It‘s Only The Calories Count, Not Source!

There is undoubtedly that overweight and obesity can bring along many unwanted ailments including high cholesterol, hypertension (high blood pressure), heart disease, stroke and even certain types of cancer. People who are overweight or obese will start to adopt different kinds of diet plan to help them reduce weight.

Different diet plan will have their own specified proportion of fat, carbohydrates and protein. It seems, however, that weight loss does not really depend on the source of the calories.

Researchers from Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana reported on January 18, 2012 in the ‘American Journal of Clinical Nutrition’ that there were no differences in weight loss or the reduction of fat between 4 diets with different proportions of fat, carbohydrates and protein. It is adherence that matters. Those participants who adhered better lost more weight than those who did not.

As shown in earlier research, certain diets like those with very low carbohydrates work better than others though there has been no consensus among researchers.

Participants were assigned to 1 of the 4 diets: Average protein, low fat and higher carbohydrates; High protein, low fat and higher carbohydrates; Average protein, high fat and lower carbohydrates; High protein, high fat and lower carbohydrates. All the diets were designed to reduce 750 calories a day.

Their weight, fat mass and lean mass were checked after 6 months and again at 2 years after starting the diets. At 6 months, participants lose more than 4.1 kilos of fat and approximately 2.3 kilos of lean mass, though they regained some of these at the 2-year mark. Nevertheless, people who managed to adhere to their diet were able to keep a weight loss of more than 3.6 kilos after 2 years including a nearly 1.4 kilos loss of abdominal fat, a drop of more than 7 percent.

During the 2-year period, many of the participants dropped out and those who completed it did not have the diets exactly the same as what had been assigned.

For instance, all the 4 diet groups ended up getting about 20 percent of their calories from protein after 2 years. This was quite different from what the researchers had hoped for: 2 diet groups get 25 percent of their calories from protein and the other 2 groups get 15 percent of their calories from protein.

The findings suggested that all diet plans can work and it is adherence that can help the weight loss success. People should choose the diet that is comfortable for them.

A Drop In Trans Fat For Americans

A study that was published in the Feb 8, 2012’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association’ revealed that Americans consume less trans fat today than they did 10 years ago.

Trans fat (trans fatty acid) is created by adding hydrogen to liquid vegetable oil to make it more solid. It is also known as partially hydrogenated oil. It can be found in fried foods such as French fries and doughnuts, and baked foods including pastries, biscuits, pizza dough, cookies, crackers, and stick margarines and shortenings.

By studying the white adults in the United States between 2000 and 2009, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that the average level of trans fatty acids of these participants dropped 58 percent.

This is certainly good news for Americans’ health because too much consumption of trans fat will raise the low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL or bad cholesterol) and lower the high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL or good cholesterol). In turn, the risk of developing heart disease and stroke, and Type-2 diabetes would be higher. As suggested by the American Heart Association (AHA), the daily consumption of trans fat should not exceed more than 1 percent of the total daily calories.

While the researchers could not figure out the exact reason of the drop, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began in 2003 to require trans fat content to be listed on products’ nutrition labels. Moreover, manufacturers also began removing trans fat from their foods and educational information about the health risks of trans fat was increased too. All of these factors could have contributed to the decline.

As the study did not include other ethnic groups, the findings could not be generalized to the population as a whole. Further research is required to examine if there will be a drop in cholesterol levels occurred along with the decline in trans fat levels. Meanwhile, the researchers plan to analyze their data to better assess the effectiveness of public health measures in cutting down trans fat levels.

More Women Are Affected By Heart Disease!

It is thought that heart disease is more common among men. But as what NIH (National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute) has announced, heart disease is the number one killer of women in the United States and it is also a leading cause of disability among women.

Heart disease, rather than breast cancer, has become the number one killer for women in Malaysia. The statistics provided by the Heart Foundation Malaysia (HFM) showed that 1 in 3 women died of heart disease while only 1 in 8 women died of breast cancer. In fact, heart disease is the major cause of death in government hospitals, which accounted for about 25 percent of all deaths.

In Goa, a state in India, 10 to 11 percent of the population is being hit by heart diseases. While heart disease is spread across the genders, women seem to be leading and this is a situation that has never prevailed in Goa. Initially, heart disease was restricted to the age group above 50 years but now people between 30 and 40 are diagnosed with heart disease.

According to cardiac experts, more women die of heart disease especially after menopause when the oestrogen level in their body changes. When one grows older, the risk of getting heart disease also rises. However, the latest trend does show that those below the age of 40 have also developed heart disease due to their unhealthy eating habits, smoking and alcohol consumption. Other modifiable risk factors include high cholesterol level, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and stress.

