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Seniors wound up with lower blood pressure after they were coached to get up and move more often, a new study says. Health coaching successfully reduced sitting time for a group of older adults by just over 30 minutes a day, according to a report published March 27 in the journal JAMA Network Open. Sitting less led to a reduction of nearly 3.5 points in the seniors’ average blood pressure, researchers said. By comparison, increased physical activity typically leads to an average 4-point reduction in blood pressure and weight loss an average 3-point reduction, they noted. “Our findings are really promising because sitting less is a change that may be easier for people than increasing physical activity, especially for older adults who are more likely to be living with restrictions like chronic pain or reduced physical function,” said lead researcher Dori Rosenberg, a senior scientific investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Research Institute in Seattle. Older adults typically sit between 65% and 80% of their waking hours, researchers said in background notes. Such sedentary behavior can lead to heart disease and diabetes. The new study involved 283 seniors ages 60 to 89 covered by Kaiser Permanente’s health system in Washington state. The seniors all received a tabletop standing desk, an activity tracker and 10 health coaching sessions during a six-month period. In these sessions, participants… read on > read on >

Living in a poor and unhealthy neighborhood could nearly double a person’s risk of heart disease and stroke, a new study says. The findings indicate that all the factors that make for a crummy neighborhood — air and water pollution, toxic sites, few parks, tons of traffic — play a significant role in heart health. So, too, do social and economic factors like low income, poor education, unemployment and lack of access to internet and health care. These environmental and social factors deliver a “dual hit” to the heart health of people trapped in lousy neighborhoods, said senior researcher Dr. Sarju Ganatra, director of the Cardio-Oncology Program and South Asian Cardio-Metabolic Program at Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington, Mass. “I was amazed to see the tight links and complex interplay between social and environmental factors on health outcomes,” Ganatra said. Even after adjusting for social factors like low income and poor education, “environmental factors played a crucial and independent role in determining various heart disease and other related health outcomes,” Ganatra added. For the study, researchers rated more than 71,000 U.S. census tracts using the Environmental Justice Index, a database combining demographic, environmental and health data gathered by multiple federal agencies. People living in neighborhoods beset by harmful environmental factors had about 1.6 times the rate of clogged arteries and more than double… read on > read on >

Some folks struggling with obesity appear to be hampered by their own genes when it comes to working off those extra pounds, a new study finds. People with a higher genetic risk of obesity have to exercise more to avoid becoming unhealthily heavy, researchers discovered. “Genetic background contributes to the amount of physical activity needed to mitigate obesity. The higher the genetic risk, the more steps needed per day,” said senior researcher Douglas Ruderfer, director of the Center for Digital Genomic Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn. Because of that, physical activity guidelines might not be so helpful when it comes to maintaining a healthy weight, since individual genetic differences drive how much exercise each person requires, Ruderfer noted. People instead need to be “active enough to account for their genetic background, or their genetic risk for obesity, regardless of how high that risk might be,” Ruderfer said in a Vanderbilt news release. For the study, researchers tracked more than 3,100 middle-aged people who weren’t obese and who walked an average 8,300 steps a day for more than five years. Obesity increased 43% among people with the highest genetic risk scores for obesity, but only by 13% among those with the lowest risk, researchers found. Results showed those with the highest genetic risk for obesity had to walk an average of 2,280… read on > read on >

A major review of data confirms that getting less than the recommended amount of sleep each night is a risk factor for high blood pressure. Data collected in 16 studies conducted from 2000 through 2023, involving over 1 million people in six countries, revealed a 7% rise in the risk for hypertension among folks who got less than seven hours of slumber each night. People who got an average of five hours of sleep per night saw their risk for high blood pressure rise by 11%, compared to people who got the recommended seven or eight hours, said a team from the Tehran Heart Center in Iran. “Based on the most updated data, the less you sleep—that is less than seven hours a day—the more likely you will develop high blood pressure in the future,” said study lead author Dr. Kaveh Hosseini, an assistant professor of cardiology at the center. “We saw a trend between longer sleep durations and a greater occurrence of high blood pressure, but it was not statistically significant. Getting seven to eight hours of sleep, as is recommended by sleep experts, may be the best for your heart, too.” His team will present its findings April 7 at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Atlanta. The sleep and heart health of people who were involved in the… read on > read on >

