Chocolate Might Help You Lower Your Cholesterol!

Who does not like chocolate? People, especially ladies, tend to eat more chocolate when they were in bad mood. But many reports had linked eating chocolate to weight gain that might lead to many medical disorders including diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and stroke.

In a paper published on May 26, 2010 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College in Beijing argued that eating chocolate could help reduce the cholesterol levels. Their theory, however, only applied to people already had risk factors for heart disease and who consumed in modest amounts.

After analyzing 8 trials involving 215 people, they found that eating cocoa would reduce levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or bad cholesterol by about 6 mg/dL and cut the total cholesterol by the same amount. Further analysis showed that only people who ate small amounts of cocoa (an amount containing 260 milligrams of polyphenols or less) had their cholesterol levels lowered, and no effect was shown in people who ate more.

Polyphenols are antioxidant compounds found in fruits, vegetables, chocolate and red wine. A 1.25-ounce bar of milk chocolate contains about 300 milligrams of polyphenols.

While healthy people did not benefit from consuming cocoa, people with heart disease risk factors like diabetes had their LDL cholesterol and total cholesterol level reduced by around 8 mg/dL each.

However, researchers suggested more rigorous randomized trials with longer follow-up should be carried out in future research so as to resolve the uncertainty about the clinical effectiveness.

In fact, several studies suggesting that chocolate might be good for the health had been conducted before. A study on 19,300 people, which was released in March 2010, suggested that people who consumed the most chocolate had lower blood pressure and were less likely to suffer stroke or heart attach over the next 10 years.

Is Video Game Really Bad For Children?

Video game, together with other screen-based entertainments like TV and DVD watching, as well as leisure time computer use, has long been accused as one of the culprits that cause children obesity.

Does this mean that children should be totally banned from playing video games? Researchers from Baylor College of Medicine might have a different perspective, as they believed video games could be used to encourage kids to eat healthier foods.

Their study, which was conducted in the United States, found that children who played certain video games increased the amount of fruit and vegetables they ate each day by around one serving. In the United States, nearly one in five 6- to 19-year-olds is obese. The findings were published on December 7, 2010 in the ‘American Journal of Preventive Medicine’.

The 2 video games used in the study were "Escape from Diab” and “Nanoswarm" designed by Archimage to change diet and physical activity behaviors to reduce the risk of becoming obese and diabetic. Archimage is a Houston-based visual arts studio using its experience in computer-based architecture to specialize in serious video game development for the medial research community.

“Escape from Diab” and “Nanoswarm” were designed as epic video game adventures that are comparable to commercial quality video games. A broad diversity of behavior change procedures was incorporated into the games, which can really motivate players to substantially improve diet behaviors.

Obese children are more likely to grow up to be obese adults, to suffer from many chronic diseases including diabetes, heart disease, hypertension (high blood pressure), stroke and fatty liver disease, and to die prematurely of any cause, as shown by numerous studies.

The finding is definitely a useful step towards fighting childhood obesity because increasing intake of fruit and vegetables could reduce the risk of obesity.

But, researchers also pointed out that while there was increased intake of health foods, children still failed to consume the minimum daily amount of fruit and vegetables recommended by doctors. What worrying them most is that children did not get enough physical exercise. According to health professionals, children should eat 5 servings a day of fruit or vegetables and get an hour of moderate to vigorous exercise.

Though serious video games hold promise, the researchers still felt that their effectiveness and mechanisms of change among youth need to be more thoroughly investigated.

Eat Less Fructose To Prevent Hypertension!

Dessert is usually a sweet course of dish served at the end of a meal. It includes cake, cookie, gelatin, pastry, ice cream, pie, and candy. Dessert is not only liked by children but also favored by many adults especially females.

Besides dessert, many of our daily diet can also be laden with excessive sugar. For instance, sugary or soda drinks are popular among teenagers and many young adults. Most of these sweetened drinks contained the popular high-fructose corn syrup (sometimes called corn sugar). Fructose can be found naturally in fruit and table sugar and that is why it is also called fruit sugar.

