Nursefriendly.com: risk factors

Showing posts with label risk factors. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Obesity Alone Raises Risk of Fatal Heart Attack, Study Finds

Obese men face a dramatically higher risk of dying from a heart attack, regardless of whether or not they have other known risk factors for cardiovascular disease, a new study reveals.

The finding stems from an analysis involving roughly 6,000 middle-aged men, and it suggests that there is something about carrying around excess weight that contributes to heart disease independent of risk factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol and arterial disease.

What exactly that something is, however, remains unclear, although the researchers suggest that the chronic inflammation that typically accompanies significant weight gain might be the driving force behind the increased risk.

"Obese, middle-aged men have a 60 percent increased risk of dying from a heart attack than non-obese middle-aged men, even after we cancel out any of the effects of cholesterol, blood pressure and other cardiovascular risk factors," noted study author Jennifer Logue, a clinical lecturer of metabolic medicine with the British Heart Foundation's Cardiovascular Research Centre at the University of Glasgow, in Scotland. "This means [that] obesity itself may be causing fatal heart attacks through a factor that we have not yet identified."

Logue and her colleagues report their observations in the Feb. 15 online issue of Heart.

To explore the subject, the authors spent nearly 15 years tracking 6,082 male patients who were diagnosed with high cholesterol but had no history of either heart disease or diabetes.

Over the study period, the research team noted 214 heart disease fatalities, along with another 1,027 heart attacks and/or strokes that did not result in death.

via health.yahoo.net

Any questions, please drop me a line.

******************************************************
Follow us on:

What's New:
http://www.nursefriendly.com/new/

Blogger:
http://4nursing.blogspot.com/

Facebook:
http://www.nursefriendly.com/facebook

Linked In:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/nursefriendly

Nursing Entrepreneurs, Nurses In Business
http://nursingentrepreneurs.ning.com/

Twitter!
http://www.nursefriendly.com/twitter

StumbleUpon,
http://www.nursefriendly.com/stumbleupon
******************************************************

Sincerely,

Andrew Lopez, RN
Nursefriendly, Inc. A New Jersey Corporation.
38 Tattersall Drive, Mantua New Jersey 08051
http://www.nursefriendly.com info@nursefriendly.com ICQ #6116137
856-415-9617, (fax) 415-9618

150,000 + Nurse-Reviewed & Approved Nursing Links

http://www.4nursing.com
http://www.legalnursingconsultant.com
http://www.nursinghumor.com
http://www.nursefriendly.com
http://www.nursingcasestudy.com
http://www.nursingentrepreneurs.com
http://www.nursingexperts.com

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Online tool can help seniors determine risk for dementia | Johns Hopkins University - The Gazette

A quick online assessment tool developed by Johns Hopkins researchers can help worried seniors find out if they are at risk of developing dementia and determine whether they should seek a comprehensive, face-to-face diagnosis from a physician, according to a new study.

The tool, which is being refined and validated, is not meant to replace a full evaluation from a doctor that includes a physical exam, blood work, imaging studies and more. Instead, this assessment provides a scientific way to help a person educate himself about a disease that doctors now believe is best managed if caught early.

“As the population ages and dementia becomes more prevalent, it’s important to get people diagnosed early,” said Jason Brandt, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the leader of the study appearing online in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia. “Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia don’t just creep up on you. They’re incubating for decades in the brain. This tool is potentially very useful in determining who is at risk.”

Among the questions asked on the Dementia Risk Assessment are whether a person has a history of high blood pressure, depression, diabetes, high cholesterol or head injury, all of which are considered well-documented risk factors for dementia. The assessment also includes a simple memory test that could point to a subtle cognitive decline, Brandt says.

The study analyzed responses from 357 people over the age of 50 who took the assessment at www.alzcast.org. Those who scored lowest on the memory test were significantly older and were more likely to be men, have hypertension and report severe memory problems. And while only 9 percent of respondents reported they had severe memory problems, more than one-third said they had a first-degree relative with dementia or severe memory loss—a major risk factor for the condition.

