Further evidence may lead to more recommendations that individuals start taking nutritional supplements, such as omega-3 fatty acids, as it has been discovered that coronary heart disease patients who had higher levels of the nutrient had a lower rate of cellular aging.

The study, which is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that patients who had a high dietary intake of omega-3 fatty acids had a lower rate of telomere length, which is a chromosomal marker of biological aging.

Researchers studied 608 patients who suffered from coronary heart disease, which is caused by clogged arteries, and noted that patients who had a higher level of omega-3 fatty acids in their blood stream had a 32 percent reduction in the chance of telomere shortening, which is a good sign for living longer.

“These findings raise the possibility that omega-3 fatty acids may protect against cellular aging in patients with coronary heart disease,” the researchers write.

Previous studies have shown the several health benefits from omega-3 fatty acids with coronary heart disease patients, but have never looked into how the nutrient affects cell life.

Scientists say they have found proof that another “bad” type of cholesterol contributes to heart disease.

Unlike the well-known LDL cholesterol, lipoprotein(a) or Lp(a) cannot be controlled by cutting down on dietary fats or taking a statin drug.

But researchers say high levels do not carry the same risk as LDL.

And other drugs might work to minimise its effects, they told the New England Journal of Medicine.

LDL is considered the aggressive tiger of the cholesterol world, furring the arteries and greatly increasing heart risk. Scientist believe Lp(a), which is inherited, is more of a pussycat, although it does appear to upset blood clotting.

Inherent risk

The researchers used gene-chip technology to scan DNA that they knew from previous studies were potential “hotspots” for heart disease risk. This analysis revealed the two genetic culprits.

Professor Martin Farrall, lead author of the study carried out at Oxford University, said one in six people carries one or more of the genes for Lp(a).

He said: “The increase in risk to people from high Lp(a) levels is significantly less severe than the risk from high LDL cholesterol levels.

“So Lp(a) doesn’t trump LDL, which has a larger impact and which we can already control pretty effectively.

“The hope now is that by targeting both we could get even better risk reduction.”

Some existing drugs, such as Niacin, and others coming on to the market, such as CETP-inhibitors, lower Lp(a) as well as LDL cholesterol.

Professor Peter Weissberg of the British Heart Foundation, which funded the study, said the findings were useful but urged people not to be alarmed by them.

“They highlight the importance of trying to lower Lp(a), which will spark new efforts to design a medicine to achieve this effectively.

“And they reveal clues that open a new avenue for research to decipher how heart disease develops.

“But LDL is still the type of cholesterol to be more concerned about.”

Fats from food are turned into cholesterol by the liver. There are different types but some, such as LDL, are known as “bad” cholesterol. They can lead to a build-up in the body’s cells.

Prof Weissberg said everyone could reduce their risk of heart disease by eating a healthy balanced diet, being physically active and avoiding smoking.

The protective association was even stronger for women who had gestational diabetes during pregnancy, according to the study’s lead author, Erica Gunderson, PhD, an epidemiologist and research scientist at Kaiser Permanente’s Division of Research in Oakland, Calif.

Breastfeeding a child lowers risk by 39 to 56 percent (depending on the duration of breastfeeding) for women without gestational diabetes, and 44 to 86 percent (depending on the duration of breastfeeding) for women with gestational diabetes, researchers said. Investigators looked at durations that included 0-1 month of lactation up to greater than 9 months of lactation.

Previous research has shown that lactating women have more favorable blood levels of glucose and lipids within several weeks after delivery than women who were not lactating. Other studies have reported much weaker protective associations of breastfeeding with the presence of Metabolic Syndrome and diabetes in middle-aged and older women.

Funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, this 20-year prospective study is the first to measure all components of Metabolic Syndrome both before pregnancy and after weaning in women of childbearing age, enabling researchers to examine breastfeeding in relation to new onset of Metabolic Syndrome, explained Gunderson.

“The findings indicate that breastfeeding a child may have lasting favorable effects on a woman’s risk factors for later developing diabetes or heart disease,” she said, explaining that the benefits don’t appear to be due to differences in weight gain, physical activity, or other health behaviors. However, in this study, less belly fat and higher levels of good cholesterol (HDL-C) were characteristic of women who did not develop Metabolic Syndrome, Gunderson said.

