People who have stressful jobs but otherwise make healthy lifestyle choices had half the risk of developing heart disease.
According to a new study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, study participants who smoked, drank alcohol, didn’t exercise and were obese developed heart disease at more than twice the rate as those with stress at work but with healthier lifestyles.
Though it was a strictly observation-based study that doesn’t prove a specific cause-and-effect relationship, it appears lifestyle choices play a big role in whether or not someone eventually develops heart disease. Quitting smoking and cutting alcohol intake can prevent other diseases, as can more exercise.
“The primary challenges patients face with maintaining a healthy lifestyle revolve around cost, both financial and time — it requires them being willing to spend the extra time and money to prepare and eat healthy food, and to find a way to carve out time for exercise or to incorporate exercise into their daily lives,” said cardiologist Amy Leigh Miller, MD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
SARS-Coronavirus Can Spread From Human Contact
There’s a new SARS-virus out there, and it looks like it could be passed between people who hug, shake hands or make other close contact.
The World Health Organization announced that coronavirus, which has been around for a year and affected 34 people worldwide, could be passed human-to-human, meaning it has pandemic potential. But right now that risk seems small.
A 50-year-old man contracted coronavirus after being treated for a separate condition in a French hospital while sharing a room with another patient who had the infection. The previous cases have mostly occurred in the Middle East, and cause respiratory symptoms like SARS, but typically not as severe.
“The virus is of the same family, but not the same. Symptoms are similar, but not identical in all cases,” said Michael Smith, an infectious disease correspondent for MedPage Today. “Most coronaviruses cause mild disease in humans; they are essentially cold viruses.”
Gut Bacteria Has Plenty of Benefits. We may not think of the bacteria swimming around in our stomachs as useful, but recent studies have shown it can help our bodies in a number of ways:
One particular gut bacteria could be the key to developing new treatments for obesity and other metabolism-related disorders.
Certain up-and-down exercises like jumping rope can curb hunger more than other exercises, since it causes “greater gut disturbance.”
A study on mice found that gut bacteria in males blocked the development of type-1 diabetes.
Gastric bypass surgery can change the composition of gut bacteria and could potentially help others with obesity.
Exposure to Agent Orange, a harmful herbicide used in the Vietnam War, has been linked to a 52 percent increased risk of prostate cancer in veterans.
Researchers looked at medical records of more than 2,500 veterans and found that 32.9 percent had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and more than half of those diagnosed had an aggressive form. More of these veterans were exposed to Agent Orange (8.3 percent) than the remaining veterans who hadn’t been diagnosed with cancer (7.1 percent).
“Along the same lines as people in the World Trade Center on 9/11, with a lot of chemical debris exposure, we see some really aggressive forms of prostate cancer,” said David B. Samadi, MD, Urologist and Chief of Robotics and Minimal Invasive Surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. “It can change the DNA and send a cell into a different cycle, making it a cancer cell.”