It is important that the younger adults should adopt a healthy lifestyle by avoiding alcohol consumption and smoking, having a balanced diet, exercising at least 30 minutes or getting for a brisk walk everyday and learning how to handle stress.

People could lower their high cholesterol risk factor by consuming low cholesterol food items and avoiding food high in animal fat like dairy products, egg yolk, coconut milk and seafood except fish. People should also consume less salt, sugar and oily food to lower other risk factors such as hypertension (high blood pressure) and obesity.

How To Lower Irregular Heartbeat Risk?

According to some estimates, up to 9 percent of Americans will develop atrial fibrillation (AF) by the time they reach their 80s. AF is the most common heart arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat). Though it may cause no symptoms, it is often associated with palpitations, fainting and chest pain. It could eventually lead to stroke and heart failure.

AF might be treated with medications to either slow the heart rate to normal range (range control) or revert the heart rhythm back to normal (rhythm control). People with AF are often prescribed with blood-thinning drugs to prevent stroke.

A new study by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health reported on January 26, 2012 in the journal ‘Circulation’ that older adults who had the highest blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids were 30 percent less likely to later develop an irregular heartbeat than those with the lowest blood levels of omega-3.

The omega-3 fatty acids measured in the study were eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), docosapentaenoic acid (DPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). They can be found in oily fish and some enriched foods like eggs and in fish oil supplements.

While some previous studies have suggested that people who ate a lot of fish had a lower risk of developing AF, these studies relied on questionnaires answered by participants about how much fish they ate, which could only estimate the amount of omega-3s they consumed.

To get a more accurate measurement, the researchers sampled blood from 3,326 adults aged over 65. These participants’ health was tracked over the next 14 years (1992-2006) and 789 were found to develop AF.

Researchers’ analysis showed that those with the top 25 percent omega-3 levels in the bloodstreams at the beginning of the study were about 30 percent less likely to develop AF, comparing with those with the bottom 25 percent blood levels. Of the 3 omega-3 fatty acids, high DHA levels were linked to a 23 percent lower risk for AF, but no reduced risk was found for EPA and DPA.

Other heart experts not involved in the study cautioned that the study did not prove eating fish could lower AF risk. The study, however, did provide some idea that the fatty acids found in fish could work by stabilizing the excitability of heart muscle cells. Meanwhile, they also suggested further studies should be carried out to find out how fish oil might be used as a potential preventive measure against AF.

Sleep Enough To Prevent Weight Gain!

People become overweight or obese because of many reasons. For instance, they might eat too much foods rich in saturated fats or they consume more calories than their bodies require. Most importantly, they do not have enough physical activities.

Once a person becomes overweight or obese, he or she is at a higher risk of developing hypertension (high blood pressure), heart disease, stroke and Type-2 diabetes.

As revealed by previous studies, lack of sleep can also lead to weight gain. Inadequate sleep could raise the hormone ghrelin that signals when to eat, and reduce hormone leptin that tells to stop eating. People who do not have enough sleep have less leptin and more ghrelin. Such imbalance of hormones can drive people to keep on eating.

On June 13, 2011, researchers from Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass reported at a meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies in Minneapolis, Minn that people suffering from sleep deprivation are likely to be attracted to high calorie foods because these foods provide a sudden but not sustainable burst of energy.

In a paper that was published in the ‘American Journal of Clinical Nutrition’ in May 2011, researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden found that sleep deprivation could slow down metabolism causing the body to use less energy. The European study showed that lack of sleep not only cause weight gain but also slow the rate at which calories are burnt.

The explanation is that a one night of sleep deprivation could acutely reduce energy expenditure in healthy men, which suggests that sleep can regulate daytime energy expenditure in humans. The researchers therefore argued that getting plenty of sleep might prevent weight gain.

In the study, 14 male university students went through a series of sleep conditions, namely curtailed sleep, no sleep, and normal sleep, over several days. Measurements were recorded for the changes in how much they ate, their blood sugar, hormone levels and indicators of their metabolic rate.

Analysis indicated that even a single night of sleep deprivation slowed metabolism the next morning, reducing energy expenditure for tasks like breathing and digestion by 5 to 20 percent, compared with the morning after a good night's sleep. The young men also had higher morning levels of blood sugar, appetite-regulating hormones such as ghrelin, and stress hormones such as cortisol after sleep disruption.

To help people get more sleep, experts’ advice is to try to go to bed an hour earlier each night, limit caffeine and alcohol, and try to exercise 5 to 6 hours before bed.

How Can Mothers’ Work Status Be Linked To Childhood Obesity?