The assessment takes just five to 10 minutes to complete online, and the questions have been borrowed from other scientifically valid assessments.

via gazette.jhu.edu

Any questions, please drop me a line.

******************************************************
Follow us on:

What's New:
http://www.nursefriendly.com/new/

Blogger:
http://4nursing.blogspot.com/

Facebook:
http://www.nursefriendly.com/facebook

Linked In:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/nursefriendly

Nursing Entrepreneurs, Nurses In Business
http://nursingentrepreneurs.ning.com/

Twitter!
http://www.nursefriendly.com/twitter

StumbleUpon,
http://www.nursefriendly.com/stumbleupon
******************************************************

Sincerely,

150,000 + Nurse-Reviewed & Approved Nursing Links

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Inactivity Is Harmful, Even With Trips to the Gym - NYTimes.com

Many of us sit in front of a computer for eight hours a day, and then go home and head for the couch to surf the Web or watch television, exchanging one seat and screen for another. Even if we try to squeeze in an hour at the gym, is it enough to counteract all that motionless sitting?

A mounting body of evidence suggests not.

Increasingly, research is focusing not on how much exercise people get, but how much of their time is spent in sedentary activity, and the harm that does.

The latest findings, published this week in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology, indicate that the amount of leisure time spent sitting in front of a screen can have such an overwhelming, seemingly irreparable impact on one’s health that physical activity doesn’t produce much benefit.

The study followed 4,512 middle-aged Scottish men for a little more than four years on average. It found that those who said they spent two or more leisure hours a day sitting in front of a screen were at double the risk of a heart attack or other cardiac event compared with those who watched less. Those who spent four or more hours of recreational time in front of a screen were 50 percent more likely to die of any cause. It didn’t matter whether the men were physically active for several hours a week — exercise didn’t mitigate the risk associated with the high amount of sedentary screen time.

via well.blogs.nytimes.com

Click on the nytimes.com link to read the full article.

Any questions, please drop me a line.

******************************************************
Follow us on:

What's New:
http://www.nursefriendly.com/new/

Blogger:
http://4nursing.blogspot.com/

Facebook:
http://www.nursefriendly.com/facebook

Linked In:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/nursefriendly

Nursing Entrepreneurs, Nurses In Business
http://nursingentrepreneurs.ning.com/

Twitter!
http://www.nursefriendly.com/twitter

StumbleUpon,
http://www.nursefriendly.com/stumbleupon
******************************************************

Sincerely,

150,000 + Nurse-Reviewed & Approved Nursing Links

Monday, January 10, 2011

Preventing Heart Ailments at Their Roots - Childhood - NYTimes.com

Two studies published Monday suggest that the road to hypertension and heart disease starts in childhood and that prevention should start there, too.

Related

Health Guides: Heart Disease | High Blood Pressure

One analysis found that parental smoking increases the risk for high blood pressure in preschoolers, and the other that excessive sugar consumption in teenagers is associated with multiple factors known to increase the risk for cardiovascular disease. Both reports appear in the February issue of the journal Circulation.
The first study looked at 4,236 children in Germany, where 5-year-olds undergo a compulsory physical and cognitive assessment before starting school. During the period of the study, 2007-8, more than 28 percent had at least one parent who smoked. Even after correcting for body mass index and parental hypertension, having a smoker as a parent substantially increased the likelihood that a child would have blood pressure readings in the top 15 percent of the sample.
Parental smoking was not the only association, or even the strongest. Being overweight and having a parent with hypertension were also associated with high blood pressure in the children. But the lead author, Dr. Giacomo D. Simonetti, said smoking was probably the easiest risk to modify.

via nytimes.com

Click on the link above to read the rest of the article:

See also: Cardiac Resources:
http://www.nursefriendly.com/nursing/directpatientcare/cardiac.htm

Any questions, please drop me a line.

