If peri-menopausal and menopausal women weren’t confused enough, another study was just released by the North American Menopause Society that suggests a glimmer of relief from lifestyle related menopausal symptoms

Results from the Kronos Early Estrogen Prevention Study(KEEPS) reported that hormone pills and patches relieved symptoms, such as hot flashes and night sweats, but didn’t increase cardiac risks. Exciting news it is, however KEEPS examined the immediate results of hormone replacement therapy . The long term affects of HRT such as increased risk of stroke, heart attack and high blood pressure still remain to be an area of concern.

Before sprinting over to your Doctors office for a little relief consider the following:

- KEEPS is to small of a study to make definitive safety recommendations.

- The WHI study was a large study the clearly exposed the risks of long term HRT.

- Read both studies prior to a conversation with your M.D.

- Remember the pendulum in always shifting especially with health concerns.

My advice – Stay current with new information and make an informed decision with your physcian.

A recent study published in the American Heart Journal,found that Poor eating and activity habits, not genetics, are the underlying causes for most cases of adolescent obesity.

The finding stems from an analysis involving more than 1,000 Michigan sixth-grade students who participated in the Project Healthy Schools program, which is in place in 13 middle schools across the state.
“For the extremely overweight child, genetic screening may be a consideration,” study senior author Dr. Kim A. Eagle, a cardiologist and a director of the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center in Ann Arbor, said in a center news release.
“For the rest, increasing physical activity, reducing recreational screen time and improving the nutritional value of school lunches offers great promise to begin a reversal of current childhood obesity trends.”
The study findings were published in a recent issue of the American Heart Journal.
The authors noted that, in 1980, just 6.5 percent of U.S. children aged 6 to 11 years were considered obese, but that percentage rose to nearly 20 percent by 2008.
The recent study found that 15 percent of the participants were obese. And almost all had poor eating habits.
Nearly one-third of all the students said they drank a soda the day before, while fewer than half said they could recall having eaten two portions of fruits and vegetables in the same time frame.
And while 34 percent of non-obese kids consumed lunches provided by their school, that figure rose to 45 percent among obese students.

Childhood obesity will continue to get worse if we continue at the present rate. Education is key and it begins in the home. Parents need to take the lead by adhering to a healthy diet and lifestyle in general. Schools should eliminate all junk food, especially soda and other calorically dense liquid calories. There is plenty of good education available, it’s just a matter of application. Start today!

Long-term weight loss was associated with a decreased intake of meat, cheese, and sweets and an increased intake of fruits and vegetables, according to a new study in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Researchers studied 481 overweight and obese postmenopausal women from the Women on the Move through Activity and Nutrition Study in Pennsylvania. The women who received counseling specifically on how to consume less total fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol and how to eat more fiber saw the most long-term weight loss. Long-term weight loss is associated with decreased risk for chronic diseases including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.

Gibbs BB, Kinzel LS, Gabriel KP, Chang YF; Kuller LH. Short- and long-term eating habit modification predicts weight change in overweight, postmenopausal women: results from the WOMAN Study. J Acad Nutr Diet. 2012;112:1347-1355.

An estimated 35.8 million U.S. adults with hypertension have uncontrolled blood pressure levels, even though the vast majority have regular access to healthcare and insurance coverage, the CDC reported Tuesday.Nearly one in three Americans has high blood pressure and more than half of those cases are “out of control,” according to federal health officials.

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that high blood pressure contributes to nearly 1,000 deaths per day by increasing the risk of heart disease and stroke.

Sixty-seven million Americans have high blood pressure, and of these, 36 million cases are uncontrolled, according to the report. Another 16 million Americans take medication from the condition but still struggle, the report found.

The CDC estimates that healthcare costs related to high blood pressure top $130 billion annually.

When summer comes, barbecue season follows, along with plenty of fatty meats thrown on the grill.
A recent study suggest we should re-consider our dietary choices, not just during the Summer either!

The study published in the British Medical Journal, stated a high protein, low carbohydrate diet increased the risk of heart disease. Between 1991 and 1992 the Women’s Lifestyle and Health Cohort recruited 43,396 women aged 30 to 49 years old. They presented with no history of cardiovascular disease. Extensive lifestyle and dietary patterns were recorded.

