Getting less than forty winks has a profound effect on metabolic processes that determine not only how we seek out and utilize food, but also how adept our bodies are at burning or storing calories.
Elevated cholesterol and high blood glucose are the obvious features of diabetes and heart disease but they’re hardly the whole picture. Other, less obvious factors including environmental toxins like BPA and lead, gastrointestinal disorders, and frequent use of artificial sweeteners are also important drivers of disease. According to Dr. Mark Hyman, author of the popular book, The Blood Sugar Solution, these oft-overlooked factors warrant closer attention.
Drug therapies to reduce cardiovascular risk and prevent the onset of diabetes may be effective in the short term, but as people age, the efficacy of drugs like statins and metformin tends to diminish, while the risk of adverse effects increases. The benefit of nutritional and lifestyle interventions, on the other hand, remains robust even as people enter their final decades.
Almost every study that has looked at the relationship between acetaminophen use and childhood asthma–and there are now over 20 such studies–has found a significant association. The notion that use of this common OTC drug might trigger asthma was first posited 14 years ago. It took science this long to catch up.
Each year, tens of thousands of Americans die unnecessarily from complications of overuse of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Hundreds of thousands are hospitalized. Yet these medications continue to be routinely prescribed by physicians, and are readily available over the counter at very low prices. Botanical medicines derived from Curcumin, Ginger and other spices offer much safer alternatives.
Magnesium supplementation, particularly at doses over 370 mg per day, can significantly reduce both systolic and diastolic blood pressure in hypertensive and pre-hypertensive people, according to a new metanalysis of 22 trials.
Weight loss wagers, the latest rage among big employers trying to cut health care costs, are proving to be an effective strategy for helping men get into better shape.
Lansoprazole, a proton-pump inhibitor promoted for controlling asthma-inducing GERD, caused more harm than good in a new placebo-controlled study of over 300 asthmatic children.
Exposure to iodinated contrast media during CT scans or cardiac catheterization procedures raises the risk of incident hyper- and hypothyroidism, according to a new study from Harvard researchers.
Increased blood viscosity is the only biological parameter that has been linked with all of the other major heart disease risk factors, including high blood pressure, elevated LDL cholesterol, low HDL, type-II diabetes, metabolic syndrome, obesity, smoking, age, and male gender. Until recently, technological limitations made it impractical for doctors to measure this key risk factor. Fortunately, that’s changing.
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