Do you know your blood pressure?

And when is the last time you had it measured?

Reason is: a study (from Canadian researchers and which was published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association) involving 1400000 people of varying socio-economic status and living in 17 countries  has concluded that only half the people who suffer from high blood pressure (HBP) actually know that they have this condition, not that much of a surprise really when you consider that for the vast majority of people with HBP, there are no symptoms.

But just as bad, I think, only 1/3 of those who do know of their HBP are treating it adequately.

In other words, even if you know you have HBP, for varying reasons including the fact that not enough people with HBP check their blood pressure often enough (or at all), over 2/3 of people who are at significantly higher risk of all those complications associated with HBP - most notoriously strokes (HBP is always listed as the main preventable risk factor for strokes), kidney damage, heart attacks, and dementia – are not looking after their relatively easily-treated problem well enough.

Everyone should get their BP checked regularly.

But anyone with HBP should do that often and should make sure that their BP is being adequately treated.

Daily wine for your mental health

Despite several previous studies linking regular alcohol intake to higher risks of depression (and several other psychological problems), a very hyped new study published in BMC Medicine has concluded that people over the age of 55 who drink the equivalent of one glass of wine a day tend to suffer from less depression than abstainers as well as those who drink more than a glass a day.

As someone who follows that path, it’s nice to know, I think, and does make a fair bit of sense since for me one of the main benefits of alcohol intake is the social part – drinking with a spouse and friends – and the stress-relieving part since alcohol tens to help people relax.

However, before everyone wanting to minimize their risk of depression rushes off to buy a lifetime stash of chardonnay and merlot, let me say that it’s also very possible that one of the other ways to parse the evidence presented in this study is to argue that people who choose to drink a glass of wine every day are likely a priori to be less likely to become depressed.

And always remember that for alcohol especially, moderation trumps excess, so that when you start getting abover a glass of wine a day, the downsides of alcohol intake can kick in pretty quickly.

Statins as brain drugs?

Statin drugs have long had a reputation of producing “brain fog” in some new users.

Hence, there’s been a long-term worry from some experts that statins may raise the risk of dementia with long-term use.

So it should come as great news that a study of more than 57000 Taiwanese  (none of whom had any signs or symptoms of dementia at the start of the study) just presented at the European Society of Cardiology meeting in Amsterdam has concluded just the opposite, specifically that long-term users of the more “powerful” statins such as atorvostatin (Lipitor) or rosuvastatin (Crestor) had significantly lower risks of dementia than non-users or those who were using weaker statins such as lovastatin.

Why?

Well, as usual, no one knows for sure but it’s presumed that long-term use of powerful statins lowers the risk of vascular injury to the brain, just as it lowers the risk of vascular injury to the heart, and that in turn decreases the risk of dementia.

Should you start taking statins to lower your risk of dementia?

No, but if you’re already on them, especially atorvastatin or rosuvastatin, here’s yet another good reason to take your meds faithfully.

Most of you will love this study on exercise

An American study involving 4500 adults (published in the American Journal of Health Promotion) has concluded that short bursts of activity done regularly are as effective at controlling weight as longer more involved regular sessions of exercise.

In other words, climbing stairs a few times a day, walking for a few minutes at a good clip a few times a day, or similar bursts of activity were deemed to be as effective in maintaining weight –and even losing weight – as was a regime of regular and longer workouts.

Here’s a great rule for some of you to follow: 3 floors up, 6 flights down; minimum

That’s for stairs, of course, versus elevators or escalators..

This was drummed into me during med school by a prof who noticed me waiting to take an elevator to go one floor up and who told me – accurately - that I was too fat and too sedentary and that I needed to change that for the rest of my life the new rule in a building was to use the stairs for “3 floors up, 6 flights down; minimum”, and I’ve consistently followed that advice for the last 40 years.

Easy to do, helps you feel good, and makes you feel so self-righteous as you note all the people stuck waiting for the elevators.

Should pregnant women avoid the swimming pool?

A provocative paper published in the British Journal of Dermatology has proposed that women who swim while pregnant have a greater chance of having their kids develop eczema and asthma.

Why?

Well, the instigation for this theory is that there has been a huge spike in eczema, allergy, and asthma diagnoses the last couple of decades, and one major theory for that rise is the “hygiene hypothesis” which speculates that because kids are increasingly being raised in “too clean” environments, that is, kids today are not nearly as exposed to a whole range of germs, toxins, environmental instigators that past generations, the immune systems of kids these days are primed to over-respond – to launch preventive inflammatory responses such as asthma - to many factors that are unavoidable to encounter at some point in normal life but which are essentially harmless on their own.

These British researchers say it’s not that that at all but rather the primary reason for the rise in asthma and eczema is a world that’s over-loaded with toxins, such as for example, the chlorine that women who swin while pregnant cannot avoid, but which may in turn damage the developing immune systems in a fetus.

I have no idea of course who’s right but seems to me that until someone figures this out one way or the other, a pregnant woman who loves to swim might well continue to follow her passion, albeit perhaps with the usual warning that “moderation is everything.”