Well, lovers of sugary drinks and sugar-laden foods should pay attention to results of a study conducted by scientists from the United States, who reported that consuming a lot of foods and drinks sweetened with fructose might significantly increase the risk of developing hypertension (high blood pressure).

The study was published on July 1, 2010 in the ‘Journal of the American Society of Nephrology’ by researchers from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. They found increased rates of borderline high blood pressure for people who consumed at least 74 grams of fructose a day (about 4 bottles of soda).

American Heart Association (AHA) also warned that having too much sugar of any kind can cause people gain weight and this could in turn lead to diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

While scientists have yet to find out the exact reason why fructose would raise blood pressure, some experts suspected that fructose has the potential to reduce production of nitric oxide within the blood vessels.

Nitric oxide, which is known to relax the vessel, is supposed to lower blood pressure. But fructose reduces the production of nitric oxide and makes it difficult for the vessels to relax and dilate.

Meanwhile, fructose also raises uric acid in the blood that could raise blood pressure. Fructose can signal the kidneys to 'hold onto' more salt, and that can contribute to high blood pressure.

Avoid Processed Meat To Prevent Heart Disease!

Bacon, sausage, hot dog and some other processed meat have already become an integrated part of many meat lovers’ diets. But many are probably not aware that eating too much of these would raise their chances of developing diabetes and heart disease.

In a paper published on May 17, 2010 in the journal ‘Circulation’, researchers from Harvard School of Public Health reported that eating unprocessed beef, pork or lamb did not seem to raise risks of heart attack and diabetes. Therefore, salt and chemical preservatives are the real culprits responsible for these 2 health disorders.

Many past studies examining the relationship between eating meat and cardiovascular disease and diabetes had found mixed results, and few had looked at the differences in risk between processed and unprocessed red meat.

To get evidence of a link between eating processed and unprocessed red meat and the risk of diabetes and heart disease, a systemic review of nearly 1,600 studies from around the world were carried out.

Processed meat was defined in the study as any meat preserved by smoking, curing or salting, or with the addition of chemical preservatives. Good examples of processed meat included bacon, salami, sausages, hot dogs or processed deli or luncheon meats. On the other hand, unprocessed red meat included beef, lamb or pork but not poultry.

The findings showed that on average, every 50 grams serving of processed meat a day (equivalent to 1 or 2 slices of deli meats or 1 hot dog) was associated with a 19 percent higher risk of developing diabetes and 42 percent higher risk of heart disease. Meanwhile, they found no higher risk of diabetes or heart disease in people eating only unprocessed red meats.

Hence, they urged people to eat less (1 serving or less per week) processed meats such as bacon, salami, sausages, hot dogs and processed deli meats in order to lower the risk of diabetes and heart attack.

As expected, the American Meat Institute objected to the findings quoting that it was only one study that was different from other studies and the United States Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Hence, there is no reason for dietary changes unless further studies could justify so.

What Would Heart Disease Cost United States 20 Years Later?

Most people are aware that heart disease is a chronic disease and the cost of treating it can never be cheap. When the condition of a heart disease patient is serious enough that it cannot no longer be treated by medication alone, he or she might need to undergo heart by-pass surgery or even heart transplant. Though advancement of technology has reduced the medical cost substantially, the amount of money that patients need to pay is still considered huge for most people.

Heart disease is the number one cause of death in most developed countries including United States, where one in 3 people has some form of heart disease. Every year, 17 percent of the cost of medical care, which is about US$273 billion, is meant for heart disease.

A study published on January 24, 2011 in ‘Circulation’, a journal of the American Heart Association (AHA) estimated that the cost of treating heart disease in United States are expected to triple to US$818 billion per year by 2030.

Based on the current disease rates, an expert panel of AHA expanded the cost according to projections from United States census data about approaching shifts in the population. The researchers also assumed that there would be no new discoveries made between now and 2030 to stop the tide of heart disease.

As revealed by the panel, 36.9 percent of Americans have some form of cardiovascular disease such as high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, heart failure or stroke presently. The number of people affected would increase to 116 million or 40.5 percent. Patients with stroke and heart failure are expected to increase the most by about 25 percent.

