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Adding a little yoga to an exercise routine can be the fix someone needs to drop high blood pressure, a small study suggests. “As observed in several studies, we recommend that patients try to find exercise and stress relief for the management of hypertension [high blood pressure] and cardiovascular disease in whatever form they find most appealing,” said Dr. Paul Poirier, of the Quebec Heart and Lung Institute — Laval University in Quebec, Canada. “Our study shows that structured yoga practices can be a healthier addition to aerobic exercise than simply muscle stretching,” he said. The findings were published Dec. 8 in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology. “While there is some evidence that yoga interventions and exercise have equal and/or superior cardiovascular outcomes, there is considerable variability in yoga types, components, frequency, session length, duration and intensity. We sought to apply a rigorous scientific approach to identify cardiovascular risk factors for which yoga is beneficial for at-risk patients and ways it could be applied in a health care setting, such as a primary prevention program,” Poirier said in a journal news release. Yoga is, of course, a spiritual and exercise practice for millions of people worldwide. It is widely accepted as a form of exercise. The researchers recruited 60 people for this study. Each had been diagnosed with high blood pressure and metabolic syndrome, which… read on > read on >

A proposed U.S. federal ban on menthol cigarettes doesn’t go far enough and needs to include other menthol products, from pipe tobacco to cigarette tubes, researchers say. New evidence shows both the appeal and the addiction potential of these substitutes in adults who smoke menthol cigarettes, said scientists from Rutgers University Center for Tobacco Studies in New Brunswick, N.J., and Ohio State University. “Tobacco companies have rebranded their roll-your-own cigarette tobacco as pipe tobacco, to avoid taxes, and rebranded flavored cigarettes as flavored cigars to skirt a federal ban,” said co-lead investigator Andrea Villanti, deputy director of the Rutgers Center. “We have already seen companies advertising pipe tobacco and cigarette tubes alongside cigarettes and filtered cigars,” Villanti said in a Rutgers news release. “The products we tested in our study are likely to be products that tobacco companies will promote following a ban on menthol cigarettes.” The researchers looked at 98 adults who smoke menthol cigarettes in four sessions held over three weeks. Participants first smoked their usual brand of menthol cigarettes, and then they were randomized over three other tests. These were smoking a preassembled roll-your-own cigarette using menthol pipe tobacco and a mentholated cigarette tube; smoking a menthol-filtered little cigar, and smoking a non-menthol cigarette. None of these products are part of the proposed ban by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which… read on > read on >

Manufacturers make all kinds of health claims, but can taking a dietary supplement actually lower your heart disease risk? A comprehensive analysis of prior research suggests that in certain cases the answer is yes. Some types of supplements – such as omega-3 fatty acids, folic acid and coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) — do provide a cardiovascular leg up. But many supplements were found to offer no heart health benefit of any kind, and others were potentially harmful. “We evaluated 27 different types of supplements, and found that there are several that offered cardiovascular benefits,” said study author Dr. Simin Liu, director of the Center for Global Cardiometabolic Health at Brown University in Providence, R.I. These included omega-3 fatty acids, which reduced the risk of early death due to heart disease. Other supplements that were shown to benefit the heart included folic acid, L-arginine, L-citrulline, Vitamin D, magnesium, zinc, alpha-lipoic acid, melatonin, catechin, curcumin, flavanol, genistein and quercetin. But some common supplements had no long-term effect on heart disease outcomes or risk for type 2 diabetes, Liu noted. They included vitamins C, D, E and selenium. Beta carotene supplements, meanwhile, were associated with an increase in early death from all causes. The findings are an outgrowth of a research review prompted by what Liu and his colleagues described as lingering confusion in the heart health community as… read on > read on >

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 7, 2022 (HealthDay News) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s foods program is in “constant turmoil” and needs stronger leadership, a panel said Thursday. The Reagan-Udall Foundation, a group with close ties to the FDA, released a 51-page report Tuesday noting the need for a clear mission in the program and more urgency to prevent illness outbreaks. FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf first sought the review in July. The group called for restructuring the program’s leadership and culture to address chronic public health issues and food crises. The report did offer suggestions such as creating a separate food agency at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Other suggestions were creating a deputy commissioner for foods or putting the FDA commissioner directly in charge of the foods program. “They lay out all the options,” Bill Marler, a food safety lawyer who testified to the panel that conducted the review, told the Associated Press. “I kind of wish they would have picked one.” As it stands, the U.S. Department of Agriculture provides oversight for some foods. Meanwhile, the FDA oversees not just foods, but drugs and medical devices for humans and for veterinary uses. Critics had earlier expressed concerns about the limited time frame given for the review and that the veterinary center was also not reviewed, the AP reported. “I will… read on > read on >

Chips, pizza, cookies: Delicious, but a diet full of ultra-processed foods like these may contribute to brain deterioration, researchers report. Ultra-processed foods have lots of added and unhealthy ingredients, such as sugar, salt, fat, artificial colors and preservatives. Examples include frozen meals, soft drinks, hot dogs and cold cuts, fast food, packaged cookies, cakes and salty snacks. These foods have been linked to an increased risk of heart disease, metabolic syndrome and obesity. Now, scientists in Brazil have tied them to a greater risk of declining brainpower. The study couldn’t prove cause-and-effect. However, “the cognitive decline could be the result of microvascular lesions in the brain, reduced brain volume or even systemic inflammation caused by the consumption of ultra-processed foods,” theorized study lead researcher Natalia Gomes Goncalves. She’s in the Department of Pathology in the School of Medicine at the University of Sao Paulo. “Dietary choices are a powerful way in helping maintain a healthy brain function,” Goncalves said, and it’s never too late to make healthy changes. “Middle age is an important period of life to adopt preventive measures through lifestyle changes, since the choices we make at this age will influence our older years,” she said. “This does not mean that [even] older adults will not see results if they adopt a healthier lifestyle,” Goncalves added, because “research has shown over and over… read on > read on >