Study participants were followed for approximately 16 years to document any hospitalizations, cardiovascular events or deaths. At the conclusion of the study a total of 1,270 cardiovascular events where recorded. The researchers final analysis found that a high protein, low carbohydrate diet were associated with this increase in cardiovascular events. For every 10% decrease in carbohydrate, cardiovascular risks increased by 5%.

Take home message- Cardiovascular disease is preventable with a high carbohydrate plant based diet. Give it a try .

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
A man who drinks one 12-ounce sugar-sweetened drink a day sharply increases his risk for heart disease, according to a large epidemiological analysis.
Researchers analyzed data from a prospective study of 42,883 male health professionals, ages 40 to 75. The men responded to diet questionnaires every four years, and more than 18,000 of them provided blood samples.
Over 22 years, 3,683 of the men had heart attacks. Even after controlling for factors like smoking, exercise and family history, the scientists found that men who drank the sweetened beverages most often were 20 percent more likely to have had a heart attack than those who drank the least.
They calculated that one serving daily of a sugar-sweetened beverage was linked to a 19 percent increase in the relative risk of cardiovascular disease. The study was published online in the journal Circulation last week.
Sugar-sweetened drinks were linked with adverse changes in levels of HDL, triglycerides and C-reactive protein. Dr. Frank B. Hu, senior author of the analysis and a professor of medicine at Harvard, said that a study a little over two years ago found similar results in women.
Is diet soda a good alternative? No, said Dr. Hu.
“Some studies have found a relationship between diet soda and metabolic disease,” he said.
■
New York Times
PUBLISHED MARCH 19, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/health/research/sugar-sweetened-drinks-linked-to-heart-disease.html

More and more research is coming out concerning strength training and adults 50 years and older. One such study included 752 older adults who strength trained 3 days per week while another group of 892 trained 2 days per week. After 10 weeks of otherwise identical training protocols, both groups experienced equal gains in lean weight. While younger groups (18-30 years) can strength train more than 2 days per week to maximize strength gains, we tend to find with older adults no more strength gains beyond baseline levels at 48, 72, or 96 hours post recovery. In other words, older adults do just fine strength training 2 days per week when set on the correct program.

It is still recommended that older adults should still include exercises for the major muscle groups (quads, hamstrings, gluteals, pectoralis major, latissimus dorsi, deltoids, biceps, triceps, erector spinae, and rectus abdominus). Age-related decline in muscle power exceeds the decline in muscle strength; therefore, power training is also important when appropriate for your individual. This can be accomplished with medicine ball exercises; however studies encourage the use of high-velocity movements with lighter loads.

So, bottom line, when appropriate based on other medical issues with your client, it is recommended to use free-weights or machines, 8-10 multiple and single joint exercises for all major muscle groups, 1-3 sets with 1-3 minutes of recovery between sets, 2-3 non-consecutive days per week with some power training exercises.

Westcott, Wayne L., PhD, “Resistance Exercise Protocols for Older Adults.” American College of Sports Medicine Certified News. October-December, 2011, Vol. 21 Issue 4.

Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity. -Oprah Winfrey

For patients with stable coronary artery disease (CAD), stent placement offered no more benefit than optimal medical therapy, according to a new meta-analysis.

In clinical trials conducted in the era of modern medical treatment, stenting plus medical intervention did not significantly reduce the risk of death compared with medical intervention alone, according to Kathleen Stergiopoulos, MD, PhD, and David Brown, MD, of Stony Brook University Medical Center in Stony Brook, N.Y.

Stents also had no significant effect on the risk of nonfatal myocardial infarction, unplanned revascularization, or persistent angina, Stergiopoulos and Brown reported in the Feb. 27 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The findings support current guidelines, which prefer initial medical treatment with aspirin, statins, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, or angiotensin receptor blockers, combined with lifestyle changes, the researchers argued.

The researchers included eight trials with a total of 7,229 patients, including the landmark COURAGE trial. For a study to be included, at last half of the patients assigned to PCI had to have been given a stent; the proportions ranged from 72% to 100%.

Taken together, the trials showed the death rate for stent implantation was 8.9% compared with 9.1% for medical therapy, yielding an odds ratio of 0.98 (95% CI 0.84 to 1.16).

