High Blood Pressure is a Neglected Disease in the US
February 23th , 2010
Reuters
The report by the Institute of Medicine, one of the National Academies of Sciences, urges the CDC to promote policies that make it easier for people to be more physically active, cut calories and reduce their salt intake.
High blood pressure or hypertension is easily preventable through diet, exercise and drugs, yet it is the second-leading cause of death in the United States, said committee chair David Fleming, who directs Public Health for Seattle and King County in Washington.
“Hypertension as a disease is relatively easy to diagnose and it’s inexpensive to treat,” Fleming said in a telephone interview.
“Yet despite that, one in six deaths in the United States is due to hypertension, and it costs our healthcare system $73 billion each year in expenses.
“In that context, hypertension is really a neglected disease in this country. There’s a huge gap between what we could do and what we are doing,” he said.
Fleming said the CDC spends less than $50 million a year for a wide array of heart disease prevention programs that includes hypertension.
Simple steps like consuming less salt and increasing the intake of vegetables, fruit and lean protein could cut rates of high blood pressure by as much as 22 percent, according to the report by the Institute, which advises policymakers.
They cited a recent study that found reducing salt intake to 2,300 milligrams per day — the current maximum recommended amount — from 3,400 milligrams a day could cut U.S. health costs by about $17.8 billion each year.
Helping overweight and obese Americans each lose 10 pounds could cut rates of high blood pressure in the overall population by 7 to 8 percent, the group said.
And a program that gets inactive people to exercise could decrease the rate of high blood pressure by 4 percent to 6 percent.
Doctors typically use generic drugs such as beta blockers and ACE inhibitors to control blood pressure. Lowering blood pressure can cut the risk of stroke, heart attack, heart failure and other conditions.
MANY INSURED PEOPLE NOT TREATED
According to the report, 86 percent of people with uncontrolled high blood pressure have insurance and see their doctors regularly. But Fleming said doctors often fail to follow guidelines, which is why many patients do not know they have the condition and are not taking steps to control it.
The group called for the CDC to research the reasons doctors fail to treat high blood pressure, and consider making blood pressure treatment a quality measure in any accreditation program.
The group also asked the CDC to urge the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs and private insurers to reduce out-of-pocket deductibles and co-payments for blood pressure drugs, and to work with the drug industry to simplify the process for patients to get reduced-cost or free drugs.
About half a billion people worldwide have hypertension.
Risk factors include obesity, a sedentary lifestyle and smoking. Chronic illnesses such as diabetes, kidney disease and high cholesterol also can raise one’s risk.
Click here for the full report
8 in 10 Englishmen Will Be Too Fat By 2020
February 17, 2010
Breitbart
By AFP
Eight out of 10 men and nearly seven out of 10 women in England will be too fat by 2020, according to new data released Wednesday.
Researchers said that while recent research showed obesity among children levelling off, instances among adults show no sign of doing the same.
Some 41 percent of men aged 20 to 65 will be obese by 2020, with 40 percent overweight, according to the figures from the National Heart Forum, based on data from the Health Survey for England. That makes a total of 81 percent.
Among women, 36 percent will be obese and 32 percent overweight — a total of 68 percent.
By 2050, this will lead to sharp increases in the number of people suffering strokes, high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes, researchers said.
“These trends demonstrate that the cautiously optimistic picture we presented in November 2009 for a levelling off of future obesity rates among children is not mirrored in adults,” said Professor Klim McPherson of Oxford University, who also chairs the National Heart Forum.
“There are already more men who are obese than who are of a healthy weight and by the end of the decade, obese men and women could out-number those who are overweight.”
Britons were “being overwhelmed by the effects of today’s ‘obesogenic’ environment, with its abundance of energy-dense food and sedentary lifestyles,” he added.
The research used figures from 1993 to 2007 to predict future obesity levels in England.
Click here for the full report.
Low Intelligence Among Top Heart Health Risks
February 10th, 2010
Reuters UK
By Kate Kelland
Intelligence comes second only to smoking as a predictor of heart disease, scientists said on Wednesday, suggesting public health campaigns may need to be designed for people with lower IQs if they are to work.
Research by Britain’s Medical Research Council (MRC) found that lower intelligence quotient (IQ) scores were associated with higher rates of heart disease and death, and were more important indicators than any other risk factors except smoking.
Heart disease is the leading killer of men and women Europe, the United States and most industrialised countries.
