Heart Disease, Diabetes, Depression a Deadly Mix

(HealthDay News) -- Heart disease, diabetes and depression can be a lethal triple-play -- boosting a patient's death risk by 20 percent to 30 percent, new research shows.

"We do not know what this increased risk is due to, but it could either be that depression influences crucial aspects of self-care behaviors needed to manage diabetes or that a more severe disease process is reflected in more depressive symptoms," said lead researcher Anastasia Georgiades, a research associate in the department of psychiatry and behavioral science at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

Georgiades was expected to present the findings Friday at the American Psychosomatic Society annual meeting in Budapest, Hungary.

In their study, the Duke team followed 933 heart patients for more than four years. During that time, there were 135 deaths among patients with type 2 diabetes and/or depression, the researchers found. Read more...

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Reducing stress in a warp speed world

by: Sherry L. Ackerman, Ph.D.

As the wheels continue to come of the wagon known as the old paradigm, humans are increasingly exhibiting accelerated stress behaviors. This isn't good, as research indicates that stress is a leading factor in precipitating illness.

Stress is not ipso facto a bad thing. A certain amount of stress is natural. None of us live stress free lives. However, while a certain amount of stress is normal, chronic negative stress is harmful to our health.

When an individual is faced with stress, his body mobilizes for action in what is called a fight or flight reaction. During a fight or flight reaction, the heart rate increases, breathing is accelerated, and the muscles tense up.

When an individual identifies a threat, or experiences strong negative emotions such as anger and/or rage, activity in the sympathetic nervous system rises and the adrenal glands release the hormones epinephrine (or adrenaline) and norepinephrine into the blood stream. At the same time, corticosteriod hormones which release fatty acids for energy, are released by the adrenal glands. This nervous system and hormonal activity causes digestion to stop, blood sugar levels to increase, and the heart to pump more blood to the muscles. Read more...

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Depression's Behavior Changes Linked to Heart Risks

(HealthDay News) -- Negative changes in health behaviors are a major reason why heart patients with depression have an increased risk of cardiovascular events such as heart attack, say U.S. researchers who followed 1,017 outpatients with stable coronary heart disease for an average of 4.8 years.

Depression has long been recognized as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease in healthy people and for recurrent events in patients with cardiovascular disease. But the reason for this association hasn't been clear.

Dr. Mary A. Whooley, of the VA Medical Center in San Francisco, and her colleagues used a questionnaire to measure the heart disease patients' symptoms of depression. The researchers then used various models to evaluate the connection between subsequent cardiovascular events (such as heart failure, heart attack, stroke), depression, disease severity at the start of the study, and biological and behavioral factors.

The researchers found that patients with depression had a 50 percent greater risk of cardiovascular events -- 10 percent among those with depression compared to 6.7 among those without depression. When the researchers adjusted for other existing conditions and cardiac disease severity, depression was associated with a 31 percent increased risk of cardiovascular events. Read more...

AyurGold for Healthy Blood

Antioxidant carnosine destroys free radicals

By Dr. David Jockers

Carnosine is a powerful antioxidant that improves muscle, brain and cardiovascular function. This special molecule is found in healthy animal meat and is being deeply researched for its anti-aging effects. It mainly functions to protect the proteins of the body which aids in tissue healing and repair.

Carnosine is a peptide that is composed of two amino acids: beta-alanine and histidine. Researchers around the world have demonstrated carnosine's ability to scavenge dangerous free radicals. In particular, it works effectively against reactive oxygen species (ROS), the hydroxyl radical and harmful aldehydes that are formed due to the peroxidation of cell membrane fatty acids. This is especially important because these are two of the more harmful free radicals to neutralize. Read more...

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Heart Patients Benefit From At-Home Care, Study Finds

(HealthDay News) -- Patients with worsening chronic heart failure may find "hospital-at-home" care is a good alternative to treatment in a traditional hospital, Italian researchers report.

An estimated 5 million North Americans suffer from chronic heart failure, a condition in which the heart struggles to pump blood to the body. In the United States, worsening chronic heart failure is the cause of more than 1 million hospital admissions a year, and patients have a 50 percent risk of readmission within six months of discharge, according to the authors of a study published in the Sept. 28 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

But the hospital is often dangerous in itself, the study authors noted.

In the study, Dr. Vittoria Tibaldi and colleagues at the University of Torino, San Giovanni Battista Hospital in Torino, Italy, enrolled patients aged 75 years or older with worsening chronic heart failure. Some were treated at a general medical ward, while others received hospital-at-home care supervised by a doctor. Read more...

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Does Deodorant Ingredient Affect Breast Cancer Risk?

(HealthDay News) -- For several years, researchers have studied a possible link between substances called parabens -- widely used as a germ-fighting preservative in cosmetics such as deodorant/antiperspirants -- and breast cancer.

Investigators have learned that parabens, also found in some drugs and food products, can mimic weakly the action of the female hormone estrogen -- an established risk factor for breast cancer. And the fact that a disproportionate number of breast tumors occur nearer the underarm also had scientists wondering.

But now, British researchers who examined breast tissue samples from 40 women who had mastectomies have found that traces of parabens are widespread in tissues, even in the seven women who said they'd never used underarm products.

"The implication is that in these seven nonusers, the paraben measured must have come from another product or products," said Dr. Philippa Darbre, a cancer researcher at the University of Reading who has long studied the issue. Read more...

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Vitamin overuse tied to men's cancer risk

1: Vitamin overuse tied to men's cancer risk Effect is seen in aggressive forms By Julie Steenhuysen, Reuters | May 16, 2007

CHICAGO -- Men who pop too many vitamins in the hope of improving their health may in fact be raising their risk of the deadliest forms of prostate cancer, especially men with a family history of the disease, researchers said yesterday.
Researchers at the National Cancer Institute found that men who exceeded the recommended dose -- taking more than seven multivitamins a week -- increased the risk of advanced cancer by about 30 percent.
The researchers followed 295,344 men over five years to see if there was a link between multivitamin use and prostate cancer.
"We didn't see any relationship with overall prostate cancer," said Dr. Michael Leitzmann, a National Cancer Institute investigator who worked on the study. He said the increased risk from overuse of multivitamins was linked to more aggressive cancer that has spread beyond the prostate gland or cancer that proved fatal. Read more...

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