Smoking Bans Cut Heart Attack Risk

Every year, more than 400,000 Americans die of illnesses related to their smoking, and so do thousands of non-smokers who have been exposed to secondhand smoke—a combination of smoke that comes from the burning end of a cigarette, cigar or pipe and the smoke exhaled by the smoker. Non-smokers who breathe in secondhand smoke take in the same toxic chemicals that smokers do, including more than 50 substances that are known to cause cancer in humans or animals. The more secondhand smoke a person is exposed to, the higher the level of these harmful chemicals in their body. For adults, the health effects of exposure to secondhand smoke include respiratory tract infections, lung cancer, nasal sinus cancer and heart disease.

In 1971, the Surgeon General proposed a federal smoking ban in public places and released a report the next year declaring secondhand smoke a health risk. In 1973, Arizona became the first state to restrict smoking in public places and today, 24 states have enacted statewide bans on smoking in all enclosed public places, including bars and restaurants. And experts say these bans are really paying off.

After analyzing a number of recent studies on the effects of smoking bans, investigators at the U.S. Institute of Medicine (IOM) concluded that smoke-free policies can reduce the risk of heart attack by up to 47 percent and significantly reduce the likelihood of other heart problems. They also found evidence that even a brief exposure to secondhand smoke can trigger a heart attack. “We did conclude a cause-and-effect relationship exists between heart disease and secondhand smoke exposure,” said Dr. Lynn R. Goldman, a professor of environmental health sciences at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and chairwoman of the IOM committee. She noted that sufficient evidence also exists to support a cause-and-effect relationship “between exposure to secondhand smoke and heart attacks or acute coronary events.”

The committee’s findings echo those of the Surgeon General in 2006. His report also concluded that secondhand smoke causes premature death and disease in children and nonsmoking adults and declared that the only way to fully protect non-smokers from exposure to secondhand smoke indoors is to prevent all smoking in that indoor space or building. Separating smokers from non-smokers, cleaning the air, and ventilating buildings cannot keep non-smokers from being exposed to secondhand smoke. Unfortunately, as of June 2009, 27 states still did not have comprehensive smoking bans in place; meaning that one in four U.S. indoor workers is still not protected by a complete smoke-free workplace policy and nearly three in five Americans do not live under comprehensive state or local laws that make workplaces, restaurants, and bars smoke-free, according to the CDC.

Danny McGoldrick, vice president for research at Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, hopes this new report will help get more states and localities to pass smoke-free legislation. “If policy makers are paying attention to the science, and this is one more piece of evidence that says ‘you can actually save people’s lives, save health-care costs,’ then those states that have yet to act should do so,” he said. “How many dramatic findings do you need before you are finally going to act to protect everybody’s right to breathe clean air?”

Until the time everyone is protected against secondhand smoke, there are important steps you can take to lower your risk and protect your family from exposure. The CDC suggests the following:

Don’t smoke or allow smoking indoors or in a vehicle, at anytime.
Visit only those restaurants and businesses that are 100 percent smoke-free. Separate “no smoking” sections DO NOT completely protect you from secondhand smoke. Neither does filtering the air or opening a window.
Take special precautions to ensure that family members who have heart disease or risk factors for heart disease avoid secondhand smoke exposure.
Encourage your community leaders to implement policies that make all indoor workplaces and public places, including restaurants, bars, and casinos, smoke-free.

High Protein Diet May Increase Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease

High protein diets have been popular off and on since the 1960s, and are once again grabbing the attention of millions of people desperate to lose weight. But before you jump on the bandwagon, there are some things you might want to consider. High protein diets can produce a rapid initial weight loss, but most of this loss can be water rather than fat. 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.

The study is published in the journal Molecular Neurodegeneration.

Second Wave of H1N1 Flu Underway

It’s a subject you’ve already heard a great deal about, and one that won’t be going away anytime soon—the H1N1 flu virus. Widespread flu activity is already being reported in 37 states, virtually all due to H1N1. Across the nation, flu-related doctor visits, hospitalizations and deaths are increasing and are higher than expected for this time of year. From August 30 to October 3, there were 3,874 laboratory-confirmed influenza associated hospitalizations, 240 laboratory-confirmed influenza associated deaths, 12,384 pneumonia and influenza syndrome-based hospitalizations and 1,544 pneumonia and influenza syndrome deaths reported to the CDC. The agency is also reporting 19 influenza-associated pediatric deaths in the past week; 16 of which were associated with H1N1 virus infection and three with influenza A virus for which subtype was undetermined.