According to the World Health Organisation, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes accounted for 32 percent of all deaths around the world in 2005.
It is well known that people with poorer education and lower incomes often face higher risks of ill health and a range of diseases. Studies have pointed to many likely reasons, including limited access to healthcare and other resources, poorer living conditions, chronic stress and higher rates of lifestyle risk factors like smoking.
The MRC study, which analysed data from 1,145 men and women aged around 55 and followed up for 20 years, rated the top five heart disease risk factors as cigarette smoking, IQ, low income, high blood pressure, and low physical activity.
The researchers, led by David Batty of the MRC and Social and Public Health Science Unit in Glasgow, Scotland, said there were “a number of plausible mechanisms” which might explain why lower IQ scores could raise the risk of heart disease — in particular a person’s approach to “healthy behaviour.”
Those who ignored or failed to understand advice about the risks of smoking or benefits of good diet and exercise for heart health would be more likely to be at higher risk, they wrote in a study in the European Journal of Cardiovascular Prevention.
Click here for the full report
Processed Foods Have Too Much Salt
January 26, 2010
Reuters
Many processed foods contain too much salt, and sauces, spreads, and processed meats are the top offenders, new research shows.
People who consume lots of salt are more likely to see their blood pressure rise as they get older, with a corresponding increase in their heart disease risk.
Public health officials are increasingly looking to the food industry for help in cutting people’s salt intake; the United Kingdom and France, for example, have been able to achieve significant reductions in salt consumption through industry collaborations, while New York City has just launched a campaign to cut US salt intake by 25 percent over the next five years.
Similar efforts are now underway in Australia, and some companies have begun to reduce the salt content of some of their products, according to Dr. Jacqueline L. Webster and colleagues from the George Institute for International Health in Sydney, Australia.
To help guide such efforts, the researchers gathered data on the sodium content of 7,221 products in 10 food groups, 33 categories, and 90 subcategories.
According to a report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, foods were considered to be high in sodium if they contained more than 500 milligrams of sodium for every 100 grams, while foods with sodium contents below 120 milligrams of sodium for every 100 grams were classified as low sodium.
The researchers found dramatic variation in salt content within certain food categories. For example, the saltiest type of hard cheese had six times more sodium than the least salty type, while there was a 14-fold difference in salt content within the sliced meat category and a 100-fold difference within the frozen potato product category.
Sauces and spreads, at 1,283 mg per 100 g, and processed meats, at 846 mg per 100 g, were the categories with the highest average sodium content.
Sodium content was lowest for cereals (206 mg per 100 g) and fruits and vegetables (211 mg per 100 g). Nearly two-thirds of the 33 food categories had average sodium concentrations that were higher than the maximum standards set by the UK Food Standards Agency, while breads, processed meats, sauces and canned vegetables included many subcategories above these targets.
High Blood Pressure May Increase Risk of Dementia
January 26, 2010
The Canadian Press
by Lauran Neergaard
If the cardiologist’s warnings don’t scare you, consider this: Controlling blood pressure just might be the best protection yet known against dementia.
In a flurry of new research, scientists scanned people’s brains to show hypertension fuels a kind of scarring linked to later development of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. Those scars can start building up in middle age, decades before memory problems will appear.
The evidence is strong enough that the U.S. National Institutes of Health soon will begin enrolling thousands of hypertension sufferers in a major study to see if aggressive treatment – pushing blood pressure lower than currently recommended – better protects not just their hearts but their brains.
“If you look … for things that we can prevent that lead to cognitive decline in the elderly, hypertension is at the top of the list,” Dr. Walter Koroshetz, deputy director of NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, told The Associated Press.
Age is the biggest risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia that affect about one in eight people 65 or older.
Scientists have long noticed that some of the same triggers for heart disease – high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes – seem to increase the risk of dementia, too. But for years, they thought that link was with “vascular dementia,” memory problems usually linked to small strokes, and not the scarier classic Alzheimer’s disease.
Now those lines are blurring as specialists realize that many if not most patients have a mix of the two dementias. Somehow, factors like hypertension – blood pressure readings of 140 over 90 or higher – that weaken arteries also seem to spur Alzheimer’s disease-like processes.
One suspect: Scarring known as white matter lesions. White matter acts as the brain’s telephone network, a system of axons, or nerve fibres, that allow brain cells to communicate with each other. Even slightly elevated blood pressure can damage the tiny blood vessels that nourish white matter, interrupting those signals.