Among the 704 women who were aged 18 to 30 years at enrollment, had never previously given birth and were free of Metabolic Syndrome before all their pregnancies, there were 120 new cases of Metabolic Syndrome after pregnancies during 20 years of follow-up.

“The Metabolic Syndrome is a clustering of risk factors related to obesity and metabolism that strongly predicts future diabetes and possibly, coronary heart disease during midlife and early death for women,” Gunderson said.

“Because the Metabolic Syndrome affects about 18 to 37 percent of U.S. women between ages 20-59, the childbearing years may be a vulnerable period for its development. Postpartum screening of risk factors for diabetes and heart disease may offer an important opportunity for primary prevention.”

Recent studies suggest a stronger link between Metabolic Syndrome to diabetes than coronary heart disease.

Another recent Kaiser Permanente study by Gunderson published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology in August 2009 found that women with gestational diabetes are 2.5 times more likely to develop Metabolic Syndrome after pregnancy.

Gunderson explained that further research is needed to learn more about the mechanism(s) through which lactation may influence risk of cardiovascular disease or diabetes. Further research also is needed to learn about whether lifestyle modifications, including lactation duration, may affect development of coronary artery disease and type 2 diabetes, particularly among high-risk groups, such as women with a history of gestational diabetes.

This study was part of the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study, a multi-center, longitudinal, population-based, observational study designed to describe the development of risk factors for coronary heart disease in young black and white adults recruited from four geographic areas in the United States: Birmingham, Ala..; Chicago; Minneapolis; and Oakland.

This study is part of Kaiser Permanente’s larger ongoing effort to research and promote the health benefits of breastfeeding. For example, Kaiser Permanente’s South Sacramento, Hayward and Fremont facilities have received the international recognition by the World Health Organization and UNICEF as Baby-Friendly™ birth facilities for offering an optimal level of care for breastfeeding mothers and their babies.

Additional investigators on the study include: David R. Jacobs, Jr., University of Minnesota Division of Epidemiology and Community Health and University of Oslo, Department of Nutrition; Vicky Chang, Kaiser Permanente Division of Research; Cora E. Lewis, University of Alabama Birmingham, Division of Preventive Medicine and the Diabetes Research and Training Center; Juanran Feng, Kaiser Permanente Division of Research; Charles P. Quesenberry, Jr., Kaiser Permanente Division of Research; and Stephen Sidney, Kaiser Permanente Division of Research.

The study was funded by U.S. National Institutes of Health (Contracts # N01-HC-48047, N01-HC-48048, N01-HC-48049, N01-HC-48050, and N01-HC-95095, from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, and Career Development Award, Grant number K01 DK059944 from the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases) and a Research Award from the American Diabetes Association.

They say matrix metalloproteinase-8 enzyme (MMP8) plays a crucial role in raising blood pressure and causing abnormal build-up of cells in the arteries—both of which increase the risk of heart disease.

“Our research tells us that this enzyme plays a crucial role in the build-up of fatty deposits in the arteries which causes heart disease,” said Shu Ye from the University of London.

The study, appearing in the journal Circulation Research, tested two groups of mice, one of which was genetically altered to not produce the MMP8 enzyme. Both groups were fed a Western-style diet high in fat and cholesterol. The mice which lacked the enzyme had clearer arteries and lower blood pressure.

Tests on humans found that out of 2,000 patients undergoing artery testing, 25 percent had a similar version of the gene for MMP8. They also had more clogged arteries.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women in the U.S.

Natural solutions that help avoid clogged arteries and heart disease include natural supplements that lower cholesterol and blood pressure, as well as a healthy lifestyle, a low-fat diet and plenty of exercise.

All men who do not openly express their anger if they are unfairly treated at work double their risk of a heart attack, Swedish research suggests.

The researchers looked at 2,755 male employees in Stockholm who had not had a heart attack when the study began.

They were asked about how they coped with conflict at work, either with superiors or colleagues.