As the number of H1N1 flu cases continues to rise, government health officials continue to urge the public to consider getting vaccinated against both swine flu and seasonal flu. “Unfortunately we are seeing more illness, more hospitalizations, and more deaths,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said in a recent H1N1 briefing. “We are now up to 76 children having died” from swine flu this year; many more already, she said, than the typical toll from influenza in years past.

At the briefing, Schuchat also addressed concerns she knows exist about the new vaccine. “Some people have reservations, they aren’t really sure about this vaccine,” she said. But a recent Associated Press-GfK poll suggests that a large majority of Americans have concerns about the vaccine. The AP poll, conducted October 1-5, found 72 percent of those surveyed are worried about side effects, although more than half say that wouldn’t stop them from getting the vaccine to protect their kids from the new flu. And 38 percent of parents said they were unlikely to give permission for their kids to be vaccinated at school.

“I would say there is moderate concern about the safety of it (H1N1 vaccine),” says Wally Ghurabi, DO, chief of emergency services at Santa Monica-UCLA and Orthopedic Hospital in California and a member of the H1N1 Steering Committee for the University of California Los Angeles. He says “someone always brings up Guillain-Barre,” a neurological condition that was linked with a previous swine flu vaccine manufactured in 1976. However, experts argue that the link was not clear and point out that vaccine production has greatly improved since then, as has testing for contaminants, which may have explained the link. Ghurabi’s advice is for patients to weigh the pros and cons, taking their risk into account. For instance, “if you are caring for a two-month old baby or are pregnant, you are in a high risk group,” he says.

But federal officials say the H1N1 vaccine is made the same way as seasonal flu vaccines that have been used for years. “This isn’t a new vaccine,” Schuchat said. “The vaccine is being manufactured exactly the same way as the seasonal flu vaccine. It is basically a vaccine made against the H1N1 instead of the seasonal viruses (expected to circulate in the upcoming season). Based on everything we know now, we are expecting a good safety record for H1N1.”

The federal government has purchased 250 million doses of the 2009 H1N1 vaccine at a cost of $2 billion, and as of Friday 3.7 million doses have been ordered by states and the District of Columbia, according to Schuchat. She says in all, 6.8 million doses are now available and production is continuing, but exactly when the H1N1 vaccine will be available in a given community is hard to predict. The CDC has recommended that certain at-risk populations, including pregnant women, health care providers and individuals with underlying chronic medical conditions such as asthma, receive the new H1N1 vaccine as a priority before the general population.
from http://www.healthnews.com

Angelina Jolie Diet Secrets - Learn Hollywood Weight Loss Tips!

To get ready for her new movie Tomb Raider, Angelina Jolie had spent a few months on a special diet. Jolie's been forced to swap cigarettes and coffee for steamed meat, vegetables and soya milk. 'It's an interesting test because I used to smoke and drink and I used to not eat breakfast but have a cigarette and coffee", Jolie said.

Although Jolie admits that Croft is the role closest to herself, playing her was one of the hardest things she has ever done. "It was such a challenge physically,” tells Angelina, who prepared for the role by following a training regime that included kickboxing, canoeing, street fighting and yoga. “A special diet also helped me shape my body. I ate steamed sea bass or steamed beef and vegetables, and I had no sugar and only drank soy milk.” Angelina had lost weight from overwork and was glad the training and healthy diet helped her put back on a few pounds of curves.

"I’m all for curves on a woman, and feeling sexy," she says, "and I never felt healthier or stronger than during the filming of this movie." Jolie performed almost all of her own stunts in “Tomb Raider,” which include sword fighting, spear throwing, dog sledding and bungee jumping. For the bungee-jumping sequence, she went through three months’ training. “The most difficult thing was learning how to do bungee ballet,” she recalls. “It took a while to learn how to work with the harness.”

When Angelina Jolie was married to husband Billy Bob Thornton, they were really focused on cleaning up their acts. Angelina said, "No more smoking or drinking, and a sugar-free diet. They want to be really healthy before they embark on having children".
from http://www.shapefit.com

Link Uncovered Between Cell Phone Use and Brain Tumors

Since the introduction of cell phones in the 1980s, there has been speculation that the radiation from these electronic marvels might pose an increased risk of cancer. There have been a number of studies, but none provided conclusive evidence one way or the other. Even a recent review of previously published findings on the subject turned up no overall link. But when the researchers reanalyzed the most scientific of the studies, they found “there is reason for concern.”

For the study, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and a consortium of Korean institutions examined 465 articles published in major journals, focusing on 23 case-controlled studies involving a total of 37,916 patients for their final analysis. Some of the patients (controls) had no history of brain tumors, while the others had been diagnosed with brain tumors.

