major issue facing governments around the world. This is because obese kids can develop heart disease, diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure), and even some types of cancer later in their life. The amount of medical expenses thus incurred is expected to be huge and this surely will create great pressure on the authorities concerned.

Most health experts have attributed such epidemic to unhealthy diet and sedentary lifestyle. A recent finding published on April 4, 2008 in the British journal Dynamic Medicine pointed out that young children who have sedentary lifestyles are up to 6 times more likely to be at serious risk of heart disease later in life, than their peers who are active. Meanwhile, the cluster of symptoms reflecting heart trouble, known as metabolic syndrome, could just show up as early as at the teen years.

In the study, key health indicators like blood pressure, body mass, cholesterol levels, height, percentage of body fat were measured for about 400 kids between 7 and 10 by the researchers from the University of North Carolina. Their frequency and duration of physical exercise were also monitored.

7 years later, these children were reexamined as teenagers and it was found that there was nearly 5 percent of the adolescents had 3 or more of core symptoms of metabolic syndrome.

Such result more or less confirmed the previous research that showed 4 to 9 percent of adolescents in the United States have some combination of glucose intolerance, hypertension, obesity and a worrying cholesterol count.

The study also found that adolescents with the syndrome were 6 times more likely to have low aerobic fitness as children, and 5 times more likely to have low levels of physical activity when the study began. These kids at best brisk walked, rode a bike or performed some equivalent activity for not more than 20 minutes a day.

This was indeed very much lower than that recommended by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that children should exert themselves at this level for at least an hour per day.

It is undeniable that children today have adopted a very sedentary life and are prone to overweight or even obesity. The new findings have already highlighted the link between sedentary life and heart disease. As such, efforts to ensure kids to increase exercise in their childhood as early as possible are inevitable. It is better to keep fit now rather than suffer the health consequences later in life.

Different Method To Measure Overweight In Metabolic Syndrome

Body mass index (BMI) is no doubt a good way to measure overweight. In 1947, however, it is found that being overweight was not the only factor that determined the risk of diabetes or heart disease. It was also important where the fat was deposited in the body.

According to studies, fat deposited around the tummy (abdominal fat) is more important as a risk factor for diabetes and heart disease than fat that is deposited elsewhere, for instance, the hips or the legs.

For two persons with exactly the same amount of fat in their bodies, the person who has more fat around the middle is at greater risk than the person who has more fat elsewhere.

For this reason, most definitions of the metabolic syndrome use the waist circumference instead of body mass index.

Metabolic Syndrome In Children

Metabolic syndrome is also known as syndrome X, has become more common as the number of overweight and obese people rises. If a person has more than 3 or more symptoms such as a large waistline, high blood pressure, raised insulin levels, excess body weight and abnormal cholesterol levels are said to possess the syndrome.

Research shows that youngsters in Europe are catching up with their counterparts in the United States, with some 2 million children are affected by syndrome X.

In the European Union, there are 900,000 children have high cholesterol, 520,000 suffer from high blood pressure, and 90,000 have impaired glucose intolerance, a pre-diabetic condition.

Metabolic syndrome can result from unhealthy diet, inactivity, genetic factors, and being overweight or obese. Each component of the syndrome can raise the risk of developing one or more diseases. In general, the more component people have, the higher the risk to their health.

People with syndrome X are 3 times more likely to have a heart attack and stroke and 5 times greater risk of getting Type 2 diabetes, as compared to healthy people.