FDA: Moving Toward Banning Trans Fats!

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced today that it has taken the first step to eventually remove artificial trans fats from processed foods, which, in the agency's estimation, could prevent 20,000 heart attacks and 7000 deaths from heart disease each year.

Taken from Medscape.

Exercise May Prevent High Blood Pressure

A study reported online in Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association, suggests that people with higher levels of physical activity are at a lower risk of developing high blood pressure (hypertension).

According to the report, after an average follow up of 10 years,  the risk of developing high blood pressure was significant less for people who had moderate to high levels of physical activity.

>>> Read the article online here

Get Over It: Muscle Pain with Statins

A study published in the American Heart Journal from researchers at a preventive cardiology clinic at Cleveland Clinic found that 87.2% of people who could not take statins because of muscle pain could tolerate daily, or every other day day dosing if they tried again (usually with a different statin.)

Even people who had to take the drug every other day had much better LDL levels than those who had to stop taking a statin all together.  

"There was a trend toward a decrease in all-cause mortality at 8 years for patients on daily and intermittent statin dosing compared with those who discontinued statin. "

>>> Read abstract here

Live Longer after a Heart Attack with a Healthy Diet

Reported online in JAMA Internal Medicine [from Medpage]:

Healthy eaters were 24% less likely to die after a heart attack, according to Shanshan Li, MD, MSc, ScD of Harvard School of Public Health.  Also of note, people who improved their diet the most after a heart attack had a 40% less chance of dying of another heart attack.

A healthy diet was defined as one rich in the following foods:

• Vegetables
• Fruit
• Nuts and legumes
• Whole grains
• Omega 3 fats (Wild Salmon)

People need to also remember that avoiding certain foods and habits is also important:

• Minimal Red and processed meats
• Minimal Sugar-sweetened drinks
• Minimal Alcohol
• Very low amounts of trans fat
• Low Sodium intake

>>>  Read the article

Athletes Live Longer

From HeartWire (theheart.org):  "Elite French cyclists participating in the Tour de France over the past 60 years have a significantly lower rate of mortality than French men in the general population, according to the results of a new study [1]...


While physicians must address the needs of their patients, including those with coronary artery disease and those who might be at risk for sudden cardiac death, the overall message for the general population is that the lifelong benefits of exercise, including high-intensity endurance sports, outweigh any potential risks when it comes to all-cause mortality, said Jouven [Dr Xavier Jouven (Paris Descartes University, France)]."

>>> Link to article

Exercise + Metformin: Improve LDL, Lower CV Risk

"Intense lifestyle changes and metformin both helped modify lipid particles in patients with type 2 diabetes, presumably improving their cardiovascular risk profile, researchers noted..."

>>> Link to article (MedPage)

Measuring BP at Home = Lower BP

"Self-measurement of blood pressure in the home, whether or not supplemented with counseling, educational materials, or other kinds of support, lowers BP over six months to a year compared with standard clinic-based BP monitoring, suggests a meta-analysis of 52 prospective studies published August 5, 2013 in the Annals of Internal Medicine."

Uhlig K, Patel K, Ip S, et al. Self-measured blood pressure monitoring in the management of hypertension. A systematic review and meta-analysis. Ann Intern Med 2013

>>> Link to full article

Statin (cholesterol) drugs: large benefit, small risk

Summary:  
A large analysis of ~170,000 patients revealed that taking a statin cholesterol drug was equally good for low risk patients as it was for high risk patients in preventing heart attacks, strokes, and bypass surgery or stents.  The overall rates of side effects were very low.

In Brief:
Over approximately a 5 year span, the "...proportional reduction in major vascular events was at least as big in the two lowest risk categories as in the higher risk categories."  

Major vascular events were defined as:  non-fatal myocardial infarction (heart attack), strokes, or coronary revascularisations (stents or bypass).  "In individuals with 5-year risk of major vascular events lower than 10% [low risk patients], each 1 mmol/L reduction in LDL cholesterol produced an absolute reduction in major vascular events of about 11 per 1000 over 5 years. This benefit greatly exceeds any known hazards of statin therapy."

>>>  Read this 2012 abstract from the Lancet here.

The Best Public Place to have a Cardiac Arrest: The GYM

"The gym may be the least deadly place for your heart to stop, according to a study showing better sudden cardiac arrest survival rates compared with other public places.

The rate of survival to hospital discharge was 56% for arrests that happened at conventional fitness centers and 45% at other places people get exercise, like dance studios and bowling alleys, compared with 34% at all other public indoor locations combined, Richard L. Page, MD, of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison, and colleagues found."

>>>See the full article here