Considered as a group, the studies showed no link between cell phone use and brain tumors. But separated into subgroups and reanalyzed, eight of the “higher quality” studies, most conducted by the same research team in Sweden, found cell phone users to have a 10 to 30 percent increased risk for developing a brain tumor, compared with people who rarely or never use them. The risk was highest among those who had used cell phones for a decade or longer.

The other subgroup of 15 studies that were not as high-quality and which were supported with mobile phone industry funding, found either no association, a negative association, or a protective effect.

“Clearly, there is a risk,” said study coauthor Joel M. Moskowitz, director of the UC Berkeley Center for Family and Community Health, noting that more research is needed to arrive at a more definitive conclusion. “It seems fairly derelict of us as a society or as a planet to just disseminate this technology to the extent that we have without doing a whole lot more research of the potential harms and how to protect against those harms,” he said. “The stakes are really high and there seems to be suggestive evidence that you better be careful about this, especially in children, who have developing tissue and smaller brain and skull sizes.” Moskowitz also believes there is a potential for harm to other areas of the body; the genitals, for instance, when the phone is carried in the pocket.

Other experts share Moskowitz’s concern. In March 2008, Dr. Vini Khurana http://www.healthnews.com/family-health/new-study-finds-mobile-phone-usa..., a neurosurgeon who has published more than 30 scientific papers and reviewed more than 100 studies on the effects of cell phones, expressed little doubt of the risk saying “there is a significant and increasing body of evidence for a link between mobile phone usage and certain brain tumors.” He warned that “mobile phones could have health consequences far greater than asbestos and smoking,” pointing out that three billion people around the world now use a cell phone, which is three times the number of people who smoke—and smoking amounts to five million deaths worldwide each year.

But the mobile communications industry argues that cell phones have been shown to be safe, and should be considered so until they are shown conclusively to be unsafe. “The peer-reviewed scientific evidence has overwhelmingly indicated that wireless devices do not pose a public health risk,” said John Walls, vice president of public affairs for CTIA-The Wireless Association. “In addition, there is no known mechanism for microwave energy within the limits established by the (U.S. Federal Communications Commission) to cause any adverse health effects,” he said. “That is why the leading global health organizations such as the American Cancer Society, (U.S.) National Cancer Institute, World Health Organization and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration all have concurred that wireless devices are not a public health risk.”

However, last month at a U.S. Senate committee hearing on the potential cancer risks of cellular phones, National Health Institutes of Health associate director, John Bucher, told the Senators the nation faces a “potentially significant health problem” but said that so far, studies have been inconclusive. Bucher suggests that, as a precautionary measure, regular cell phone users might want to use a headset instead of holding the phone next to their head.

Superfoods Fight Swine Flu

As fall approaches and the weather gets colder flu season is expected to be at an all-time high and swine flu is still a danger, although not quite the pandemic as it was originally introduced as at the beginning of the summer. Swine flu—like the regular form of the flu which kills thousands of people per year if left untreated—needs to latch on to a body with a lowered immune system, so stay on top of it with these foods:

Yogurt – You have long heard that probioticsl help assemble the good bacteria in your stomach to keep diseases away and the flu is no different. Full of “live active cultures,” yogurt helps keep your internal systems running on track and make sure the stomach and intestines are free of germs that cause harmful bacteria to grow. A recent study from Europe showed that consuming just 7 ounces of yogurt a day contains just as much nutrition as swallowing the daily amount of probiotic supplements. The recommended dosage is two 6 ounce servings. Yogurt that contains the strain Lactobacillus reuteri, has proved to be most effective, and is currently only found in Stonyfield Farms yogurt sold in the United States.

Garlic – These delightful little power cloves are the perfect compliment to almost any type of food and can be enjoyed raw, baked, sautéed, or thrown into any combination of plates. Garlic has also been known for ages to cure many ailments but is now mostly used to fight bad bacteria as well as infection. Notorious for giving you bad breath, professionals still encourage eating two cloves a day or slice up a few in your meals a couple times a week in order to get their full effect.

Oats and Barley – A farmer’s delight, oats and barley contain a fiber that holds a lot of antimicrobial and antioxidant properties more akin to taking Echinacea. Animals that consume a lot of barley or oats in their diet are less likely to get diseases like the flu and the same goes for humans but these super grains also help speed up the healing process and boost immunity which is needed to prevent a virus like the flu from spreading. Eat one serving per day of oats or barley to attain the daily recommended dosage to keep bugs out of your system.