Among the strongest new studies:
-MRI scans showed women 65 and older with high blood pressure had significantly more white matter lesions in their brains eight years later. The study included 1,403 women who were enrolled in a memory subset of the landmark Women’s Health Initiative that tracked postmenopausal health. The worse their blood pressure, the higher volume of white matter damage, says the study published online last month in the Journal of Clinical Hypertension.
“This is a silent disease in the brain,” says lead researcher Dr. Lewis Kuller of the University of Pittsburgh. “It’s evolving over time and it leads to very bad outcomes.”
-The journal Stroke just published similar evidence from a Johns Hopkins University-led study that tracked 983 people for more than 15 years, starting in middle age. The longer people spent with uncontrolled high blood pressure, the more white matter damage they accumulated. The researchers could see a change with each 20-point jump in too-high systolic pressure, the top number in a blood-pressure reading.
Clearly, hypertension alone doesn’t doom someone to later dementia. Far more people, nearly one in three U.S. adults, have hypertension.
And there are plenty of other reasons to lower blood pressure: Hypertension is a leading cause of heart attacks, strokes and kidney failure.
But while some studies have found hypertension treatment lowered the dementia risk, others haven’t.
Enter the NIH’s SPRINT study, which in a few months is to begin enrolling 7,500 hypertension patients age 55 and older around the country. The test: Whether aggressive treatment to lower systolic blood pressure below 120 – what’s considered normal – will prove healthier than today’s guidelines that urge getting it below 140, or 130 for diabetics.
The main focus is on heart and kidney health. But all participants will be screened for dementia, and a subset will undergo repeated cognitive testing and MRI scans to tell if lowering blood pressure also protects against a slide toward dementia. Another question: If older patients can tolerate bigger than usual blood pressure drops without side effects, such as falls.
With dementia rising fast as the population greys, even a small effect from better blood pressure control could have a big public health impact, says Dr. William Thies of the Alzheimer’s Association.
Other dementia-preventing efforts, such as targeting the sticky amyloid plaques in Alzheimer’s patients brains, haven’t panned out so far – while hypertension control has little downside, notes Pittsburgh’s Kuller.
Group Urges Recall of Fibromyalgia Drug
January 20th, 2010
abcnews.go.com
By Matthew Perrone
A consumer advocacy group is asking government regulators to recall a drug they approved last year for a little-understood pain ailment, saying the pill can lead to dangerously high blood pressure.
A letter Wednesday from Public Citizen calls on the Food and Drug Administration to pull Savella off the market, almost exactly a year after it was cleared to treat fibromyalgia.
The drug is co-marketed by Forest Laboratories Inc. and Cypress Bioscience Inc.
Fibromyalgia is characterized by a wide range of pain-related symptoms, including muscle soreness, headache, fatigue and depression. Last summer European regulators rejected the drug due to lack of effectiveness data and side effects. Public Citizen argues the FDA should have reached the same conclusion.
“FDA should never have approved Savella for fibromyalgia, and should now immediately undo its error by removing it from the market,” states the petition from Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group.
Company studies of the drug showed 20 percent of patients taking Savella had hypertension, or high blood pressure, compared with 7 percent of those taking a dummy pill. Savella, known generically as milnacipran, is part of an antidepressant class of drugs that have been associated with increased blood pressure.
Public Citizen also points out that the original study of Savella failed to meet the companies’ own study goals for effectiveness. Company scientists reanalyzed the study, with a larger population and a shorter time span and recorded relatively meager benefit: 9 percent of patients on Savella significantly reduced their pain, compared with 7 percent of those taking placebo.
Public Citizen cites complaints from FDA’s own statistical reviewer, who wrote: “there is no evidence … that milnacipran is associated with improvements in pain or improvements in function at three months of therapy.”
Since the FDA approved Savella last January, doctors have written more than 250,000 prescriptions for the drug, according to data from IMS Health.
Click here for the full report
ADHD Drugs Abuses by Teens
January 21,2010
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
Inquiries to poison control centers about teenage abuse of drugs for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) increased by 76 percent over the last eight years, indicating a surge in rates of the abuse itself, according to a study conducted by researchers from the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Memorial Center and published in the journal Pediatrics.
“It’s more bad news on an entrenched problem,” said Steve Pasierb, head of The Partnership for a Drug-Free America, who was not involved in the study.