The researchers say their study shows a strong relationship between pent-up anger and heart disease.

Writing in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, the researchers called the various strategies for keeping things bottled up, covert coping.

The men were asked what methods they adopted: whether they dealt with things head-on, whether they let things pass without saying anything, walked away from conflict, developed symptoms like headache or stomach ache or got into a bad temper at home.

Hospital registers

They were checked for smoking, drinking, physical activity, education, diabetes, job demands and their freedom to take decisions.

Their blood pressure, body mass index and cholesterol levels were measured and they were aged 41 on average at the start of the study between 1992 and 1995.

Details of whether any of the men subsequently had a heart attack or died as a result of heart disease in the period up to 2003 were gathered from national registers of hospital treatment and deaths.

Up to 2003, 47 of the 2,755 men had a heart attack or died from heart disease.

The men who coped by sometimes or often walking away or who often let things pass without saying anything, had double the risk of a heart attack or dying from serious heart disease compared to men who challenged and dealt with the situation head-on.

Developing a headache or stomach ache or getting into a bad temper at home, did not increase the risk of heart attack or heart disease.

The researchers believe that anger can produce physiological tensions if it is not released and that these lead to increases in blood pressure which eventually damage the cardiovascular system.

‘Conflict situations’

Dr Constanze Leineweber, who led the study from the Stress Research Institute in Stockholm, said: “There has been research before pointing in this direction but the surprise is that the association between pent-up anger and heart disease was such a strong one.

“I think men can’t help how they behave in conflict situations – it’s not something they think about, it’s just how they react instinctively.

“If you are smoking and don’t exercise you would be much more conscious of the risk.”

Judy O’Sullivan, senior cardiac nurse for the British Heart Foundation, said: “Stress itself is not a risk factor for heart and circulatory disease, but some people’s responses to stress, such as smoking or overeating, can increase your risk.

“We all find different things stressful and symptoms of stress can vary, but the important thing is that we need to find ways of coping with it in our lives in a positive way, whether at work or home.”/bbc.co.uk/

The Spanish research involving more than 15,500 men and 26,000 women found large quantities of alcohol could be even more beneficial for men.

Female drinkers did not benefit to the same extent, the study in Heart found.

Experts are critical, warning heavy drinking can increase the risk of other diseases, with alcohol responsible for 1.8 million deaths globally per year.

The study was conducted in Spain, a country with relatively high rates of alcohol consumption and low rates of coronary heart disease.

The research involved men and women aged between 29 and 69, who were asked to document their lifetime drinking habits and followed for 10 years.

Crucially the research team claim to have eliminated the “sick abstainers” risk by differentiating between those who had never drunk and those whom ill-health had forced to quit. This has been used in the past to explain fewer heart-related deaths among drinkers on the basis that those who are unhealthy to start with are less likely to drink.

Good cholesterol

The researchers, led by the Basque Public Health Department, placed the participants into six categories – from never having drunk to drinking more than 90g of alcohol each day. This would be the equivalent of consuming about eight bottles of wine a week, or 28 pints of lager.

For those drinking little – less than a shot of vodka a day for instance – the risk was reduced by 35%. And for those who drank anything from three shots to more than 11 shots each day, the risk worked out an average of 50% less.

The same benefits were not seen in women, who suffer fewer heart problems than men to start with. Researchers speculated this difference could be down to the fact that women process alcohol differently, and that female hormones protect against the disease in younger age groups.

The type of alcohol drunk did not seem to make a difference, but protection was greater for those drinking moderate to high amounts of varied drinks.

The exact mechanisms are as yet unclear, but it is known that alcohol helps to raise high-density lipoproteins, sometimes known as good cholesterol, which helps stop so-called bad cholesterol from building up in the arteries.

‘Binge-drinking’

UK experts said the findings should be treated with caution because they do not take into account ill-health from a range of other diseases caused by excess drinking.

“Whilst moderate alcohol intake can lower the risk of having a heart attack, coronary heart disease is just one type of heart disease. Cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle, is associated with high alcohol intake and can lead to a poor quality of life and premature death,” said the British Heart Foundation’s senior cardiac nurse, Cathy Ross.

