Cardiologist Dr. Willie Lawrence remains haunted by the memory of police shooting his best friend during a 1966 race riot in Cleveland. “I saw my best friend shot in the back and the leg by police. I saw his sister shot five times. I witnessed all that, and that impacted me for the rest of my life,” said Lawrence, chief of cardiology at HCA Midwest Health’s Research Medical Center in Kansas City, Mo. “I’d say I’m as afraid of police as anybody you’d ever come across, and that’s a stressor,” added Lawrence, who is Black. The lasting echoes of that trauma left Lawrence not at all surprised by a new study linking racism in the United States to an elevated risk of high blood pressure among Black Americans. Blacks who endure life-altering instances of discrimination are a third to a half more likely to develop high blood pressure than those who haven’t been similarly traumatized, researchers report in the July 1 issue of the journal Hypertension. These results “may explain a lot of the racial differences between people’s health outcomes, and why African Americans are disproportionately impacted by hypertension,” said lead author Allana Forde, a postdoctoral research fellow at Drexel University’s Urban Health Collaborative in Philadelphia. “Discrimination is bad for your health,” Forde said. “Discrimination is measurable and will impact your health in a negative…  read on >

Canadian provinces that allow retail displays promoting e-cigarettes had nearly three times the teen vaping rate, a new study found. Until May 2018, e-cigarettes weren’t widely available in Canada and it was illegal to advertise those containing nicotine. When the law changed, Quebec and Manitoba adopted their own restrictions, including bans on retail displays and ads for e-cigarettes and other tobacco products. Study author David Hammond, a professor of public health at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, said this situation set up a “unique natural experiment” for researchers as Canada went from ban to a more open market. “It allowed us to answer the hypothetical question: Would lifting the restrictions make a difference in teen e-cigarette use?” he said. The answer? “E-cigarette marketing does make a difference,” Hammond said. “It does reach minors. What our study says is that regulating marketing limited the amount of vaping.” He said trends are similar to those in the United States — advertisers appear to be targeting a younger audience. “There’s social media marketing, digital media and retail stores themselves,” Hammond said. “Retail stores are one of the most common areas of exposure — you go in for a bag of chips or some milk, and you’re confronted with product supplies and ads.” While Canada requires retailers to keep traditional cigarettes out of sight, many now have e-cigarette…  read on >

Loving pet parents only want the finest fare for their furry friends, but with a dizzying array of choices, it’s hard to know which pet diet is best. Raw food is all the rage, but is it really better than commercial kibble or homemade? Owners are trying to figure this out. New research found that only 13% of dog owners and about one-third of cat owners exclusively fed their pets conventional pet foods as their main meals all of the time. Nearly two-thirds of dogs and about half of cats were given homemade meals at least some of the time. And more than two-thirds of pooches and more than half of kitties sometimes got raw meals. “Fewer dogs and cats are being fed conventional, heat-processed foods,” said study author Dr. Sarah Dodd, a veterinarian and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Guelph Ontario Veterinary College in Canada. The study included surveys from more than 3,600 pet owners from countries including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. “Commercial pet diets have only been around for a few decades, and one of the reasons these products were developed was an increased interest in animals’ well-being. Pets have evolved to become part of the family and people wanted to provide a more balanced diet with better nutrition,” Dodd explained. She said typical grocery…  read on >

Among patients in China with COVID-19, researchers found that those with high blood pressure had twice the risk of death from the coronavirus compared with patients who didn’t have high blood pressure. And patients with high blood pressure who were not taking drugs to control it were at even higher risk, the findings showed. However, the study only found an association and could not prove cause-and-effect. For the study, researchers in China and Ireland analyzed data on nearly 2,900 COVID-19 patients who entered one hospital in Wuhan, China, between Feb. 5 and March 15. Nearly 30% of these patients had a history of high blood pressure. The analysis revealed that 4% of patients with high blood pressure died versus 1% of other patients, according to the report published June 5 in the European Heart Journal. Among those not taking medication for their high blood pressure, 8% died. That compared with 3% of patients who were taking blood pressure medication. The researchers, led by Fei Li and Ling Tao from Xijing Hospital in Xi’an, then pooled that data with data from three other studies involving 2,300 high blood pressure patients. The investigators found that patients taking angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) were less likely to die than patients on other blood pressure drugs. But the researchers stressed that due to the size…  read on >

How you store your tomatoes doesn’t affect the flavor — what really matters is the type of tomato you choose, researchers say. A team from the University of Göttingen in Germany investigated the differences in flavor of ripe, picked tomatoes when stored in the refrigerator (44.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and at room temperature (68 degrees F). A panel of experienced taste-testers who judged the sweetness, acidity and juiciness of the tomatoes found no significant differences between those kept in the fridge and those stored at room temperature. The variety of tomato played a far bigger part in flavor than storage methods, according to the researchers. The study focused on two varieties of black cherry tomatoes. “It is the variety of tomato in particular that has an important influence on the flavor. Therefore, the development of new varieties with an appealing flavor can be a step towards improving the flavor quality of tomatoes,” lead author Larissa Kanski said in a university news release. She is a doctoral student in the Division of Quality Plant Products. Study co-author Elke Pawelzik said freshness is a key to flavor but short-term storage won’t hurt. “The shorter the storage period, the better it is for the flavor and related attributes,” said Pawelzik, head of the Division of Quality Plant Products. “However, we were able to show that, taking into account the…  read on >

For parents hoping their “picky” eater will grow out of it, a new study may be unwelcome news. Researchers found that choosy 4-year-olds were still turning their noses up at many foods at age 9 — suggesting their finicky eating is more of a trait than a phase. The study, which followed over 300 children, found three patterns: The majority were consistently middle-of-the-road when it came to food fussiness — sometimes shunning unfamiliar cuisine, but remaining relatively open to trying new foods. A sizable minority (29%) consistently ate everything their parents offered up. Then there was the picky 14%. From age 4 to 9, they routinely refused new foods and maintained a limited culinary repertoire. Still, researchers saw bright spots in the findings, published May 26 in the journal Pediatrics. For one, there were no signs that picky eaters were underweight. And the fact that the fussiness seems to be a trait — and not a failure on the parents’ part — might bring some solace. “It can be very stressful for parents to deal with a picky eater,” noted senior researcher Dr. Megan Pesch, a pediatrician at the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor. But if parents think they did something wrong to cause it, she added, these findings suggest otherwise. “It’s not your fault,” Pesch said. “It seems to…  read on >

The now-trendy keto diet is said to turn fat into fuel. But a new, small study says it may also change the vast array of microbes residing in your gut (the microbiome). That could be a good thing, as those changes may ultimately strengthen the immune system by tamping down inflammation, researchers say. The keto diet, which severely restricts carbohydrates and emphasizes fats and protein, has been touted as a way to rein in epilepsy, diabetes and expanding waistlines. Yet despite rising popularity, it remains controversial, and much is unknown about its true impact on health. The new finding follows a two-month study that tracked diet-related shifts in microbiome content among 17 overweight or obese men, with follow-up tests in mice. “There has been a lot of work on ketogenic diets,” noted study author Peter Turnbaugh, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of California, San Francisco. “But we didn’t know much about how these diets differ from other high-fat diets, how exactly they impact microbes, or whether or not these diet-induced changes to gut microbes matter,” he said. To find out, Turnbaugh and his colleagues first placed half the men on a one-month “standard” Western diet composed of 50% carbs, 15% protein and 35% fat. The other half started off on a keto diet made up of 5% carbs, 15% protein…  read on >