Childhood obesity epidemic has long been a headache for most countries around the world. Obese children are likely to be fat as they become adults and they are therefore facing a higher risk of developing Type-2 diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure), stroke and heart disease.

Many factors can lead to childhood obesity, and one of them is mothers’ work status. Researchers from Melbourne's Murdoch Children’s Research Institute together with the University of New England and the Australian National University carried out a study to find out whether the childhood obesity epidemic was linked to mothers' increased participation in the workforce. They published their findings on March 3, 2010 in the ‘Journal of Social Science and Medicine’.

The researchers examined the weight and lifestyle of some 2,500 children when they were 4 or 5 and again when they were 6 or 7. They revealed in their report that between 18 and 20 percent of children were either obese or overweight.

According to the findings, mothers who work part-time were more likely to have healthier children than those who worked full-time or who were not working at all. These children watched less television, ate fewer snacks and were more physically active. On the other hand, mothers with full-time jobs might not have enough time to encourage physically active play or prepare home-cooked meals.

Nevertheless, the researchers cautioned public that the findings might oversimplify actual situation. For example, stay-at-home mothers might be difficult to juggle family time when there is more than one young child at home.

While the study indicated that work status indirectly contributed to children’s lifestyle, some health experts argued that these things are controllable. Whether the mothers are working, they could still control how much television their child watches and what types of snacks they can eat. Others quoted parental distress, postpartum depression and lack of social support as variable that could account for children having less-healthy lifestyles.

More Pregnant Women Are Having Strokes!

It is unlikely that women would have stroke during pregnancy or shortly after giving birth. However, researchers from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia have spotted a big jump in such events over the past 12 years.

The findings, which were published on July 28, 2011 in ‘Stroke’ (Journal of the American Heart Association), showed that there was a total of 4,085 pregnancy related stroke hospitalizations in the United States during the period between 1994 and 1995, and that number rose 54 percent to 6,293 between 2006 and 2007. The data used in the study came from a large national database of 5 to 8 million discharges from 1,000 hospitals.

Some increase was expected, but the figures found in the findings indeed surprised the researchers. Overall incidence is still low as latest data indicated that just three-quarters of a percent of women in America had a stroke during pregnancy or within 3 months of giving birth.

One factor could be responsible for the rise is that more women are overweight when they become pregnant, which can raise the likelihood of complications from diabetes and high blood pressure. Nevertheless, it was wished that more research should be designed and carried out to find the cause of the rise.

Stroke risk is usually low for a relatively healthy person. As pregnancy by itself is a risk factor for stroke and more pregnant women already have some kind of risk factor for stroke like obesity, hypertension (high blood pressure), diabetes or congenital heart disease, the overall risk will simply be doubled.

It was also observed that doctors do not have enough guidance on the best medication for pregnant women, especially for those with an increased risk for stroke. This is because norms on clinical studies usually exclude pregnant women in clinical trials as most drugs pose a hazard to the unborn fetus.

The researchers suggested developing a comprehensive, multidisciplinary plan that would enable doctors and patients to follow guidelines that could accurately monitor and provide care before, after and during childbirth.

Can Heart Attack Damage Be Repaired?

Heart attack is a common name for myocardial infarction (MI) or acute myocardial infarction (AMI). When a person has a heart attack, some heart cells will die because of interruption of blood supply to a part of his or her heart. If a heart attack victim is not dealt with immediately, he or she might end up with death. That is why it is the leading cause for death for men and women worldwide.

Even if the victim is lucky enough to survive the heart attack, the damage to the heart muscle can never be repaired. He or she could have complications such as blood clots, heart failure, heart rupture, heart valve damage, irregular heartbeats and inflammation of the heart.

Good news is that doctors might be able to help the human heart repair itself in the near future. Researchers the Institute of Child Health in London had discovered cells in the hearts of mice that can make new muscle after a heart attack, and found a way to reactivate these cells that help build the heart in an embryo but generally go dormant in adulthood.

The findings, which were published on June 9, 2011 in the journal ‘Nature’, suggested that it might be possible to develop a drug for patients who are at risk of heart attack to keep those dormant cells ready in case of a heart attack.

In the study, researchers found that if the cells, which are found in the outer layer of the mouse heart, were injected with a particular substance and the animals were given a heart attack, the cells migrated to the injury part and made new muscle. The heart worked better as shown by several indicators found. Nevertheless, it was not clear if that was due to the new muscle or other known effects of the injected substance.

While it is generally agreed that very little in the cardiac world has translated from mice to man, some cardiac experts believe the new study would stir the field of heart regeneration studies that would eventually generate some positive findings to benefit people with heart disease.