“The heart is just one of many organs in the body. While alcohol could offer limited protection to one organ, abuse of it can damage the heart and other organs such as the liver, pancreas and brain.”

The Stroke Association meanwhile noted that overall, evidence indicated that people who regularly consumed a large amount of alcohol had a three-fold increased risk of stroke.

“Six units within six hours is considered ‘binge-drinking’ and anyone indulging in regular ‘binge-drinking’ increases their risk of stroke greatly,” said research officer Joanne Murphy.

Public health specialists warned no-one should be encouraged to drink more as a result of this study.

“The relationship between alcohol and heart disease remains controversial,” said Professor Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

“While there is good evidence that moderate consumption is protective in people who are at substantial risk of heart disease – which excludes most people under the age of 40 – we also know that most people underestimate how much they drink. This paper adds to the existing literature but should not be considered as definitive. ”

In the UK, the recommendation is no more than two to three units of alcohol a day for women – the equivalent of one standard glass of wine – and three to four units for men.

The British Liver Trust said: “There have been several studies suggesting that small amounts of alcohol can reduce the risk of coronary heart disease in men over the age of 40.

“But these are often misinterpreted by people looking for a health reason to consume alcohol.

“If you want to look after your health, stay within the limits of no more than 3-4 units a day for men or 2-3 for women and aim to give yourself at least two days off alcohol a week.”

Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, president of the UK Faculty of Public Health, agreed that the message from this study was not clear: “At the end of the day, you’re juggling different risks and benefits, maybe helping your heart or maybe damaging your brain and liver.

“The simple message is moderation.

“Stick to the guidelines, and you won’t go far wrong.”

Patients with

At a meeting of the American Heart Association they said they had randomly assigned 201 African Americans to meditate or to make lifestyle changes.

After nine years, the meditation group had a 47% reduction in deaths, heart attacks and strokes.

The research was carried out by the Medical College in Wisconsin with the Maharishi University in Iowa.

It was funded by a £2.3m grant from the National Institute of Health and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

‘Significant benefits’

The African American men and women had an average age of 59 years and a narrowing of the arteries in their hearts.

The meditation group were asked to practise for 20 minutes twice a day.

The lifestyle change group received education classes in traditional risk factors, including dietary modification and exercise.

Over 9 years, there were 20 events (heart attacks, strokes or death) in the meditation group and 31 in the health education group.

Dr Robert Schneider, lead author and director of the Centre for Natural Medicine and Prevention at the Maharishi University in Iowa said:

“At the end of the 9 years, 80% of the meditation group were still practising at least once a day.

“But there was very little change in the health education group.

“Their lifestyle was much the same in terms of diet and exercise – it’s a very difficult thing to make those changes.”

As well as the reductions in death, heart attacks and strokes in the meditating group, their average blood pressure was significantly lower (5mm Hg), and there was a significant reduction in psychological stress in some participants.

Dr Schneider said other studies had shown the benefits of Transcendental Meditation on blood pressure and stress, irrespective of ethnicity.

“This is the first controlled clinical trial to show that long-term practise of this particular stress reduction programme reduces the incidence of clinical cardiovascular events, that is heart attacks, strokes and mortality,” he said.

Dr Schneider said that the effect of Transcendental Meditation in the trial was like adding a class of newly discovered drugs for the prevention of heart disease.

He said: “In this case, the new medications are derived from the body’s own internal pharmacy stimulated by the Transcendental Meditation practice.”

Ingrid Collins, a consultant educational psychologist at the London Medical Centre, said: “I’m not at all surprised that a change of behaviour like this can have enormous benefits both emotionally and physically.

“Physical and emotional energy is on a continuum and whatever happens to us physically can affect our emotions and vice versa.”

British Heart Foundation Cardiac Nurse Ellen Mason said: “This is a fascinating area and the results were impressive.

“However, in order to fully assess the difference transcendental meditation could have on heart patient’s lives, we need to see research confirming it in a far bigger study and with other ethnic groups.”

That’s according to estimates released by the American Institute for Cancer Research. The estimates suggest that heart disease, diabetes, and joint problems aren’t the only illnesses in which rampant obesity is causing havoc.