The rates for nonfatal MI were also similar — 8.9% for stents and 8.1% for medical therapy, yielding an OR of 1.12 (95% CI 0.93 to 1.34).

Also, the rate of unplanned revascularization in the stent group was 21.4%, compared with 30.7% in the medical treatment group (OR 0.78, 95% CI 0.57 to 1.06).

Finally, the rates of persistent angina were 29% for stents and 33% for medical therapy (OR 0.80, 95% CI 0.60 to 1.05).

The researchers argued that the continued use of stents in people with stable CAD is driven by the fee-for-service model and is markedly increasing healthcare costs. However not all agree The study adds “nothing at all” to the debate, according to Kirk Garratt, MD, of Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. In an email to MedPage Today/ABC News, Garratt said he and his colleagues use stenting in stable patients for “the improved functional capacity it offers,” specifically a reduction in persistent angina.

He noted that the current analysis found about a 20% reduction in the rates of persistent angina and unplanned revascularization with stents — similar to outcomes from other studies — although the results did not reach statistical significance.

“This means stents can help get five more patients back to an active lifestyle, back to work, and closer to a normal life,” he said.
Jon Resar, MD, of Johns Hopkins University, concurred that the study adds little to what’s known. “The premise that stenting patients with stable CAD decreases their chance of subsequent death or heart attack has not been thought to be valid for a long time,” he said in an email to MedPage Today/ABC News.

On the other hand, he said, “there is indeed a significant minority of patients who undergo inappropriate coronary artery stenting,” often because of financial incentives.

“Patients need to understand that simply putting in a stent in a blockage doesn’t address the underlying problem,” Resar said. “Lifestyle changes and aggressive medical management are far more important than just putting in a stent.”

But that is easier said than done, according to David Fischman, MD, of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, who was one of the authors of a study that led to regulatory approval of stents.

“Patients have come to expect that if there is a coronary blockage, it needs to be fixed,” he said in an email to MedPage Today/ABC News. “It is easier to fix a blockage than for a patient to lose the 40 pounds or to stop smoking.”

Take home message- Both opinions state very real world dilemma’s the medical community face on a daily basis. Wouldn’t it be better to exercise daily and enjoy a whole food plant based diet in order to prevent this problem from occurring in the first place?

The Journal of the American Medical Association published in the February issue that women who are hospitalized for a heart attack are less likely to experience chest pain and are more likely to die then men the same age, researchers said. The analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical Association is the largest to examine the relationship among gender, age and chest pain when it comes to death from heart disease, the leading killer worldwide. Chest pain is the hallmark symptom of a heart attack, according to researchers who suggested its absence might help explain women’s increased risk.

The study examined the records of 1.1 million Americans from 1994 to 2006 in the National Registry of Myocardial Infarction, the largest database of heart-attack patients in the world. Forty-two percent of women reported no chest pain when they were hospitalized for a heart attack, known medically as a myocardial infarction, compared with 30.7 percent of men. Almost 15 percent of the women died, compared with 10 percent of men.

“Our data suggest that the absence of chest pain is associated with increased mortality, especially among younger women,” said the researchers, led by John Canto, from the Watson Clinic and Lakeland Regional Medical Center in Florida. “Patients without chest pain and discomfort tend to present later, are treated less aggressively and have almost twice the short-term mortality compared with those presenting with more typical symptoms.” Also stated, the risk of dying in the hospital for women who weren’t experiencing chest pain decreased with age, as the oldest women were less likely to die than men the same age who also weren’t suffering the tell-tale signs of a heart attack.

The National Institute of Health reports more than one million Americans suffer a heart attack each year, more than half die. It’s critical to recognize the symptoms of a heart attack but also to keep in mind classic chest pain may or may not be present especially in younger women.

Take home message for women and those who love them, heart attack symptoms in women are different than men, not always presenting with classic sub-sternal chest pain. Women will experience upper back pain, neck pain, nausea or indigestion and fatigue. Unfortunately with the multiple roles women play today at work and home it is easy to understand how a heart attack could go undiagnosed. It is critical for women to be aware of there risks and symptoms of heart disease, most importantly to take personal responsibility for their health.