Advertising would have you believe that a big bowl of sugary cereal or a syrupy iced coffee drink will make you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning. But that sort of sugar-laden breakfast may be one of the worst things you can do to help you wake up alert and refreshed. A major new sleep study shows a breakfast rich in complex carbohydrates — think a big bowl of steel-cut oatmeal, with some strawberries for flavor — is key to waking up without feeling sluggish. “We found that when you have spike in your blood glucose after breakfast, you’re going to feel less alert, you’re going to feel more sleepy after that breakfast,” said lead researcher Raphael Vallat, a postdoctoral fellow at University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Human Sleep Science. “You want to avoid foods that will drastically increase your blood glucose.” Actually, a good breakfast is only one part of a three-step prescription for avoiding morning grogginess, Vallat and his team reported recently in the journal Nature Communications. People who want to wake up alert also should get more than their usual amount of physical activity the day before, Vallat said, and they should sleep a little longer into the morning. “If you wake up later than usual, you’re going to feel a little more alert,” Vallat explained. These recommendations are based on… read on > read on >

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned fruit-flavored vaping products in early 2020, the idea was to reverse the rapid rise in electronic cigarette use among youths. Now, a new survey of adult e-cigarette users finds that instead of quitting e-cigarettes, most vapers switched to flavored products not covered by the ban, or even went back to smoking traditional cigarettes. The ban does not appear to be working and use of flavored products continues, contends study co-author Deborah Ossip. She’s a professor in the department of public health sciences and Center for Community Health and Prevention at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) in New York. “It really gets to the issue of, if you want to meaningfully restrict the use of flavored products, you really need to close those loopholes,” Ossip said. “And to combine that with the program of enforcing the regulations, and I think a very large public awareness campaign about why that’s happening, because there’s a lot of confused messaging around use of flavored products and e-cigarettes.” The FDA ban was on products using flavored cartridges and pods. It did not include tanks. It also did not ban disposable, flavored e-cigarette products that soared in popularity after the ban. Menthol products were also not part of the ban, said lead study author Dongmei Li, an associate professor of clinical… read on > read on >

Infants and young children could soon receive an updated COVID-19 vaccine as part of their three-dose series. Pfizer Inc. on Monday asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to have the vaccine that targets the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 replace the third dose in the series for children aged 6 months through 4 years old. Children in that age group would still receive two doses of the original COVID vaccine prior to the Omicron-targeted dose. Though children aged 5 and up and adults need only two doses to complete a primary series, younger children need three doses, CNN reported. “With the high level of respiratory illnesses currently circulating among children under 5 years of age, updated COVID-19 vaccines may help prevent severe illness and hospitalization,” the company said in a news release. It is unknown whether parents will choose to get the third shot for their children even if it’s approved. Fewer than 5% of children younger than 5 have been fully vaccinated for COVID, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Uptake is higher in children aged 5 and older, 73% of whom are vaccinated and 13% of whom have also received boosters, CNN reported. Meanwhile respiratory illnesses are surging for this population, including COVID-19 cases, flu and another virus known as RSV (respiratory syncytial virus). No vaccine exists for… read on > read on >

Money may not buy happiness, but it might give low-income obese people an extra incentive to lose weight, a new study suggests. The study, of people from urban neighborhoods, found that cash rewards encouraged participants to shed some extra pounds, versus a weight-loss program with no financial bonuses. And the effects were similar whether people were rewarded for reaching their weight-loss goals, or simply for making healthy lifestyle changes. Over six months, 39% to 49% of people given cash incentives lost at least 5% of their starting weight. That compared with 22% of study participants given no monetary motivation. The caveat, experts said, is that no one knows how financial rewards pan out in the long run. In this study, the weight-loss differences among the groups had begun to narrow by the one-year point. “This would only be impactful if people could keep losing weight at this rate over the longer term,” said Karen Glanz, of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics in Philadelphia. Glanz, who was not involved in the study, said that researchers still have much to learn about the role for financial incentives in weight loss — including how and when it’s best to use them. The concept itself is not new. Studies have suggested that offering people money in exchange for lost pounds can bear fruit… read on > read on >

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved the first fecal microbiota treatment, aimed at helping adults battling tough-to-treat Clostridium difficile (C. diff) infections. “Today’s approval of Rebyota is an advance in caring for patients who have recurrent C. difficile infection [CDI],” said Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. “Recurrent CDI impacts an individual’s quality of life and can also potentially be life-threatening,” Marks said in an agency news release. “As the first FDA-approved fecal microbiota product, today’s action represents an important milestone, as it provides an additional approved option to prevent recurrent CDI.” Prior to this approval, the infection has been treated using stool samples from healthy donors. Adding healthy bacteria from the donor gut in what is called fecal transplant helps fight the recipient’s infection. Rebyota, from Ferring Pharmaceuticals Inc., is still prepared from human stool. Donors are tested for a range of transmissible pathogens, though there is still the possibility of transmitting infections, the FDA noted. The treatment is administered rectally in one dose. Two randomized, double-blind clinical studies and some open label clinical studies were completed prior to the approval to assess safety, involving a total of 978 adults. In one study, the most common side effects among 180 Rebyota recipients when compared to 87 placebo recipients were abdominal pain, diarrhea, abdominal bloating,… read on > read on >