Tag: Health

Health

Study: Cigarette Smoking Causes More Aterial Damage in Women

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According to a new study.

The harmful effects of tobacco smoke on atherosclerosis, one of the driving forces of cardiovascular disease, are greater in women than in men.

This result emerges from the large European epidemiological study (Carotid Intima Media thickness and IMT-PROgression as predictors of Vascular Events: the IMPROVE study), funded by EU (Vth Framework Program — Contract n. QLG1-CT-2002-00896). In the IMPROVE study, authors examined 1694 men and 1893 women from Finland, Sweden, Netherlands, France and Italy, and used ultrasound technology to assess the presence of wall thickening and plaques in the carotids, the arteries that bring blood to the brain.

The research shows that the amount tobacco exposure during the entire life significantly correlates with the thickness of carotid arterial walls (an index of atherosclerosis) in both genders. However, the impact is more than doubled in women than in men. Similarly, the effect of the number of cigarettes smoked per day on the progression of the disease over time is more than five-fold in women than in men. These associations are independent from other factors that may affect atherosclerosis, such as age, blood pressure, cholesterol level, obesity and social class.

Elena Tremoli, Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Milan, Italy, and scientific director of the Monzino Cardiology Centre in Milan who led the study, says: “This is a particular relevant finding, especially in view of the fact that educational campaigns carried out in the last years have been less successful in reducing the number of smokers in women than in men.”

According to WHO, while in most European countries a significant proportion of men has quit smoking, in many countries (e.g. Italy and Finland) the percentage of women smokers remained roughly constant in the last three decades, whereas in others (France, Spain) it even increased.

“The reasons for the stronger effect of tobacco smoke on women’s arteries are still unknown, but some hints may come from the complex interplay between smoke, inflammation and atherosclerosis,” says Prof. Tremoli.

Researchers found that other factors, besides smoking, have a differential effect on the arteries of men and women. One of these is education, a well known index of social class: while men who have studied less showed a greater thickening of arterial walls than those who have studied more, the same was not true for women. Similarly, women, in contrast with men, seem to be protected against the harmful effects of systemic inflammation. Indeed, in the IMPROVE study, the relation between arterial wall thickening and the levels of C-Reactive Protein (CRP) and white blood cells (WBC) counts, two indexes of inflammation, is very strong in men, but absent in women.

“It is important to mention, however, that, when women smoke they lose their protection against the harmful effect of inflammation. In particular, if we stratify the female population according to smoking habits, we see that in the group of women who smoke, especially in heavy smokers, the relationship between CRP and arterial wall thickening becomes similar to that observed in men,” says Prof. Tremoli.

“We all know that women are ‘naturally’ protected against cardiovascular disease, particularly before menopause, and this has led to less attention of health professionals and researchers in regard to this disease in women.

Women, who for some reason appear to be less vigilant about heart disease, should take this study to their own heart. If you smoke, you have an increased risk of heart disease – more than the men.

So, stop smoking!

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Health

College Campuses Tell Smokers to Get Lost

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Smoke-Free college campuses are a good thing.

This summer, a group of University of Kentucky students and staff has been patrolling campus grounds — scouting out any student, employee or visitor lighting a cigarette.

Unlike hall monitors who cite students for bad behavior, the Tobacco-free Take Action! volunteers approach smokers, respectfully ask them to dispose of the cigarette and provide information about quit-smoking resources available on campus.

The University of Kentucky is one of more than 500 college campuses across the country that have enacted 100% smoke-free or tobacco-free policies as of July 1. Although policy enforcement varies from school to school, most prohibit smoking on all campus grounds, including athletic stadiums, restaurants and parking lots.

An increasing number of colleges adopted smoke-free or tobacco-free policies in the past few years, according to American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation Project Manager Liz Williams. In the past year alone, 120 campuses were added to the smoke-free list.

Good for them and let’s lower the smoking rate even further – for better health.

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Health

Is Snuff or Cigarettes Worse for a Pregnant Mother?

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In a new study, the answer is snuff.

Babies born to snuff-using mothers were more likely to have breathing problems than those whose moms smoked cigarettes while pregnant, in new data from Sweden.

Snuff — ground tobacco that is high in nicotine but doesn’t generate the same additional chemicals as cigarette smoke because it’s not burned — is generally assumed be safer than cigarettes, said the authors of the new study.

That’s still the case for many people — but it’s not a good option for pregnant women, according to Dr. Anna Gunnerbeck, the lead researcher from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

The smokeless tobacco “may have a little bit different effect than smoking, because smoking has the combustion products, but it’s still not safe during pregnancy,” Gunnerbeck told Reuters Health.

