TUESDAY, July 26 (HealthDay News) — Prevention is the key to stemming the soaring cost of heart disease in the United States, which reached $450 billion last year, according to a new policy statement from the American Heart Association (AHA).
Programs to better manage cholesterol, blood pressure and tobacco use would be a wise long-term investment in the nation’s health and economy, said the heart experts as they called on policy makers to make heart-disease prevention a national priority.
By Serena Gordon
HealthDay Reporter
MONDAY, July 18 (HealthDay News) — Australian researchers have discovered that a drug initially designed to raise levels of “good” HDL cholesterol has an unexpected benefit in people with type 2 diabetes: it lowered their blood sugar.
That’s the good news.
By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter
FRIDAY, July 15 (HealthDay News) — Kids stretched out their open palms over barricades as I crossed the finish line Sunday of the Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic, and I high-fived them as I rolled past, feeling like an utter rock star.
Farther down the “chute,” volunteers handed out garish yet glorious blue-and-green patches to finishers of the grueling 202-mile, two-state bike ride. I smoothly plucked the offered patch with one hand as I rolled past the smiling girl, slowing only slightly.
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MONDAY, July 11, 2011 (Health.com) — People who eat more sodium and less potassium may die sooner of heart or other problems than people who consume the opposite, a large, 15-year-study has found.
The study of more than 12,000 Americans provides more ammunition to health advocates who say that slashing salt intake will save lives. But not everyone is convinced, as some research is contradictory. Read More
By Randy Dotinga
HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, July 6 (HealthDay News) — The next time you indulge in a juicy steak or a hot fudge sundae, consider this: The high you get from eating all that fat may be related to the one you might feel if you smoked marijuana.
The same mechanism that gives pot smokers the “munchies” — that is, a nearly irresistible desire to eat — appears to help explain why people like fat so much, according to a new study involving rats.
By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, June 21 (HealthDay News) — High doses of the widely popular cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins may have a downside.
A new meta-analysis finds that intensive doses of statins, such as Lipitor and Zocor, upped the risk of being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes compared with moderate doses of the drugs.
By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, June 9 (HealthDay News) — The cholesterol-lowering drug Vytorin reduced the risk of heart disease among kidney patients by as much as 25 percent, according to the results of the largest kidney disease trial ever conducted.
“People with kidney disease are at a high risk of heart attack and strokes,” explained study author Dr. Colin Baigent, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Oxford in the U.K. “But there are very few studies attempting to see how that risk can be reduced. In healthy people we know that lowering LDL, or ‘bad,’ cholesterol reduces the risk. But now this is the first study to show that lowering LDL among people with kidney disease reduces risk as well.”
By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, June 8 (HealthDay News) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday called for a label warning on the popular statin Zocor because of an increased risk of muscle damage when taken in the highest doses.
This risk has been seen among some people taking 80 milligrams of Zocor (simvastatin) a day, particularly during the first year of treatment, the agency said. In light of this, the FDA is recommending that this dose only be given to people who have not had any muscle problems over 12 months of taking the cholesterol-lowering drug.
By Kathleen Doheny
HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, June 2 (HealthDay News) — New research suggests that low-carbohydrate diets, with regular exercise as part of the plan, don’t appear to harm the arteries, as some experts have feared.
“It’s pretty clear low-carb is effective for weight loss,” said study author Kerry J. Stewart, director of clinical and research exercise physiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Heart and Vascular Institute. “The concern has been that because you are eating more fat this is going to put stress on your blood vessels.”
FRIDAY, May 27 (HealthDay News) — A new, “ultra-bad” form of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol has been discovered in people with a high risk for heart disease, according to British researchers.
They found that the cholesterol, called MGmin-LDL, is super-sticky, making it more likely to attach to the walls of arteries and form fatty plaques, which could lead to heart attacks and stroke.
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