******************************************************
Follow us on:

What's New:
http://www.nursefriendly.com/new/

Blogger:
http://4nursing.blogspot.com/

Facebook:
http://www.nursefriendly.com/facebook

Linked In:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/nursefriendly

Nursing Entrepreneurs, Nurses In Business
http://nursingentrepreneurs.ning.com/

Twitter!
http://www.nursefriendly.com/twitter

StumbleUpon,
http://www.nursefriendly.com/stumbleupon
******************************************************

Sincerely,

150,000 + Nurse-Reviewed & Approved Nursing Links

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Holding Their Liquor Makes Women Much Sicker than Men | LiveScience

Some women may be able to hold their liquor as well as men do, but there's no equality when it comes to whose health suffers more for it. Excessive alcohol use takes a higher toll on women's bodies, with a greater risk of liver, brain or heart damage, among other devastating conditions.

"We are very concerned about the fact that more young women are starting to drink in harmful ways, including binge drinking," said Dr. Deidra Roach of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

A decades-long study of data on more than 500,000 people nationwide indicated women ages 21 to 23 were the only group whose binge drinking has increased. The research, reported in the July 2009 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, showed a 30 percent jump between 1979 and 2006 in women who binge drink (that is, who down at least four alcoholic drinks in rapid succession).

The physical differences between the sexes play a significant role in how their bodies metabolize alcohol. Women have more body fat and less water in their systems than men do, as well as lower levels of an enzyme important in the breakdown of alcohol, according to the NIAAA. This means they experience the effects of drinking more quickly and for a longer time than men.

Of the estimated 17.6 million Americans who abuse alcohol, 5.3 million of them are female, according to the National Institutes of Health.

"Because women are smaller than men . . . the same amount of alcohol will be more concentrated in a woman's body than a man's body," said Roach, a health scientist administrator in the NIAAA's Division of Treatment and Recovery Research. "This means when a man and a woman drink the same amount of alcohol, in general, the woman's internal organs will be exposed to more alcohol than the man's."

A bevy of health problems

For women, the consequences of drinking include damage to organs and increased rates of chronic diseases.

Liver damage: Women develop alcohol-induced liver disease — including hepatitis and cirrhosis — over a shorter period of time and after consuming less alcohol than men, according to the NIAAA. It may be the female hormone estrogen that increases these risks.

Brain damage: MRI scans have shown that certain brain regions are smaller in women alcoholics than in other women and in men who are alcoholics, even after measurements are adjusted for head size, according to the NIAAA.

Heart disease: Many studies have shown a drink or two per day is heart-healthy. However, other research shows similar rates of severe damage to the heart muscle among women and men who are alcoholics, despite the fact that women who are alcoholics consume 60 percent less on average over their lifetimes, according to the NIAAA.

Breast cancer: The risks of developing breast cancer go up dramatically for heavy female drinkers. According to Loyola Marymount University, a large analysis showed the risk of developing the disease jumped 9 percent for each 10-gram increase (0.35 ounces) in daily alcohol consumption, up to 60 grams (2 ounces).

Violent injury: Not only are women put at greater risk of being assaulted, sexually or otherwise physically, by heavy drinking, according to the NIAAA, there has been an increase over the past decade in the proportion of women drivers to men drivers involved in fatal car crashes.

Unhealthy drinking habits place women at greater risk for a variety of adverse health and social consequences, including becoming infected with the AIDS virus, Roach said.

"We are seeing a growing body of evidence that binge drinking is a major risk factor for acquiring HIV among some groups of women," she said.

A disease that "sneaks up" on you

Even less serious conditions, such as sinus or bladder infections, can be brought on by alcohol abuse.

Joyce Rebeta-Burditt of Los Angeles said she had chronic sinus infections when she drank excessively 40 years ago. Rebeta-Burditt has since become a UCLA-certified alcohol recovery expert and the author of two books about recovering alcoholic women.

"Alcoholism is very dehydrating," she said. "I didn't appreciate how sick I was physically. I got IBS [irritable bowel syndrome] from alcohol irritation, and I still have bouts."

Rebeta-Burditt compared alcoholism to diseases such as diabetes that "sneak up on people," making it difficult to know when the line has been crossed.

