Don't worry, be happy! Positive emotions protect against heart disease

NewsRx.com-2-26-10



People who are usually happy, enthusiastic and content are less likely to develop heart disease than those who tend not to be happy, according to a major new study published (Thursday 18 February) (see also European Society of Cardiology).



The authors believe that the study, published in the Europe's leading cardiology journal, the European Heart Journal [1], is the first to show such an independent relationship between positive emotions and coronary heart disease.



Dr Karina Davidson, who led the research, said that although this was an observational study, her study did suggest that it might be possible to help prevent heart disease by enhancing people's positive emotions. However, she cautioned that it would be premature to make clinical recommendations without clinical trials to investigate the findings further.



"We desperately need rigorous clinical trials in this area. If the trials support our findings, then these results will be incredibly important in describing specifically what clinicians and/or patients could do to improve health," said Dr Davidson, who is the Herbert Irving Associate Professor of Medicine & Psychiatry and Director of the Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health at Columbia University Medical Center (New York, USA).



Over a period of ten years, Dr Davidson and her colleagues followed 1,739 healthy adults (862 men and 877 women) who were participating in the 1995 Nova Scotia Health Survey. At the start of the study, trained nurses assessed the participants' risk of heart disease and, with both self-reporting and clinical assessment, they measured symptoms of depression, hostility, anxiety and the degree of expression of positive emotions, which is known as "positive affect".



Positive affect is defined as the experience of pleasurable emotions such as joy, happiness, excitement, enthusiasm and contentment. These feelings can be transient, but they are usually stable and trait-like, particularly in adulthood. Positive affect is largely independent of negative affect, so that someone who is generally a happy, contented person can also be occasionally anxious, angry or depressed.



After taking account of age, sex, cardiovascular risk factors and negative emotions, the researchers found that, over the ten-year period, increased positive affect predicted less risk of heart disease by 22% per point on a five-point scale measuring levels of positive affect expression (ranging from "none" to "extreme").



Dr Davidson said: "Participants with no positive affect were at a 22% higher risk of ischaemic heart disease (heart attack or angina) than those with a little positive affect, who were themselves at 22% higher risk than those with moderate positive affect.



"We also found that if someone, who was usually positive, had some depressive symptoms at the time of the survey, this did not affect their overall lower risk of heart disease.



"As far as we know, this is the first prospective study to examine the relationship between clinically-assessed positive affect and heart disease."



The researchers speculate about what could be the possible mechanisms by which positive emotions might be responsible for conferring long-term protection from heart disease. These include influence on heart rates, sleeping patterns and smoking cessation.



"We have several possible explanations," said Dr Davidson. "First, those with positive affect may have longer periods of rest or relaxation physiologically. Baroreflex and parasympathetic regulation may, therefore, by superior in these persons, compared to those with little positive affect. Second, those with positive affect may recover more quickly from stressors, and may not spend as much time 're-living' them, which in turn seems to cause physiological damage. This is speculative, as we are just beginning to explore why positive emotions and happiness have positive health benefits."



She said that most successful interventions for depression include increasing positive affect as well as decreasing negative affect. If clinical trials supported the findings of this study, then it would be relatively easy to assess positive affect in patients and suggest interventions to improve it to help prevent heart disease. In the meantime, people reading about this research could take some simple steps to increase their positive affect.



"Like the observational finding that moderate wine consumption is healthy (and enjoyable), at this point ordinary people can ensure they have some pleasurable activities in their daily lives," she said. "Some people wait for their two weeks of vacation to have fun, and that would be analogous to binge drinking (moderation and consistency, not deprivation and binging, is what is needed). If you enjoy reading novels, but never get around to it, commit to getting 15 minutes or so of reading in. If walking or listening to music improves your mood, get those activities in your schedule. Essentially, spending some few minutes each day truly relaxed and enjoying yourself is certainly good for your mental health, and may improve your physical health as well (although this is, as yet, not confirmed)."



