High blood pressure

A study that involved health histories of 1,000,000 people followed for over 5 years came up with a couple of surprising findings about the risks associated with high blood pressure (HBP).

The finding that surprised the researchers most – at least the one they focussed on for health web sites – is that the systolic (upper) and diastolic (lower) registers of blood pressure each had their own cardiovascular risks by being elevated, so that, for example, raised systolic pressures were associated much more with a risk for a hemorrhage in the brain, raised diastolic pressures were much more associated with the development of ruptures in abdominal aortic aneurysms (an AAA is a weakening in the wall of the part of the aorta that travels through the abdomen).

The finding that was most interesting to me, though, is that once you’ve been diagnosed with HBP, you are at an increased lifetime risk of cardiovascular complications no matter how well you control your raised blood pressure, although clearly, the poorer the control over blood pressure, the higher those risks.

In other words, even if you diligently take your HBP meds as prescribed and your BP comes down, once you’ve allowed your BP to rise into the higher ranges, you retain a higher risk of hemorrhage, stroke, etc, no matter what you do.

Which means 1) we don’t know nearly enough about blood pressure as we should, 2) we may not be lowering BP  enough in people who’ve gone on to develop HBP, 3) (this one for sure) our medications are not nearly as good as they should be so that even though they may lower our BP effectively, there is still some damage going on to our blood vessels that these meds do not address, and most important, you really don’t want to develop raised blood pressure  in the first place, and although HBP occurs even to people living very healthy lives, it tends to be much more common in people who are overweight, eat poor habits, smoke, and are sedentary.

Tanning beds

Coincidence?

You decide.

So shortly after I reported on Global TV that a new study has found that people who use tanning beds have a significantly higher risk of developing a malignant melanoma, the most serious and still sometime deadly form of skin cancer, a link that was particularly enhanced if the tanning bed user had started that habit at an early age, the US FDA announced that tanning beds must now come with a warning that the use of tanning beds raises the risk of skin cancer.

You think the FDA monitors Global TV?

Me neither and to be fair, that study I referred to appeared on lots and lots and lots of health sites.

But hey, why not dream about being influential?

No harm in it.

Mental illness

Lots of talk this week about mental health in the wake of that mass killing in Santa Barbara, especially about how we might be better able to identify mass murderers before they commit an atrocity.

Certainly, that’s a great aim, but it’s also very important to note that the overwhelming majority of people with “mental illness” are not violent, and even when some do commit violent acts, it’s more – tragically - often on themselves.

To our great shame, I think, we know appallingly little about mental illness, especially when compared to “physical” conditions.

The diagnostic criteria for defining “mental” or psychological conditions are way too often frustratingly vague and malleable (think ADHD, bipolar disease in kids, many others); our therapeutic strategies ineffective or worse, harmful; our knowledge about when to intervene, how to intervene, what to do if we choose to intervene more in line with wishful thinking than based on hard science; even our knowledge about prognosis for most “mental” conditions is often just guesswork, which is why there was such surprise at last week’s study from the UK (published in the journal World Psychiatry) that concluded that mental illness robs on average 9-20 years of life from an individual suffering from one of those conditions, a toll about double that exacted by smoking.

This should be a wake-up call that “mental illnesses” desperately need at least as much attention – research, dollars, media – as other more “fashionable” problems.

A fat old brain may be a dull old brain

A study published in the Annals of Neurology found that the more saturated fat the women in this study (all of whom were over the age of 65) ate, the worse their cognitive functioning.

Conversely, the more "good" fat (mono-unsaturated fat from e.g. olive oil, avocados, etc ) they ate, the better their cognition.

2 things: there’s really no reason to assume that similar results wouldn’t occur in younger women as well as men, ergo, it makes sense to me that a diet high in saturated fat – at whatever age - may be linked to progressive deterioration in cognitive functioning.

That said, it may not be the saturated fat that’s the culprit in the drop in cognitive powers.

In fact, I think it’s more likely that the high-saturated fat intake is a marker for a poorer overall lifestyle, that is, women (and men) who eat lots of red meat and butter (which are the major sources of saturated fat for American adults, and this study was done in the US) are also, I think, less likely to eat lots of veggies, do a bit of exercise, etc., and it’s really that overall poorer lifestyle, I think, that’s to blame for the cognitive drop.

In other words, I will not stop using using butter to fry my eggs and to eat lots of cheese.

Lots of noise about diet drinks today.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2640557/Diet-drinks-DO-help-lose-weight-Study-finds-theyre-effective-water-alone.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490

Before you run out to buy a few cases of diet pop, though, a reality check.

This study lasted only 12 weeks, calorie intakes were not monitored, and all the study participants got intense support and back-up: I would be highly skeptical that most of these people would maintain much weight loss left on their own after several months.

Indeed, most studies that have evaluated the long-term effect of drinking diet soda on weight have found that paradoxically, heavy users of diet drinks tend to gain more weight than those who avoid diet drinks.

Why?

Perhaps because, as many experts believe, drinking lots of diet soda increases hunger for real sugar, or (my favorite explanation) people who rely on weight loss aids instead of just cutting calorie intake (the only proven effective weight control strategy) tend to “cheat” on their calorie intake because consciously or not, they figure that since they are taking something that will do some of the hard weight-loss work for them, they can get away with eating a bit more, and that bit more adds up over time.