Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/BTotDqF8O1U

Even if your parents suffered a heart attack at a young age, you can avoid that fate.  Lack of exercise, smoking, blood pressure, cholesterol, and diabetes are more important than genetic factors when it comes to the early development of cardiovascular disease.  

This conclusion stems from a Portuguese study just presented to the European Society of Cardiology.  The researchers analyzed data from just over 1,000 mostly male patients under the age of 50 half of whom had developed premature coronary artery disease.  The tabulated results showed that 73% of those who did fall ill had at least 3 of the 5 risk factors versus only 31% of the healthy controls.  The probability that a young person will fall victim to heart disease rises even higher by a factor of 3 with the addition of 1 more risk factor, escalates 7 fold with two more factors,, and soars 24 times higher with 3 additional factors.

Since lifestyle factors far outweigh any genetically-controlled family history of early cardiac disease, you have the power to control your destiny by exercising, avoiding smoking and vaping, eating healthy, and controlling your weight.

European Society of Cardiology. "Lifestyle, not genetics, explains most premature heart disease." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 2 September 2019. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190902181602.htm

#Lifestyle #genetics #prematureCAD #prematureheartdisease

Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/RU0P15Rlw1M

Women who are walkers, live near green spaces in temperate to warm climates, eat only moderate amounts of fish, and avoid BPA-containing plastic water bottles are more likely to have kids with normal blood pressures during mid to late childhood.  Spanish researchers just published these finding in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

The investigators studied nearly 1300 mother-child pairs from across Europe for whom data was available from their gestational periods through 6-11 years of age.  Their findings confirm and extend previous work that emphasizes the value of exercise, dietary moderation, avoidance of known toxins, and time spent outdoors in the clean air of green spaces.

Normal blood pressure during childhood, like normal body weight, normal cholesterol and lipid levels, and frequent exercise, is critically important for preventing mid-life heart attacks, strokes, kidney disease, and early death.

Charline Warembourg, Léa Maitre, Ibon Tamayo-Uria, etal. Early-Life Environmental Exposures and Blood Pressure in Children. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 2019; 74 (10): 1317 DOI: 10.1016/j.jacc.2019.06.069

#Pregnancy #walking #fish #BPA #hypertension

Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/uhyKeeSPw4o

Here comes another loud cheer for sleep moderation from the Harvard-MIT Broad Biomedical Institute, the University of Colorado-Boulder, and the UK’s University of Manchester.  Those sleeping fewer than 6 hours a night had a 20% higher heart attack risk, but sleeping longer than 9 hours was even more dangerous elevating the risk of heart attack by 34%.

The researchers studied more than 460,000 subjects 40-69 years of age with sleep, cardiovascular, genetic as well as 27 other categories of data in Britain’s huge Biobank The large size of the study group permitted the investigators to isolate the impact of sleep on cardiovascular disease.  Sleep is such a powerful body rejuvenator that the proper amount of it can even help to neutralize those genetic factors that predispose many to heart attacks. 

Hours of sleep is another of those health numbers to track regularly.  Add it to weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, and calories burned in order to keep the machine that is your body chugging along in optimal shape.

Iyas Daghlas, Hassan S. Dashti, Jacqueline Lane, Krishna G. Aragam, Martin K. Rutter, Richa Saxena, Céline Vetter. Sleep Duration and Myocardial Infarction. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 2019; 74 (10): 1304 DOI: 10.1016/j.jacc.2019.07.022

#Sleep #heartattack

Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/5H_y0xIrTgo

Health News You Should Use, the latest medical discoveries that you can use to keep yourself and your family healthy.

Here are this weeks stories :

Listening Equal To Reading For Comprehending Information

Dogs Help Your Heart

Smartphone Use Not Driving Our Teens Crazy After All

Polluted Air Kills You Faster

Any Physical Activity Cuts Risk of Early Death

A Your Partner IS An Excellent Pain Killer

Heavy Drinking Curbs Immunity To HIV

Don’t Sugar-coat Your Cancer Risk

Zinc Boosts Resistance To Bacterial Pneumonia

Women Do Have Typical Heart Attack Symptoms

Simpler Parental Speech Speeds Baby’s Language Development

Pomegranate Juice During Pregnancy Yields Healthier Neonate Brains

Cannabis Flower The Most Effective Pain Reliever

Green-space Drives Happiness

Even Nicotine-Free, Flavor-Free Vaping Is Toxic

For show notes and references to for the stories, check out my website at:

https://www.drhowardsmith.com/aug-2019-4th-week-health-news

#Reading #listening #comprehension #semanticmaps #Dogs #heartdisease #exercise #Smartphone #teen #mentalhealth #Airpollution #mortalityrates #Moving #exercise #prematuredeath #Pain #analgesic #lover #significantother #Immunity #HIV #alcohol #Sugar #cancer #diabetes #Zinc #immunity #pneumonia #Heartattack #women #underdiagnosis #Babbling #simplifiedlanguage #linguistics #parenting #IUGR #pomegranate #intrauterinegrowthrestriction #placentalinsufficiency #Cannabis #pain #THC #Releafapp #Greenspace #happiness #twitter #Christmas #Vaping #nicotine #lungdisease #ecigarettes

Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/T3LMa31YJEk

It’s all over the news: currently more than 200 mostly young people have been hospitalized with life-threatening respiratory illness.  At least one of them has died.  

A new study from the University of Pennsylvania shows that even vaping once without any nicotine leads to significant blood vessel lining damage.

The study analyzed 31 healthy non-smoking adults before and after vaping a single e-cigarette that did not contain nicotine but only the usual propylene glycol-glycerol base with tobacco flavoring added. Each participant took only 16-3-second puffs.

Even this limited exposure drove a 34% reduction in major arterial dilatation, a 17% reduction in peak blood flow, a 20% reduction in venous oxygenation, and a 26% reduction in blood acceleration.  The electric heating and vaporization process converts the e-cigarette liquids into toxic substances that damage blood vessels.

Don’t use these devices.  If you want to quit smoking and need to withdraw from nicotine, use nicotine gum or the patch.  Save your lungs, your blood vessels, and your life.

Alessandra Caporale, Michael C. Langham, Wensheng Guo, Alyssa Johncola, Shampa Chatterjee, Felix W. Wehrli. Acute Effects of Electronic Cigarette Aerosol Inhalation on Vascular Function Detected at Quantitative MRI. Radiology, 2019; 190562 DOI: 10.1148/radiol.2019190562

#Vaping #nicotine #lungdisease #ecigarettes

Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/EoNbGsjDUns

A visit to your favorite park can give you a happiness boost equivalent to Christmas.  In a first-of-its-kind-study, a University of Vermont study analyzed the word contents of tweets from nearly 4700 users as a function of their publicly identified geolocation.

Those users in the largest green spaces with the most vegetation used the happiest words in their tweets.   They also tended show less narcissism dropping the use of first person pronouns such as “I” and “me.” 

Their burst of happiness on Twitter was statistically equivalent to that coming from users over the traditional winter holiday.  The park visit even showed a positive tail, since tweets following the visit used fewer negative words.

The researchers caution that the “twitter-addicted” may not always be representative of the population at large.  I’d take that chance, and get yourself out into the great outdoors.  So many other studies have demonstrated the benefits of frequent visits with good ol’ Mother Nature.

Aaron J. Schwartz, Peter Sheridan Dodds, Jarlath P. M. O'Neil‐Dunne, Christopher M. Danforth, Taylor H. Ricketts. Visitors to urban greenspace have higher sentiment and lower negativity on Twitter. People and Nature, 2019; DOI: 10.1002/pan3.10045

#Greenspace #happiness #twitter #Christmas

Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/luh_-YXmVT8

Cannabis does relieve pain, the most effective pain relief comes from whole cannabis flower, and the products most likely to help with pain are those with the highest THC rather than CBD content.  These are the conclusions from a University of New Mexico study that analyzed data contributed by nearly 3000 users of the ReleafApp.  

This Releaf app contains the largest available database of outcomes from patient self-directed cannabis administration.  It captures information about the product used, the beneficial effects, and any side effects and complications.

The researchers looked at more than 20,000 cannabis administrations.  The average pain reduction recorded was 3 on a 10 point scale, and cannabis containing THC worked well for musculoskeletal, headache, nerve, and gastrointestinal pain.  The bad news is that the psychoactive THC products did drive more temporary cognitive and functional impairment along with a longer-term addiction risk.

If you do suffer from pain, I’d recommend downloading and using the ReLeafApp.  You’ll be able to record and store your own observations, contribute to the crowd-sourced knowledge about cannabis usage,  and receive summary non-identifying information about others’ experiences.