In an accompanying editorial by Bertram Pitt, Professor of Internal Medicine, and Patricia Deldin, Associate Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, both at the University of Michigan School of Medicine (Michigan, USA), the authors pointed out that, currently, no-one knew whether positive affect had a direct or indirect causal role in heart disease, or whether there was a third, underlying factor at work, common to both conditions. Nor was it known for certain whether it was possible to modify and improve positive affect, and to what extent.



"Randomised controlled trials of interventions to increase positive affect in patients with cardiovascular disease are now underway and will help determine the effectiveness of increasing positive affect on cardiovascular outcome and will provide insight into the nature of the relationship between positive affect and cardiovascular disease," they wrote.



"The 'vicious cycle' linking cardiovascular disease to major depression and depression to cardiovascular disease deserves greater attention from both the cardiovascular and psychiatric investigators........These new treatments [to increase positive affect] could open an exciting potential new approach for treating patients with known cardiovascular disease who develop depression. If Davidson et al.'s observations and hypotheses stimulate further investigation regarding the effect of increased positive affect on physiological abnormalities associated with cardiovascular risk, perhaps it will be time for all of us to smile."



Keywords: Angina, Angiology, Cardiology, Cardiovascular, Clinical Trial Research, Columbia University, Coronary Heart Disease, Depression, Heart Attack, Heart Disease, Leisure, Listening To Music, Mental Health, Psychiatric, Psychiatry, Psychology, European Society of Cardiology.



This article was prepared by Preventive Medicine Week editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2010, Preventive Medicine Week via NewsRx.com.



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Taking action about your health

Many people call me and email me to tell me what their problems are, healthwise that is,  but when asked what have they been doing about them, their answers fall far short of making changes.  Yes, investigation is necessay but to delay effective action on some for your conventionally diagnosed probelms is only making them worse.  A person emailed me with many questions about their health.  I told them to fill out our online neurotransmitter form so that I may have more info to act upon.  After receiving such form I saw that many areas of brain function needed attention.  Her answer to me was "how come I did not stress exercise or diet control"

This is typical.  A doctor gives his educated answer to problems and then the person writes back that what the doctor offered for advise was not taken but just rudly dismissed.  Sure you can exercise and diet but you cannot leave out objective nutritional supplementation based upon patient forms.  Diet and exercise can come later.


In conclusion, if you ask for advise please take the doctor up on his recommendations.  He is giving 30 years of experience on what to do.

A new way to effectively perform CPR

Found a new way of doing CPR as listed by the Mayo Clinic.

