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Want to fend off high blood pressure? New research adds to the pile of evidence showing that living healthy can help you avoid hypertension. The study included nearly 3,000 Black and white U.S. adults, aged 45 and older, who didn’t have high blood pressure at the start of the study. The participants’ heart health was assessed with the American Heart Association’s Life’s Simple 7 tool, which measures seven risk factors: body mass index, diet, smoking, physical activity, blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels. A score of 10 to 14 is ideal; 5 to 9 is average, and 0 to 4 is poor. The median score among the participants was 9. Over about nine years of follow-up, 42% of participants developed high blood pressure. The rates among Black adults were 52% in women and 50% in men. Among white adults the rates were 37% in women and 42% in men. Each 1-point higher score was associated with a 6% lower risk of high blood pressure, without significant difference by race or sex, according to the study published Sept. 15 in the Journal of the American Heart Association. “High blood pressure is among the most common conditions in the U.S., and it contributes to the greatest burden of disability and largest reduction in healthy life expectancy among any disease,” said lead author Dr. Timothy Plante, an… read on >

A lot has been made of the so-called “quarantine 15.” Now, a new study suggests certain people are more likely to binge eat during the coronavirus pandemic than others. Most often they are young adults who faced social stigma about being overweight before COVID-19 swept the globe. The researchers found this group had higher levels of depressive symptoms, stress, eating as a coping strategy and binge-eating behaviors compared to those who hadn’t dealt with weight stigma previously. The risk of binge eating was nearly three times higher among those who’d been teased or mistreated because of their size compared to those who hadn’t, according to the study. The study included nearly 600 young adults who took part in a previous study on eating and activity, and completed a follow-up survey during the pandemic. “Understanding whether weight stigma elevates risk for health challenges during the pandemic represents a critical first step for the development of health messaging, responses, and support during outbreaks of COVID-19 and similar public health emergencies,” said study author Rebecca Puhl. She is deputy director of the University of Connecticut’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. “With additional outbreaks and more cases of COVID-19 expected in the coming months, it is important to support individuals who may be prone to worse health and health behaviors exacerbating their risk during these times of… read on >

The new rapid COVID-19 test approved last week is probably not the most reliable option for determining whether someone is infected. But it’s cheap and it’s fast, and if used correctly, it could be the basis of a screening strategy to keep Americans safe as they return to school and work, infectious disease experts say. The BinaxNOW COVID-19 Ag Card produced by Abbott Laboratories is an antigen test, a type of scan that looks for specific structural proteins of the coronavirus that form during infection. The test will produce results within 15 minutes and cost $5, Abbott says. Antigen tests are notorious for producing many false positives, indicating that people are infected when they really aren’t, said Dr. Gary Procop, medical director and co-chair of the Enterprise Laboratory Stewardship Committee at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. And he said that’s absolutely fine if the test is used appropriately, as a screening tool to make sure folks infected with SARS-CoV-2 don’t make it into a crowded school or a basketball court or an assembly line. “Whenever you do screening tests, you actually want a lot of false positives because you want to capture everybody with disease,” Procop said. The key is to make the antigen test the first in a two-step screening process, he said. Everyone who tests positive should then receive a confirmatory PCR test… read on >

Telemedicine might help people with stubbornly high blood pressure get their numbers down — and possibly lower their risk of heart disease and stroke in the long run, a new study suggests. Doctors already recommend that people with high blood pressure use a home monitor to track their numbers. But research suggests that home readings, alone, only make a small difference in getting the condition under control. “People really don’t have the agency to act [on those readings] on their own,” said Dr. Karen Margolis, executive director of research at the HealthPartners Institute in Minneapolis. And if there is no clear plan for what to do about high home numbers, she said, any issues may only come to light at the periodic doctor visit. So Margolis and her colleagues tested a “telemonitoring” program designed to give patients more help: Their home readings were sent electronically to a pharmacist within the health system who then had regular phone “visits” with the patients. Over the next 18 months, the tactic worked. Compared with patients on standard care, those in the telemonitoring program lowered their blood pressure by an extra 7 to 10 points, on average, the study found. And over five years, they were half as likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke, or develop heart failure, according to the report. That finding, Margolis said, fell… read on >

If you have hypertension and you’re depressed, don’t blame your blood pressure drugs. Although previous research hinted there might be a connection between high blood pressure medications and depression, a new study of dozens of commonly used drugs found no such link. In fact, the Danish researchers found the opposite — nine blood pressure drugs were associated with a lower risk of depression. How could blood pressure medication help depression? “It is possible that the mechanism involved in decreasing the risk of depression is the anti-inflammatory effect among these nine medications,” study author Dr. Lars Vedel Kessing said in a statement from the journal Hypertension, where the findings were published Aug. 24. He’s a professor of psychiatry at the Psychiatric Center Copenhagen and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Kessing added that more study is needed. But the findings might help doctors when choosing medications to treat high blood pressure in patients who also have depression or a high risk of depression. He also noted that the study wasn’t designed to prove a cause-and-effect relationship between the medications and a lower risk of depression. The new study relied on a Danish population registry. The researchers included 5.4 million people in Denmark in 2005 and followed their health outcomes until December 2015. During that time, nearly 3.75 million people were given a prescription for a high… read on >