The researchers reviewed data collected by the American Association of Poison Control Centers between 1998 and 2005. They found that the number of calls by parents, emergency room doctors and others about teenagers abusing ADHD drugs increased from 330 per year in 1998 to 581 per year in 2005, far outpacing the rate of increase in calls about other forms of teenage substance abuse. The majority of teenagers involved in the calls ended up being treated in emergency rooms, and 42 percent suffered moderate or severe side effects. Four of the teenagers died.
Far more teenagers are probably experiencing side effects, the researchers noted, since most cases of abuse don’t end in calls to poison control.
During the time period covered by the study, prescriptions for ADHD drugs rose 86 percent in children between the ages of 10 and 19, from roughly four million to almost eight million.
Pasierb said that many teenagers do not understand that abuse of prescription drugs can lead to potentially fatal side effects. In the case of ADHD drugs, these can include agitation, rapid heartbeat and dangerously high blood pressure.
“They say, ‘It’s FDA approved, how dangerous could it be?’” he said.
Click here to read full report
New York Pushes for 25% Reduction of Salt in Food
January 11, 2010
New York Times
By William Neuman
First New York City required restaurants to cut out trans fat. Then it made restaurant chains post calorie counts on their menus. Now it wants to protect people from another health scourge: salt.
On Monday, the Bloomberg administration plans to unveil a broad new health initiative aimed at encouraging food manufacturers and restaurant chains across the country to curtail the amount of salt in their products.
The plan, for which the city claims support from health agencies in other cities and states, sets a goal of reducing the amount of salt in packaged and restaurant food by 25 percent over the next five years.
Public health experts say that would reduce the incidence of high blood pressure and should help prevent some of the strokes and heart attacks associated with that condition. The plan is voluntary for food companies and involves no legislation. It allows companies to cut salt gradually over five years so the change is not so noticeable to consumers.
“We all consume way too much salt, and most of the salt we consume is in the food when we buy it,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the city health commissioner, whose department is leading the effort. Eighty percent of the salt in Americans’ diets comes from packaged or restaurant food. Dr. Farley said reducing salt from those sources would save lives.
Since taking office, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who just began his third term, has gained a reputation as an advocate for healthy living, initiating prominent campaigns against smoking and harmful trans fats. To combat obesity, he has campaigned for calorie labeling on restaurant menus and warned consumers about sugary soft drinks.
The city’s salt campaign is in some ways more ambitious and less certain of success than the ones it waged against smoking and obesity. For one thing, the changes it prescribes require cooperation on a national scale, city officials said, because major food companies cannot be expected to alter their products for just the New York market.
And removing salt from many products can be complicated. Salt plays many roles in food, enhancing flavor, preventing spoilage and improving shelf life. It helps bread to rise and brown.
The city’s campaign against salt resembles its push to cut trans fat from restaurant foods, which began with a call for voluntary compliance. When that did not work, the city passed a law to force restaurants to eliminate trans fat.
But city officials said it would be difficult to legislate sodium reduction.
“There’s not an easy regulatory fix,” said Geoffrey Cowley, an associate health commissioner. “You would have to micromanage so many targets for so many different products.”
He said officials hoped the campaign would work through public pressure. Companies that complied would benefit from good publicity.
The city has been discussing the program with the food industry since late 2008, yet only a few companies appear ready to jump on board. One of those is A.& P., the supermarket chain.
“We think it’s a very realistic set of criteria that our suppliers can adhere to,” said Douglas A. Palmer, vice president for store brands at A.& P.
He said the company expected to embrace the city’s salt reduction goals for the hundreds of store brand products it sells under labels like America’s Choice and Smart Price in 435 supermarkets throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. In Manhattan, the chain operates under the name Food Emporium.
Subway, the fast food sandwich chain, also said it expected to commit to the city’s salt guidelines at its nearly 23,000 stores across the country.
Lanette R. Kovachi, Subway’s corporate dietitian, said the company has reduced salt in stores in several other countries, including Britain and Australia, in response to government programs there.
“We view these as achievable goals,” she said.
The company’s best-selling item, a six-inch turkey sandwich, is already below the city’s five-year average target for lunch meat sandwiches in restaurants. But the chain also has a six-inch spicy Italian sub whose salt content is well above the city’s goals.
On Monday, after a year of consultations with industry, the city will release preliminary targets for sodium content. After a review, the city will unveil final targets in the spring and ask companies to commit to the program.