Here's the link:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5huVSebZpM

Brain works best with proper exercise, diet, sleep

Brain works best with proper exercise, diet, sleep: Special Section: Education / Getting Smarter
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
02-09-10
Feb. 9--Depending on what technology reigned supreme at the time, the human brain has been compared to a telegraph, a TV and a computer.
But it's also a three-pound, flesh-and-blood human organ, and with 100 billion neurons, a very demanding one at that. Even though it comprises only 2 percent of the body's weight, it consumes 20 percent of its oxygen and a majority of its blood sugar.
It makes sense that a biochemical factory that complicated will work best with proper care and feeding, even in young and healthy college students.
The brain starts out with some built-in advantages. Not only is it encased in a sturdy skull, but a set of cells known as the blood-brain barrier keeps many bacteria and other harmful substances out of the cerebrospinal fluid that bathes the brain and spinal cord.
The brain also gets first dibs on a lot of vitamins and nutrients, says Simon Evans, a University of Michigan neuroscientist who wrote the book "BrainFit for Life: A User's Guide to Life-Long Brain Health and Fitness."
Even so, college students still need to pay attention to their diets, exercise and sleep patterns, all of which play key roles in basic brain health, Dr. Evans says.
In fact, taking care of your brain when you are in your late teens and early 20s will pay lifelong benefits, he and other experts say.
The human brain continues to form new internal connections throughout youth, adolescence and early adulthood, they say. While the peak demand for brain-boosting nutrition is from 4 to 8 years of age, the process continues into the college years, says Robert Clark, a brain researcher and chief of pediatric critical care medicine at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC.
"There is an idea out there that if you produce a lot of new neurons when you're young, that once they are there, they are there for good," adds Henriette Van Praag, a brain researcher with the National Institute on Aging.
Sleep is one commodity that college students often shortchange, and that not only can affect their thinking ability, but their memories, their growth and even their weight, Dr. Evans says.
Research has shown that sleep is when the day's memories are consolidated in the brain. It is also when the body secretes most of its growth hormone, which is why children who don't get enough sleep tend to be shorter than average, he says. Sleep is also a time when the body uses energy from fat cells, which is one reason why too little sleep is linked with obesity, Dr. Evans says.
Exercise doesn't just build muscles, burn fat and expand heart and lung capacity. It also makes the brain smarter.
That's one result of studies done by Dr. Van Praag and others on mice that use treadmills and perform learning tasks.
After training mice to press their noses against icons on a computer screen to get a sugar pellet, her team split them into two groups -- one that was sedentary and the other that had plenty of treadmill workouts.
The mice that exercised were not only better at pressing the right icons and learning to negotiate a maze, but were quicker to adapt when researchers changed the icon that yielded the reward, she says.
When the scientists examined the mice brains later, they found that the ones that exercised had grown new neurons in a key part of the hippocampus, a brain area involved in memory and learning, and that the number of fresh neurons correlated nicely with how well the mice performed on the tests.
While she is cautious about extrapolating her results to humans, Dr. Van Praag says that the exercise-induced brain growth in mice seems to be connected to substances that flow into the brain in the bloodstream, particularly one called insulin-like growth factor.
On the nutritional front, college students' bodies are pretty good at supplying energy to the brain. "Anybody who can take an Extra Value Meal at McDonald's and convert it into something useful has a pretty sophisticated digestive system," says Dr. Clark.
That doesn't mean a balanced diet is unimportant, though, the experts say.
Like the rest of the body, the brain benefits when a person's diet has a proper ratio of Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids. Americans tend to consume too much Omega-6, which is prevalent in vegetable oils and can constrict blood vessels and cause inflammation, Dr. Evans says, while Omega-3, found most famously in fish oil, is anti-inflammatory.
Dr. Clark has found in his own research that when the brain is starved of nutrients, it begins to eat itself to survive, a process known as autophagy.
The same thing happens during starvation in the rest of the body, he says, but the effects are not as dire. " If you're sick and don't eat, you will lose muscle mass," he says, "but after a couple of weeks you'll be back to your old self. But if that happens to the brain it can be kind of catastrophic," and can kill off neurons.
That kind of brain stress doesn't happen easily with college students, he notes, but it is possible, especially with students who drink too much.
"It used to be thought that alcohol kills brain cells because of its chemical makeup," Dr. Clark says, "but it's possible it has more to do with swapping alcohol for other nutrition."
"To maximize your academic potential," he adds, "you want to have a balanced diet. In general, it's pretty hard to be malnourished in America, but if you add another stress -- you're anorexic or most of your calories are coming through alcohol or you get sick -- that's when the brain is most vulnerable to nutritional shortcomings."
Exercise, diet and sleep are not just about preserving neurons -- they also boost the health of the rest of the brain, the cells known as white matter.
They get that name from the fatty myelin sheaths that protect neurons connecting one brain region to another. Just like the insulation on an electrical cable, myelin can speed up brain transmissions a hundredfold, says R. Douglas Fields, a senior investigator at the National Institutes of Health and author of a new book, "The Other Brain: From Dementia to Schizophrenia, How New Discoveries About the Brain Are Revolutionizing Medicine and Science."
White matter in the brain doesn't just help link together brain regions, he says. Emerging research shows it also helps the brain fight off infections, regulates the chemicals that the neurons use to function and can even stimulate the growth of new neurons and blood vessels in the brain.
One study showing the importance of white matter was the analysis of autopsy slices from Albert Einstein's brain, he says. Much to the scientists' surprise, the famous physicist did not have any more gray matter neurons than other people, but his brain did have a much denser network of white matter.
There is one other thing to remember, says Michigan's Dr. Evans. Whether it's gray matter or white matter, all those cells are active all the time.
"The brain is an electrochemical organ," he says, "and it's always on. Even when you're sleeping it's recharging hormones that were depleted during the day. The brain is at constant, almost full tilt."
Mark Roth: mroth@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1130.
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Copyright (c) 2010, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
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If Passed, McCain Bill Would Eat Away at Supplement Sales