Women who are pregnant or trying to get pregnant may need to forgo coffee, tea, sodas and other sources of caffeine. A new data analysis finds no safe level of the drug during this time. “The cumulative scientific evidence supports pregnant women and women contemplating pregnancy being advised to avoid caffeine,” concluded study author Jack James, a professor at Reykjavik University in Iceland. The findings challenge current U.S. expert recommendations from organizations such as the March of Dimes and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Those guidelines say that consuming a small amount of caffeine each day — 200 milligrams, equal to about a cup or two of coffee — does not appear to harm the fetus. In the new analysis, James tracked data from 37 studies and 11 meta-analyses (data gleaned from multiple studies) published over the past two decades. The study focused on six major negative pregnancy outcomes: miscarriage, stillbirth, low birth weight and/or babies small for gestational age, preterm birth, childhood acute leukemia, and childhood overweight/obesity. Of the 42 separate findings in the observational studies, 32 found that caffeine significantly increased the risk of a negative pregnancy outcome, while 10 others found either no associations or inconclusive associations. Caffeine-related risks were reported with moderate to high levels of consistency for all pregnancy outcomes except preterm birth. Of the 17 findings from… read on >

For a host of reasons, millions worldwide are deciding to give up meat and focus on a plant-based diet. But new research out of Greece is a reminder that not all vegetarian diets are healthy — especially for people who are already obese. “The quality of plant-based diets varies,” concluded a team led by Matina Kouvari of Harokopio University in Athens. Reporting Thursday at the virtual meeting of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), her team assessed the diets of 146 randomly selected obese people in Athens, who had normal blood pressure, blood cholesterol and blood sugar, and did not yet have heart disease. Their diets were assessed using a questionnaire about their typical eating habits in the previous year. It asked about 156 foods and beverages commonly consumed in Greece. Within 10 years, nearly half of the participants had gone on to develop high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol and high blood sugar — a combination that’s particularly risky for the heart. However, diets focused on healthier plant-based foods were associated with normal blood pressure, blood lipids and blood sugar. These “healthier” vegetarian options included whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, olive oil and tea/coffee, as well as foods made with the least amount of processing. On the other hand, unhealthy plant-based foods — items such as juices, sweetened beverages, refined grains (for example, white… read on >

Feeling woozy when you stand up may be a sign of an increased risk of developing dementia, a new study suggests. Doctors call this feeling “orthostatic hypotension,” and it occurs when there’s a sudden drop in blood pressure as you stand, explained a team of researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). The researchers found a connection between orthostatic hypotension and later onset of dementia with a drop in systolic blood pressure of at least 15 mm Hg, but not diastolic blood pressure or blood pressure overall. Systolic blood pressure is the top number in a blood pressure reading. The finding suggests that “people’s blood pressure when they move from sitting to standing should be monitored,” UCSF researcher Dr. Laure Rouch said in a news release from the American Academy of Neurology. “It’s possible that controlling these blood pressure drops could be a promising way to help preserve people’s thinking and memory skills as they age.” Rouch cautioned that this study couldn’t prove that orthostatic hypotension causes dementia, only that there appears to be an association. In the study, her team tracked the medical history of more than 2,100 people who averaged 73 years of age and did not have dementia at the beginning of the study. Over the next 12 years, 22% of these individuals developed dementia. Those with systolic orthostatic hypotension… read on >

After a period of improvement, U.S. kids are eating as much fast food as they were in the early 2000s, new government figures show. Researchers found that between 2003 and 2010, there was a decline in U.S. kids’ intake of fast-food calories — dipping from an average of 14% of daily calories, to just under 11%. The positive trend was short-lived, however. By 2018, that figure was back up to 14%. The study, by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), did not go into the underlying reasons. But other research gives some clues as to what could be driving the reversal. One possibility is that social media and “digital marketing” have a role, according to Frances Fleming-Milici, a researcher with the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut. “Fast-food companies have been pioneers in using digital marketing,” said Fleming-Milici, who was not involved in the NCHS report. Admittedly, she said, it is hard to get a handle on how often kids encounter fast-food promotions on their smartphones. But a recent Rudd study found that 70% of teens “engaged with” food and beverage brands on social media — meaning they followed the brands, or “liked” or shared their content. More than half of kids said they engaged with fast-food brands. Another Rudd study found that the percentage of parents… read on >

Folks who want to eat healthy by choosing whole grain foods aren’t helped by product labels that can confuse and mislead consumers, a new study shows. Almost half were unable to identify the healthier whole grain option when asked to rely on food package labels, researchers discovered. A similar proportion of participants were unable to accurately state the whole grain content of different products, according to the study. Terms like “multigrain,” “contains whole grains,” “honey wheat” and “12-grain” can be used to hawk breads, cereals and crackers as healthier options even if the product mostly contains refined flour, explained lead researcher Parke Wilde, a professor at Tufts University’s School of Nutrition Science and Policy in Boston. “If they say it contains whole grains, it really does have to contain some whole grains. They would get into trouble if they made a claim that was outright false,” Wilde said. “But it’s totally permitted to say it contains whole grains even if it’s mostly refined grains. “For terms like multigrain or seven-grain or 12-grain, or the coloring, there’s no rules at all,” Wilde continued. “There’s no rules against using any of those terms on a refined grain product, or coloring the product brown, which consumers associate with whole grains.” Current U.S. dietary guidelines recommend that whole grains make up at least half of a person’s overall grain… read on >