Chicken Soup – Mom always made chicken soup for you when you were sick…or at least you know television moms did for your two-dimensional companions. Chicken soup is not only chock full of delicious veggies, broth, and tender slow-cooked chicken that makes you feel instantly better, you may think that the “healing” is mainly psychological. In a study of 12 nationwide brands of pre-packaged chicken soups, researchers at the University of Nebraska found that all held the amino acids necessary for blocking the inflamed immunity cells that travel your body and build up in your trachea causing cold and flu symptoms associated with the throat. Salt from the broth helps to thin any mucus membranes that may have accumulated throughout the season and besides being whole meal when you add oyster or saltine crackers, chicken soup is a hearty and scrumptious way to celebrate cold weather. Eat chicken soup whenever you want.

Sweet Potatoes – The sweet and colorful cousin to the popular potato is often overlooked with the exception of adding to the rainbow that is a festive Thanksgiving table. Many people either love or hate sweet potatoes making it harder to incorporate these into more family dinners. Sweet potatoes are the mascots of vitamin A helping to keep your skin soft and healthy, keeping your connective tissue thick and useful. Foods containing beta-carotene help your body turn them into vitamin A which helps protect your body overall. If you detest the sweet potato, other sources of beta-carotene that carry vitamin A are found in other orange tinted foods like carrots and squash.

In order to keep both types of flu at bay, you should be nourishing your body with as much immune support as necessary to keep you healthy throughout the season. Follow these simple food tips to keep your insides in tip top fighting shape.

Mind Over Matter: How Placebo Treatments Can Reduce Real Pain

Placebos, the ubiquitous sugar pills of old, are usually employed in drug trials to determine the effectiveness of a medication. Comparing the responses of both the medication and a placebo allows for the measurement of the efficacy of the treatment. However, in some cases, the placebo actually can have an effect, as is the case in a recent trial where the placebo actually reduced pain signaling in their spinal cord.

Past studies have shown that, inexplicabley, placebos can actually have a positive effect. This new study goes further and suggests that the pain-related placebo effect could work by tapping into the pain-suppressing system that is already in place in the body, one that starts in the brain and then relays down to the spinal cord. Scientists know that when people experience a decrease in their pain from a placebo treatment, certain compounds, called endorphins, are released into their brains. However, they still don’t know exactly how the release of these compounds leads to pain reduction.

One idea is that the endorphins will allow certain parts of the brain to “communicate with an evolutionarily preserved system in the brain stem,” one that will control the pain by inhibiting neural activity in the spinal cord, stated Falk Eippert, who is a researcher from the Department of Systems Neuroscience at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Hamburg, Germany.

Eippert and his research team tested this hypothesis on a group of 15 volunteers. The study subjects were told they would receive painful heat stimulation on their forearm, and during this simulation, their arms would be treated with one of two creams, one which was an active, pain-reliving cream (lidocaine cream), and the other which was the placebo cream used as the inactive control. In truth, neither one of the creams was active and was not designed in any way to reduce pain.

Firs, the team applied the full heat stimulation to the forearms of the subjects that had been treated with the control cream. Next, they tested the so-called “lidocaine” cream. In reality, the research team reduced the heat temperature so the subjects would feel less pain. This was a trick designed to make the volunteers think that the “lidocaine” cream actually had an effect on the pain. Eippert said, “We wanted to induce a belief in the effectiveness of this treatment, the cream, although it doesn’t have an effectiveness, per se.”

Then, the team ran the heat-stimulation again, but this time, they did not reduce the temperature during the “lidocaine” treatment. During this heat stimulation experiment, the team also studied the volunteers with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to observe their spinal cord response. The fMRI images show the amount of oxygen in the blood, which is considered an indirect measure of the spinal cord’s neural activity.

When the volunteers were given the control cream, they reported they had a lot of pain, and showed strong activity in their pain cord. However, when the volunteers received the so-called “lidocaine” cream, which they thought was the real treatment but was in fact a placebo, they reported to have less pain and showed less activity in their spinal cord. This suggests that “there must be some inhibition [coming] from the brain,” Eippert stated.

The research team believes that the placebo effect works by recruiting the ancient pain-suppressing system. Eippert said, “What we can now show is that, in humans, this system is brought into play by psychological factors such as expectation of pain relief under placebo. It’s not just altered reporting behavior, it’s a very deeply rooted effect.” This could in fact be something very profound.

With only 15 volunteers, this study might seem a little small, but it is in fact a good size for an imaging study, which often utilizes 10 to 20 subjects, stated Eippert. He also noted that the placebo is very robust, so you really do not need too many people to study it. A study that looks at a smaller behavioral effect might need more subjects.

The data from the study was also analyzed in a way that accounted for the small size of the study. Eippert said,” The kind of statistics that we’re using are explicitly taking into account how many subjects we had.” Their results showed that the reduction of the activity in the spinal cord in response to the placebo treatment was statistically significant.