The group says overweight and obesity could be the cause of more than 6% of all the estimated 1.6 million cancer cases diagnosed in the U.S. each year.

A 2007 report from the American Institute for Cancer Research and the World Cancer Research Foundation reviewed hundreds of studies and found what researchers called “convincing evidence” that obesity was tied to several cancers. Those included cancer of the esophagus, pancreas, and kidneys. It also included colorectal cancer and endometrial cancer (a form of uterine cancer).

Researchers also said it was “probable” that excess abdominal fat was a cause of breast cancer in postmenopausal women.

Experts took estimates of obesity’s influence on cancer and applied them to a breakdown of the approximately 1.6 million U.S. cancer cases per year.

The researchers estimate that excess body fat is the cause of 33,000 breast cancer cases each year, nearly one-sixth the total cases in postmenopausal women. Obesity could be to blame for nearly 21,000 cases of endometrial cancer and more than 13,000 cases of colorectal cancer per year.

Researchers stressed that the figures are only estimates, and that individual cancer cases can have many, inter-connected causes.

“We believe these estimates are as good as it is possible to achieve, given the available data,” says Tim Byers, MD, PhD, interim director of the University of Colorado Cancer Center and a co-author of the report.

Cancer is more often blamed on influences like smoking and other toxic exposures than it is blamed on obesity. Smoking does cause many more malignancies than excess body fat.

But Larry Kolonel, MD, PhD, deputy director of the Cancer Research Center of Hawaii, says there are strong reasons to believe that excess fat can give rise to cancer. Fat cells produce estrogen, which are now known to be a factor in breast cancer and endometrial cancer. Fatty tissue also affects the way the body metabolizes insulin, which can alter how sugar is processed and how it ultimately gets to cells.

Fatty tissue, also known as adipose tissue, produces hormones on its own that could play a role in promoting cancer cells, Kolonel says. It also has been shown to produce chronic, low-grade inflammation in the body. That inflammation can spark immune responses that may also be linked.

“It is not implausible that adipose tissue can be a risk factor or a causal factor for cancers,” he says.

The estimates suggest maintaining a normal weight could prevent half of all endometrial cancers, a third of all esophageal cancers, and a quarter of all kidney cancers.

“We can have a very substantial influence,” Kolonel says.

The drug demonstrated an even greater improvement in non- weight loss measures in patients considered to be at high risk of heart disease, according to data released on Saturday.

Orexigen released top-line data in July from a trio of Phase III trials showing Contrave met its primary goal of at least 5 percent weight loss compared with a placebo.

That data included all patients who began the studies, even those who discontinued the medicine at any point. The data presented Saturday included only those who completed 56 weeks of treatment, which the company called “a more clinically relevant number.”

Orexigen also released data that looked at several secondary measures, such as impact on waist circumference, blood lipids and a marker for inflammation, as well as blood sugar levels in a separate trial of obese diabetics.

“We’re very encouraged that all those things are going in the right direction,” Dennis Kim, Orexigen’s head of medical affairs who presented the new data at the Obesity Society scientific meeting in Washington, said in an interview.

Contrave is a pill that combines the antidepressant Wellbutrin, known generically as bupropion, with a sustained- release version of naltrexone, an opioid blocker used to treat alcoholism and other addictions.

New obesity treatments are needed for what has become a public health epidemic as obesity is a leading cause of diabetes, heart disease and many other serious medical problems, and the condition is rising at alarming rates.

The top-line data in July showed 48 percent of obese patients lost at least 5 percent of their body weight in one trial and 56.3 percent in a second study, compared with 16.4 percent and 17.1 percent on placebo.

Those differences are considered robust enough for likely FDA approval and the company said it was on track to apply for U.S. approval in the first half of next year.

But when looking only at patients who completed the 56-week study, the Contrave numbers jump to 61.8 percent and 75.8 percent compared with 23.1 percent and 21.7 percent on placebo.

In addition, 48.2 percent of Contrave patients lost at least 10 percent body weight and 23 percent dropped an impressive 15 percent of their weight in one of the studies.