ADHD stimulant medications like Ritalin or Adderall appear linked to a heightened risk for cardiomyopathy (a weakening of the heart muscle), and the risk grows with time, new research shows. However, researchers were quick to note that cardiomyopathies are rare in the young, and even with ADHD medication use the absolute risk to any one patient remains very small. Overall, folks ages 20 to 40 who were on a medication for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) were 17% more likely to have cardiomyopathy at one year and 57% more likely to have cardiomyopathy at eight years, compared to their peers who weren’t taking the drugs. The study wasn’t designed to prove cause-and-effect. “The longer you leave patients on these medications, the more likely they are to develop cardiomyopathy, but the risk of that is very low,” said study lead author Pauline Gerard. She’s a second-year medical student at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “I don’t think this is a reason to stop prescribing these medications,” she said. “There’s very little increased risk of these medications over the long term; it’s a real risk, but it’s small.” The findings are slated to be presented April 7 at the American College of Cardiology annual meeting in Atlanta. The new study was based on data from 80 hospitals from across the United States, looking at people ages 20… read on > read on >

Folks who consistently work out two to three times a week are less likely to suffer from insomnia, a new study says. That sort of long-term commitment to exercise also helps people get the recommended amount of sleep each night, according to findings published March 26 in the journal BMJ Open. The paper “indicates strongly that consistency in [physical activity] might be an important factor in optimizing sleep duration and reducing the symptoms of insomnia,” concluded the research team led by Icelandic psychologists Erla Bjornsdottir and Elin Helga Thorarinsdottir. For the study, researchers tracked the exercise habits and sleep quality of nearly 4,400 middle-aged adults from 21 hospitals in nine European countries. Participants were specifically asked how often they exercise to the point that they become out of breath or sweaty. Researchers found that people who persistently worked out at least a few times a week — totaling at least one hour of exercise weekly — were: 42% less likely to find it difficult to fall asleep 22% less likely to suffer any symptoms of insomnia 40% less likely to suffer more than one insomnia symptom Symptoms of insomnia include taking a long time to go to sleep, waking in the night and feeling excessively sleepy during the day. People who consistently exercised also were 55% more likely to get the normal, recommended amount of… read on > read on >

Fried foods not only wreck the waistline, but they could also be harming the brain, a new study of lab rats suggests. Fed chow that was fried in sesame or sunflower oil, the rodents developed liver and colon problems that wound up affecting their brain health, researchers found. These brain health effects not only were found in the lab rats that munched down the fried food, but also in their offspring, noted lead researcher Kathiresan Shanmugam, an associate professor with the Central University of Tamil Nadu in India. These results suggest that reused frying oil could affect connections between the liver, gut and brain, Shanmugam said. “Deep-frying at high temperatures has been linked with several metabolic disorders, but there have been no long-term investigations on the influence of deep-fried oil consumption and its detrimental effects on health,” Shanmugam said. “To our knowledge we are first to report long-term deep-fried oil supplementation increases neurodegeneration in the first-generation offspring.” Scientists stress that this is early research, however, and animal studies don’t always pan out in humans. The study was presented Sunday at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas. Deep frying adds loads of fat calories to food, researchers noted. In addition, frying oil that’s reused often loses many of its natural antioxidants and health benefits, while gaining harmful compounds.… read on > read on >