These tobacco products are just bad news for a healthy lifestyle. Don’t smoke or use snuff – especially if you are pregnant.

Just say no!

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Diet

Weight Loss From Reducing Calories Can Lead to Unrealistic Expectations

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This post of a paper caught my eye this morning, since I am dieting and trying to reduce my body weight. I am using My Fitness Pal online and count calories in and exercise calories expended. So far I have lost about 9 pounds.

Common rules of thumb exaggerate how much weight people will lose from a given dietary calorie reduction, leading to unrealistic expectations and disappointment, researchers said.

Whereas patients are often told that cutting 500 calories a day will let them lose a pound a week, a more realistic formula is that such a caloric reduction would lead to a 50-pound loss over three or more years, according to Kevin D. Hall, PhD, of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Bethesda, Md., and colleagues.

Even then, they explained in the Aug. 27 issue of The Lancet — a special edition devoted to obesity — such weight loss is possible only if the calorie reduction is actually maintained over that time.

The standard rules — endorsed by the National Institutes of Health and the American Dietetic Association, among others — fail to consider that human metabolism responds dynamically to changes in diet and body composition, Hall and colleagues asserted.

If a 300-pound dieter could really lose a pound a week by cutting his regular diet by 500 calories, he would vanish entirely in six years.

“This ubiquitous weight-loss rule (also known as the 3,500 [calorie]-per-pound rule) was derived by estimation of the energy content of weight lost, but it ignores dynamic physiological adaptations to altered body weight that lead to changes of both the resting metabolic rate as well as the energy cost of physical activity,” the researchers wrote.

When people gain weight, their baseline energy needs increase, to keep the extra tissue alive and to move it around. Likewise, when weight is lost, their baseline needs decrease.

So when people cut calories below the baseline requirement — thereby triggering weight loss — the gap between their intake and their baseline energy needs begins to shrink. At some point, it may disappear altogether, at which point weight loss stops.

Hall and colleagues put together what they said was a better model of caloric intake and resultant weight loss, incorporating feedback mechanisms to reflect metabolic changes over time in response to diet and body weight.

It indicated that weight change in response to caloric restriction occurs over a relatively long period of time.

Each reduction of 100 kilojoules daily — 24 calories — in intake eventually leads to a loss of 1 kg (2.2 lbs) in body weight, the researchers determined. But only half that loss occurs in the first year. In three years, 95% of the ultimate loss will be realized.

On the flip side, using data from previous studies, Hall and colleagues said their calculations suggest that the U.S. population has a persistent excess energy intake of 30 kilojoules (7.2 calories) per day, explaining the increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity.

For the population to return to body mass index values that prevailed in the 1970s, average diets would need to shrink by about 220 calories per day.

The researchers pointed out that these figures are averages for the adult population. Individuals’ metabolic requirements for sustaining a given body mass vary substantially.

Consequently, “a given diet results in an uncertain degree of energy deficit,” Hall and colleagues wrote.

I suppose I will just have to be patient and wait the three to five years to reach my weight goal. But, then again, I have been packing on the extra weight for decades now and I cannot expect a quick fix.

I can do it.

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Dentistry

American Obesity Rates Remain Higher Than 20% in ALL States

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According to the latest Gallup Poll.

Colorado continues to be the state with the lowest obesity rate in the country, at 20.1% in the first half of 2011. Fewer than one in four residents are obese in the 10 states with the lowest obesity rates. In the 10 states with the highest levels of obesity, rates are 29% or higher. West Virginia has the highest obesity rate in January through June 2011, at 34.3%, which is also the highest Gallup has measured for any state since it began tracking obesity rates in 2008.

These results are based on 177,237 interviews conducted daily from January through June 2011. Gallup tracks U.S. obesity levels as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, using Americans’ self-reported height and weight to calculate Body Mass Index (BMI) scores. BMI scores of 30 or higher are considered obese.

The 26.3% obesity rate for the nation overall in January through June of this year is essentially unchanged from 26.6% in 2010. However, this 2011 rate is higher than the 25.5% in 2008. So far in 2011, obesity rates are generally more likely to be rising in the states where they are already the highest and declining in the places where they are lowest.

These obesity rates are way too high and I am doing my best to lose weight.

Diet plus exercise should do the trick but it is a slow – very slow – process.

While obesity in the United States as a whole remains unchanged so far in 2011 compared with last year, many of the country’s most obese states continue to see the trend go in the wrong direction. At the same time, many states are registering improvements this year. Still, in no state are obesity rates lower than 20%, revealing residents throughout the entire country have much work to do to begin to tackle the nation’s obesity problem.

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