February 9, 2010


In the wake of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s (USADA) “Supplement Safety Now” campaign, Senator John McCain last week introduced the Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010, which is aimed at improving the current level of safety and transparency in the U.S. supplement industry. If signed into law, the legislation would alter portions of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994. Among the major changes would be a requirement for all supplement manufacturers to go through an annual registration process that would include disclosure of all ingredients contained in products. Additionally, the new law would do away with the current grandfather clause for dietary supplement ingredients that were on the market prior to DSHEA’s passage in 1994. This means that all ingredients would be subject to a new list of accepted dietary ingredients determined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) office. Further, instead of only reporting serious adverse events, manufacturers would be required to report even minor adverse events related to their products. Retailers would also be affected by the bill, as they would be required to ensure that all supplement manufacturers’ documentation is compliant with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).The bill is being championed by USADA and several professional sporting leagues, including Major League Baseball. “The McCain bill is a fair and balanced approach that provides significant protections for all consumers of dietary supplements, while at the same time avoids placing unreasonable burdens on legitimate companies in the industry,” said USADA CEO Travis T. Tygart. “We are grateful to Senator McCain for his strong leadership on this public health issue and urge other members of Congress to support this bill.”NBJ Bottom Line: Industry reaction to McCain’s bill has been understandably mixed as different segments of the industry try to understand how the legislation would affect their business if it were to be signed into law. Although doubts remain as to whether the new bill will be passed by Congress, there is little debate that the immediate ramifications would negatively affect sales in the industry. The immediate threat to industry sales would be the removal of products from the market based on a lack of approval from the Secretary of HHS. That is especially threatening if the grandfather clause, which allows variations of products containing ingredients that were on the market prior to 1994, were to be removed. USADA’s support of the bill—and the group’s outspoken criticism of steroids being marketed as supplements— indicates that sports supplements could be the first category to be thrust under the microscope if the law is passed. In 2008, U.S. consumers spent $2.7 billion on sports supplements, according to Nutrition Business Journal estimates. If passage of the bill resulted in the immediate removal of one or more popular ingredients—similar to the 2004 banning of ephedra—the sports supplement category could see a retraction of 30% or more in sales. If the removal of products were to expand into weight loss and other related categories and remove one or more herb or botanical extract ingredients from the market, the impact could be even greater as that segment of the industry is almost twice as large as the sports supplement category. The retail component of the bill could cause some retailers to stop selling certain dietary supplements if they felt overburdened by the obligation to ensure product safety. It’s too early to say what the full extent of the impact would be, but virtually everyone seems to agree that the $25.2 billion U.S. supplement industry could experience significant attrition and lost sales. Related NBJ Links:Is USADA’s ‘Supplement Safety Now’ Campaign a Threat to the DSHEA?Industry Calls for Greater DSHEA Enforcement, Not New LegislationSecond Major Sports Supplement Recall Could Slow Internet SalesRelated Functional Ingredients magazine links:Proposed Bill Would Modify Supplement Regs, Alter DSHEA