Xiaoxue Li, Jacob M. Vigil, Sarah S. Stith, Franco Brockelman, Keenan Keeling, Branden Hall. The effectiveness of self-directed medical cannabis treatment for pain. Complementary Therapies in Medicine, 2019; 46: 123 DOI: 10.1016/j.ctim.2019.07.022

#Cannabis #pain #THC #Releafapp 

Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/z6pAYo_JlkU

Babies at risk for abnormal brain development showed improved tissue microstructure and better functional connectivity when their pregnant mothers consumed pomegranate juice on a daily basis.  These startling results of a preliminary study are being rushed into publication by neonatologists at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

The team there conducted a randomized, controlled, double-blind study of 78 pregnant women whose developing babies were diagnosed with intrauterine growth restriction at 24-34 weeks.  These growth issues are associated with placental malfunction.  

Half the group received a 8 ounces of pomegranate juice daily while the controls were served a placebo with an identical taste and color.  Pomegranate juice’s anti-oxidant polyphenols are known to cross both the placenta and the blood-brain barrier.

When the neonate brains were analyzed with MRIs at 36-41 weeks, those babies whose mothers received the pomegranate juice were spared some negative neurologic effects of their placental insufficiency.  Though their brains were no larger than controls, they showed improved structure and function. 

The Brigham team is currently mounting a larger study to confirm and extend these results.  Meanwhile, pregnant women with known intrauterine growth problems will almost certainly benefit from daily pomegranate juice.

Lillian G. Matthews, Christopher D. Smyser, Sara Cherkerzian, etal. Maternal pomegranate juice intake and brain structure and function in infants with intrauterine growth restriction: A randomized controlled pilot study. PLOS ONE, 2019; 14 (8): e0219596 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0219596

#IUGR #pomegranate #intrauterinegrowthrestriction #placentalinsufficiency

Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/qpSt1Nj92lM

When parents simply their speech by using single word replies, shorter sentences, and fewer new words, infants develop language faster.  This observation comes from a Cornell University study just published in the Journal of Child Language.

Pediatric behavioral specialists there studied the vocalizations of 30 infant-mother pairs on two consecutive days.  They discovered that when many parents responded to their baby’s babbling, they tended to simply their language output.  Those infants whose parents did streamline their speech showed accelerated vocal maturation even in the short run.

The study shows that babies actually cue their parents to present language to them in a form they can easily digest.  If you want your own infant’s language skills to soar, follow their lead by responding to their babbling and consistently serving up bite sized language “snacks.”

Steven L. Elmlinger, Jennifer A. Schwade, Michael H. Goldstein. The ecology of prelinguistic vocal learning: parents simplify the structure of their speech in response to babbling. Journal of Child Language, 2019; 46 (05): 998 DOI: 10.1017/S0305000919000291

#Babbling #simplifiedlanguage #linguistics #parenting

Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/ippJoLK0hZU

I learned in med school and then read over and over again that women have different and more subtle heart attack symptoms compared with men.  Cardiologists often warn not to expect the crushing left-sided chest and arm pains if you want to make a clinical diagnosis in women.

A Scottish study, just published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, now labels this medical orthodoxy a medical myth.  Researchers at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary studied the presenting symptoms of 274 heart attack victims diagnosed by the gold standard cardiac muscle protein troponin test.  Ninety-three percent of both men and women had chest pain and 48-49 percent of each gender had pain radiating to the left.  Women did have more pain traveling to the jaw and back as well as nausea, but men also had the gastrointestinal symptom heartburn and also reported back pain.

The assumption that women only have atypical heart attack symptoms has led to delayed diagnoses and over 8,000 avoidable deaths during the last decade in the UK and Wales.  The same is likely true for the US. 

Knowing this latest finding should drive us to demand an EKG and a troponin test for any woman with chest, arm, jaw, or back pain.  Doing so could be lifesaving.

Amy V. Ferry, Atul Anand, Fiona E. Strachan, Leanne Mooney, Stacey D. Stewart, Lucy Marshall, Andrew R. Chapman, Kuan Ken Lee, Simon Jones, Katherine Orme, Anoop S. V. Shah, Nicholas L. Mills. Presenting Symptoms in Men and Women Diagnosed With Myocardial Infarction Using Sex‐Specific Criteria. Journal of the American Heart Association, 2019; 8 (17) DOI: 10.1161/JAHA.119.012307

#Heartattack #women #underdiagnosis