The system proposed by the city is complex, with reductions ranging from 10 to 40 percent for 61 classes of packaged foods and 25 classes of restaurant foods.
It would measure the average salt content of a company’s entire line of a particular type of product, like canned vegetables, breakfast cereals or frozen dinners, adjusted to give greater weight to products with the highest sales. That would allow companies to maintain a range of sodium levels but would create incentive to cut back on salt in the most popular items.
To continue reading the report, click here.
The Kevin Trudeau Show: 12-2-09
Today, Kevin goes into why the government has banned him from every Fox News network, every Disney owned television station and even USA Today & TIME Magazine!
Get the latest news you won’t hear from those news sources!
100% of Non-Organic Chickens Carry Deadly Bacteria
Secrets to Boost Your Immune System
Climate-Gate Scientist Steps Down
Vioxx Side Effects Known Years Before Recall
Plus, the inventor of the Magnetico Sleep Pad, Dr. Dean Bonlie, explains how you, too, can get a better night’s sleep and even loss weight with his Magnetico Sleep Pad!
Take Trudeau on the Go! Click here to download this show to your iPod, mp3 player, or PC through iTunes!
Click below to hear The Kevin Trudeau Show RIGHT NOW!!!
Obese Justification Not a Healthy Mindset
November 18, 2009
American Heart Association
Some obese people misperceive that their body size is normal and think they don’t need to lose weight, according to research presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2009.
In the Dallas Heart Study of 5,893 people, researchers found that 8 percent of the 2,056 who were obese said they were satisfied with their body size or felt they could gain weight.
“Almost one in 10 obese individuals are satisfied with their body size and didn’t perceive that they need to lose weight,” said Tiffany Powell, M.D., lead author of the study and a cardiology fellow at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. “That is a sizeable percentage who don’t understand they are overweight and believe they are healthy.”
Participants included about 50 percent blacks, 20 percent Hispanics and 30 percent whites, similar to other urban populations, Powell said. About half – 54 percent – were women. African Americans (14 percent) and Hispanics (11 percent) were significantly more likely than whites (2 percent) to be satisfied with their body size and believe that they did not need to lose weight.
Using the sex-specific Stunkard nine-figure scale, participants chose the figure that represented their present body size and the figure that represented their ideal body size. Self-perceived ideal body size was classified as below normal, normal and above normal. Body size discrepancy, a measure of body size satisfaction, was calculated as the difference between self-perceived actual and self-perceived ideal body sizes.
Those with a misperception of body size believed they were healthy. But 35 percent of them had high blood pressure, 15 percent had high cholesterol, 14 percent had diabetes and 27 percent were current smokers. These risk factors are similar to obese individuals who acknowledged they had a weight problem and needed to lose weight, Powell said.
Overall, 2 percent to 3 percent of the study population perceived an above-normal body size as ideal. Compared to subjects who perceived their ideal body size as normal, those who perceived ideal body size to be above normal were more likely to be women, African American and had higher body mass index, blood pressure and higher insulin resistance.
Researchers also found:
Those who misperceived their body size were less likely to go to a physician. In fact, 44 percent didn’t visit a physician during the past year, compared to 26 percent of obese participants who correctly perceived they needed to lose weight.
There was no significant difference between the two groups in socioeconomic status or access to health care due to insurance status.
Among those who did see a physician in the past year, the obese individuals who did not feel they needed to lose weight were much less likely to report that their physician had told them they need to lose weight compared to those who perceived they needed to lose weight (38 percent vs 68 percent). Moreover, only 38 percent talked with their physician about dietary changes, while 64 percent of those with a more accurate body perception talked about changes.
Obese people who were satisfied with their body size didn’t exercise, while obese individuals who recognized they had a weight problem exercised regularly, on average.
The major limitation of the study is that researchers couldn’t infer causality between associated beliefs and behaviors because the study is cross-sectional.
“This is an important population that we aren’t seeing or targeting,” Powell said. “Understanding and countering this misconception may be a novel and perhaps vitally important target for obesity prevention and treatment. Because many of these individuals believe they are healthier than they really are, they do not go to the doctor and thus community interventions will be needed. However, Powell also emphasized that her findings show that physicians need to talk with their obese patients about exercise and weight loss. “The onus falls on us as physicians to determine who this population is and how to talk with them.”
Click here for the full report.
