Public Health

Is there any point to the World Health Organization (WHO) making a recommendation that 3 people out of 1,000 can achieve? If not, Americans won't take WHO seriously, and the British respect those guidelines even less. Only 1 in 1,000 in the UK can meet WHO's targets for potassium and sodium. The World Health Organization recommends we consume no more than 2,000 mg of sodium a day - less than a teaspoon of salt - supposedly because of studies showing it impacts heart disease and stroke. And they recommend at least 3,510 mg of potassium daily, again to lower our odds of heart disease…

If you ever thought your spouse makes your blood pressure go up, you now have a study to show it. Sociological and epidemiological papers have long linked stress and negative marital quality to changes in mortality and blood pressure but there has not been much to show how those correlate to married couples over time. Using systolic blood pressure as a gauge, researchers assessed whether an individual’s blood pressure is influenced by their own as well as their partner’s reports of chronic stress and whether there are gender differences in these patterns. The authors sought to show how…

Inhalable particles include all particulate matter with a diameter smaller than 10 micrometers (PM10), which is broken down into finer particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5), which can enter the lung, and ultrafine particles with diameters less than 0.1 micrometers (100 nanometers), which can enter the blood stream. A Helmholtz Zentrum München research team led by Prof. Dr. Annette Peters, head of the research program Epidemiology at the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD), and Dr. Alexandra Schneider studied how ultrafine particles specifically affect the heart. They provided…

Commercial weight loss plans come and go. It is hard to have a week go by without some new weight loss gimmick being listed on the New York Times bestseller list, and a diet plan and pre-packaged meals are sure to follow. Many people will ask doctors for recommendations when it comes to a weight loss plan but that can be hard to do. A new review analyzed 4,200 studies for solid evidence of the effectiveness of weight loss plans but concluded only a few studies met the scientific gold standard of reliability. And most weight loss programs have not had randomized controlled trials at all. Only…

When people start to put on weight do they drink diet soda more often, or does diet soda lead to weight increases? A new observational study says San Antonio men and women ages 65 and older got fat because of diet soda. The San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging (SALSA), led by Helen P. Hazuda, Ph.D., professor of medicine in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, gathered data on health status and lifestyles of 749 Mexican-American and European-American elders, then tracked the health outcomes in 466 survivors for more than nine years. …

A new study has examined why beavers don't get tooth decay even though they don't brush their teeth or drink fluoridated water. It isn't simply shorter lifespan, if a human does not brush their teeth for 20 years they are likely to develop problems. Instead it seems to be the pigmented enamel of beavers, which contains iron, makes their teeth both harder and more resistant to acid than regular enamel, including that treated with fluoride. Layers of well-ordered hydroxylapatite “nanowires” are the core structure of enamel, but Northwestern professor of materials science and…

A new epidemiology paper on the effects of sedentary or 'sitting' time on diabetes risk matched the curves of television watching and obesity and correlated each hour spent watching TV daily with a 3.4 percent greater risk of developing diabetes. The authors used data from participants in the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) study (published in 2002 and funded by the National Institute of Digestive and Diabetes and Kidney Diseases [NIDDK] section of the US National Institutes of Health [NIH]). Though this was just an analysis of results, the actual study study enrolled 3,234 overweight US…

If you’re on Facebook, you’ve probably seen it – an article suggesting that it is love that addicts need and lack of love and connection that causes addiction. The case made seems compelling. There are some things we know to be true. We know, for example, that addiction is not just a biochemical process. There are famous studies and heaps of anecdotal evidence that show us that some people can use like fiends for a long period and seem in every way addicted, then suddenly stop using. Most of the heroin abusing veterans who returned from Vietnam fit into this category. When they…

Americans have new dietary guidelines and those state that half of our daily servings of grains should be whole grain, because whole grains are higher in fiber and lower in fat, etc. 5 percent of you will actually do that. Why the Federal government would diet shame 95 percent of America is a separate issue, perhaps they want to create an ideal for you to strive for, the same way supermodels are an ideal body image that women who read fashion magazine are supposed to strive for - you don't have to attain it, as long as you try - but that is not the point of this article. Whole grains and…

Multiple studies have indicated a link between high consumption of dairy products and a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes but a new study goes a step farther and finds that it is high-fat dairy products specifically that are associated with reduced risk.  Those who ate the most high-fat dairy products had a 23 percent lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes than those who ate the least, according to the paper in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. That will make the National Dairy Council happy but the National Cattlemen's Beef Association won't be happy…