Youngsters might have good cause to think they’re brainier than their parents or grandparents, a new study finds. It turns out that human brains are getting larger with each generation, potentially adding more brain reserve and reducing the overall risk of dementia, researchers report March 25 in the journal JAMA Neurology. People born in the 1970s have nearly 7% larger brain volume and almost 15% larger brain surface area than folks born in the 1930s, according to the results of the 75-year study. “The decade someone is born appears to impact brain size and potentially long-term brain health,” said lead researcher Dr. Charles DeCarli, director of the University of California, Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. For the study, researchers analyzed brain scans of participants in the Framingham Heart Study, a multi-generational project launched in 1948 to analyze disease patterns among people in the town of Framingham, Mass. The study has continued for 75 years and now includes second- and third-generation participants, researchers said. MRIs of the participants’ brains were conducted between 1999 and 2019. Researchers found gradual but consistent increases in several brain structures when they compared participants born in the 1930s to those born in the 1970s. White matter, gray matter and the hippocampus — a region involved in language and memory — were all larger in people born in the 1970s, results show.… read on > read on >

Migraines in young adults appear to increase their risk of stroke more than traditional risk factors like high blood pressure, a new study reports. Results show that migraine is the most important non-traditional risk factor for stroke among adults ages 18 to 34, accounting for 20% of strokes in men and nearly 35% in women. Overall, non-traditional risk factors were associated with more strokes in young adults than the factors traditionally associated with stroke risk, like high blood pressure or smoking, researchers found. “Most of our attention has been focused on traditional risk factors,” noted lead researcher Dr. Michelle Leppert. She’s an assistant professor of neurology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora. “We should not ignore nontraditional stroke risk factors and only focus on traditional risk factors; both are important to the development of strokes among young people,” she added. Factors traditionally associated with increased risk of stroke include high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, smoking, obesity, lack of physical activity, alcoholism and clogged arteries, researchers said. However, recent data has shown strokes increasing among young adults who don’t have those risk factors, researchers said. To figure out what is driving stroke risk among young adults, researchers used health insurance claims data to compare more than 2,600 stroke victims with more than 7,800 people who hadn’t suffered a stroke.… read on > read on >

Chemicals found in common household products might damage the brain’s wiring, a new study warns. These chemicals — found in disinfectants, cleaners, hair products, furniture and textiles — could be linked to degenerative brain diseases like multiple sclerosis and autism, researchers report. The chemicals specifically affect the brain’s oligodendrocytes, a specialized type of cell that generates the protective insulation found around nerve cells, researchers said. “Loss of oligodendrocytes underlies multiple sclerosis and other neurological diseases,” said principal investigator Paul Tesar, director of Case Western Reserve University’s Institute for Glial Science, in Cleveland. For example, MS occurs due to a breakdown in myelin, the protective sheath around nerve cells. “We now show that specific chemicals in consumer products can directly harm oligodendrocytes, representing a previously unrecognized risk factor for neurological disease,” Tesar added in a university news release. For the study, Tesar and his colleagues analyzed the effect of more than 1,800 chemicals on these brain cells. They identified two classes of chemicals that damage oligodendrocytes — organophosphate flame retardants and quaternary ammonium compounds. Quaternary ammonium compounds are present in many personal care products and disinfectants, while organophosphate flame retardants are found in many electronics and furniture, researchers said. Lab tests showed that quaternary ammonium products cause oligodendrocytes to die, while the flame retardants prevent the maturation of these brain cells. These classes of chemicals also… read on > read on >

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Just 30 Minutes Less Sitting Time Per Day Cuts Seniors’ High Blood Pressure

Living in Poor Neighborhoods Nearly Doubles Risk of Heart Attacks, Stroke

Obesity Genes Mean Some Folks Must Exercise More for Same Results

Sleep Troubles Can Raise Your Blood Pressure: Study

ADHD Meds Tied to Heart Damage in Young Adult Users

Could Regular Exercise Cure Your Insomnia? New Research Says Yes

Could Deep Frying Foods Harm the Brain? Rat Study Suggests It Might

Human Brains Are Getting Larger With Each Generation

Young Adults With Migraine May Face Higher Stroke Risk

Common Household Chemicals Could Harm the Brain