In the other Phase III trial, 34.5 percent lost at least 10 percent on Contrave and 17.2 percent achieved 15 percent weight loss — all significantly better than the placebo group, which topped out at 3.4 percent losing 15 percent of body weight and 10.7 percent who dropped 10 percent.

“These numbers demonstrate some really compelling efficacy results that I think patients and prescribers will be impressed by,” Kim said.

The data also demonstrated impressive impacts on blood lipids and other measures in those patients in the study considered to be at high cardiovascular risk.

In that population, triglycerides went down 66.3 milligrams/deciliter and 51.2 mg/dl on Contrave.

“Those drops in triglycerides actually is in the ballpark of what you would expect to see from a lipid lowering drug that’s on the market today,” Kim said, referring to Abbott Laboratories’ blockbuster triglyceride lowerer TriCor.

Levels of good HDL cholesterol rose 5 mg/dl and 6.2 mg/dl among Contrave at risk patients — similar to what one would expect from niacin, which is approved to raise HDL.

High risk Contrave patients also had significant drops waist circumference and c-reactive protein — an indicator of arterial inflammation associated with heart disease — and small drops in bad LDL cholesterol, according to the data.

Blood sugar levels from the study of diabetics was also more impressive than originally thought when looking at just patients who began the trial with A1c levels of greater than 8 percent. American Diabetes Association guidelines call for an A1c level of 7 percent or less.

Among those patients, Contrave led to a highly statistically significant mean A1c reduction of 1.1 percent.

“That is very impressive and outdoes a lot of diabetes drugs that are approved today,” Kim said. “And you get big weight loss on top of it.”

Sources: reuters.com

Additionally, many high protein diets are high in saturated fat and low in fiber, a combination that can increase cholesterol levels and raise the risk of heart disease and stroke.

High protein diets have also been shown to cause higher than normal calcium excretion through the urine, which over a prolonged period of time can increase the risk of osteoporosis and kidney stones. And a recent study suggests that a high protein diet may actually cause brain shrinkage and an increased “susceptibility to or progression of Alzheimer’s disease.”

The discovery was an unexpected one, found while studying the effects of different diets on mice bred to develop Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The mice were fed either a regular diet, high fat/low carb custom diet, high protein/low carb version or a high carb/low fat option. When the researchers looked at the brain and body weight of the mice, as well as plaque build-up and differences in the structure of several brain regions involved in the memory defect underlying AD, they were surprised to find that the brains of the mice fed a high protein/low carb diet were 5 percent lighter than all the others and the regions of their hippocampus were less developed.

The researchers theorize that the high protein diet may leave neurons more vulnerable to AD plaque. “High protein diets are used for weight control, and those diets sometimes combine high fat and high protein, which may be doubly damaging, if the high fat increases the accumulation of plaques and the high protein sensitizes nerve cells to the poison released by plaques,” said lead author Sam Gandy, a professor at The Mount Sinai School of Medicine and a neurologist at the James J. Peters Veterans Affairs Medical Center in New York. “Given the previously reported association of high-protein diet with aging-related neurotoxicity, one wonders whether particular diets, if ingested at particular ages, might increase susceptibility to incidence or progression of Alzheimer’s disease.”

Gandy believes the only way to know for sure if these findings have implications for the human brain is to perform prospective randomized double blind clinical diet trials. “This would be a challenging undertaking but potentially worthwhile. If there is a real chance that the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease might be slowed or avoided through healthy eating,” he said. “Such trials will be required if scientists are ever to make specific recommendations about dietary risks for Alzheimer’s disease.” Previous research has shown a Mediterranean-style low-calorie, low-fat diet rich in vegetables, fruits, and fish might delay the onset or slow the progression of AD.

AD is the most common type of dementia, affecting as many as 5.3 million Americans. Brain lesions, called amyloid plaques and tangles, accumulate, destroying brain cells, causing memory loss and problems with thinking and behavior severe enough to affect work, social life and even the ability to cope with everyday life. Over time, AD gets worse and is fatal. Currently, there is no cure for AD, but researchers around the world continue to search for better ways to treat the disease, delay its onset, or prevent it from developing.