Most heart disease, according to AHA, is preventable if people can stick to healthy diet and adequate exercises. Unfortunately, many people do not seem to follow such advice. Meanwhile many heart disease patients do not take their medications as directed or drugs are not optimally prescribed to them. All these can further raise the cost of treatment.

Women Benefit More In Certain Heart Disease Treatment!

Heart failure is a condition in which heart is unable to pump blood at an adequate rate or in adequate volume. In serious cases, heart failure patients could lose their life with cessation of heartbeat.

There are numerous reasons why one might develop heart failure, which can be sudden or happen gradually over a periods of time. Some common causes are heart attack, high blood pressure, defective valves in the heart, cardiomyopathies (diseases of the heart muscle), too much alcohol, and congenital conditions that one is born with.

Besides taking right mix of medications, heart failure patients could have their condition reversed if the heart valve is repaired or fast heart rhythm is controlled. In some cases, certain devices are used to help the heart beat and contract properly. For example, cardiac resynchronization therapy with defibrillator (CRT-D), which is a form of therapy for congestive heart failure caused by dilated cardiomyopathy, have been found to have remarkable benefits on appropriately selected patients with heart failure.

CRT-D can help guard against sudden death from irregular heart rhythm by using a specialized pacemaker to re-coordinate the action of the right and left ventricles in patients with heart failure. It can also help strengthen pumping action in patients with heart damage.

Researchers from the University of Rochester pointed out in their findings that CRT-D works twice as well in women. Their study, which was published on February 7, 2011 in the ‘Journal of the American College of Cardiology’, found that when using CRT-D, there was a 70 percent reduction in heart failure in women compared a 35 percent drop in men.

This is probably the first time in history of heart disease research that has credited a certain type of treatment that is more effective in women than in men. In the past cardiac studies, men and women generally received similar benefit from preventive medical therapy.

According to researchers, CRT-D works better in women because women tend to suffer from a different type of heart disease than men. The male participants in the study were more likely to have coronary heart disease while the female participants were more likely to suffer from non-ischemic heart disease.

Coronary artery disease, which is also known as ischemic heart disease, is a condition in which narrowed vessels restrict blood flow to the heart. Non-ischemic heart disease, on the other hand, is one that involves more generalized scarring of heart tissue.

How To Help Women Quit Smoking?

Smoking is definitely not a good habit for health. Smokers are at a higher risk of getting not only lung cancer but also other diseases including heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). More importantly, smokers can pose health risk to people around them through secondhand smoke.

While smokers are aware of the risk they face, many of them especially females are reluctant to quit because they afraid they could gain weight after they stop smoking. In fact, most smokers who quit smoking will eventually gain 5 to 15 pounds.

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center reported that a combination of specialized counseling and the anti-smoking drug Zyban might boost, at least for a while, chances of quitting smoking for female smokers.

Zyban is a prescription drug used to help smokers give up their habit. It comes in a pill form, and it does not contain nicotine. Hence, it is not a nicotine replacement therapy product. Zyban is the trade name of the drug called “bupropion” and it was approved in 1997 as a stop smoking aid.

The findings, appeared on March 22, 2010 in the ‘Archives of Internal Medicine’, showed that over a period of 6 months of treatment, women who received the combo therapy were more successful at quitting than those who received weight counseling only, and more successful than those who received standard smoking-cessation counseling plus Zyban.

Over the period of 6 months, 34 percent of women in the group that received weight counseling and Zyban consistently abstained, comparing to 21 percent of women who received standard counseling and Zyban, 11 percent of those who received weight counseling and placebo (inactive pills) and 10 percent of those who had standard counseling and placebo.

However, the positive effect faded after treatment ended. At the 1-year mark, 24 percent of women in the group that received weight counseling and Zyban had still remained abstinent, as compared with those in the group that received standard therapy/Zyban. Yet, researchers still insisted that cognitive behavioral therapy, which was developed by them, aimed at smokers' weight-gain issues could give certain women an extra push to quit.