"The difference is, most people know diabetes is an illness and don't know that alcoholism is, too," she said.

Roach said the NIAAA encourages health care professionals to screen women of all ages for problem drinking, because symptoms are so easily overlooked. For example, in older women alcohol may be a "hidden culprit" contributing to depression, frequent falling or heart failure, she said.

"Neither health professionals nor patients should ever simply assume that alcohol could not be a problem," Roach said.

3 Lifestyle Choices Lower Breast Cancer Risk, Regardless of Family History

For Pregnant Women, 1 or 2 Drinks Per Week May Be OK

10 Dos and Don'ts to Reduce Your Risk of Cancer

This article was provided by MyHealthNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience.

via livescience.com

Any questions, please drop me a line.

******************************************************
Follow us on:

Blogger:
http://4nursing.blogspot.com/

Facebook:
http://www.nursefriendly.com/facebook

Linked In:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/nursefriendly

Nursing Entrepreneurs, Nurses In Business
http://nursingentrepreneurs.ning.com/

Twitter!
http://www.nursefriendly.com/twitter

StumbleUpon,
http://www.nursefriendly.com/stumbleupon
******************************************************

Sincerely,

150,000 + Nurse-Reviewed & Approved Nursing Links

http://www.4nursing.com
http://www.howtostartanursingagency.com
http://www.jocularity.com
http://www.nursinghumor.com
http://www.nursefriendly.com
http://www.nursingentrepreneurs.com
http://www.nursingexperts.com

Monday, November 15, 2010

How salt is associated with stroke and heart disease risk-KevinMD.com

Sodium intake has a direct and independent impact on the risk of stroke and cardiovascular disease, according to a meta-analysis published online ahead of print in the British Medical Journal.
According to the American Heart Association, you can help patients reduce salt intake by recommending that they:
• Compare the sodium content of similar products (e.g., different brands of tomato sauce) and choose products with less salt
• Choose versions of processed foods, including cereals and baked goods, that are reduced in salt
• Limit condiments (e.g., soy sauce, ketchup).
Researchers out of the University of Naples conducted a meta-analysis of 19 independent cohort samples taken from 13 studies exploring the relationship between salt intake and cardiovascular disease. The cohorts comprised 177,025 participants who were followed-up for 3.5 to 19 years and who experienced over 11,000 vascular events.
Higher salt intake was associated with a greater risk of stroke, with a pooled relative risk (RR) of 1.23, as well as a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, with a pooled RR of 1.14. The observed associations increased with larger differences in sodium intake and a longer duration of follow-up. The authors estimate that reducing daily salt intake by as little as 5 g at the population level could avert 1.25 million deaths from stroke and nearly three million deaths from cardiovascular disease annually.
Today’s research provides strong evidence for worldwide efforts to reduce sodium intake.

via kevinmd.com

Any questions, please drop me a line.

******************************************************
Follow us on:

Facebook:
http://www.nursefriendly.com/facebook

Linked In:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/nursefriendly

Nursing Entrepreneurs, Nurses In Business
http://nursingentrepreneurs.ning.com/

Twitter!
http://www.nursefriendly.com/twitter

StumbleUpon,
http://www.nursefriendly.com/stumbleupon
******************************************************

Sincerely,

150,000 + Nurse-Reviewed & Approved Nursing Links

Nursefriendly.com

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Obesity Alone Raises Risk of Fatal Heart Attack, Study Finds

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Online tool can help seniors determine risk for dementia | Johns Hopkins University - The Gazette

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Inactivity Is Harmful, Even With Trips to the Gym - NYTimes.com

Monday, January 10, 2011

Preventing Heart Ailments at Their Roots - Childhood - NYTimes.com

Related

Health Guides: Heart Disease | High Blood Pressure

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Holding Their Liquor Makes Women Much Sicker than Men | LiveScience

Monday, November 15, 2010

How salt is associated with stroke and heart disease risk-KevinMD.com

Blog Archive

Contact Us

About Andrew Lopez, RN, Nursefriendly.com

Followers