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7 Factors That Foster Teen Virginity, Pledge or No Pledge
Tweet Share on Facebook December 30, 2008 Comment (79)Pledges of no sex until marriage don't work, especially if taken by 15- or 16-year-olds, according to a recent study in the journal Pediatrics. Despite broken promises, however, virginity-pledging teens were considerably more conservative in their overall sexual behaviors than teens in general—a fact that many media reports have missed cold. In other words, the act of making a virginity pledge doesn't appear to affect a teen's future sexual behavior. But the kind of teen who takes a pledge is the kind who's already likely to be sexually restrained throughout adolescence.
There's an important message here for parents: The focus should be on cultivating the teenager's ongoing home and social environment, rather than on eliciting a one-time, easily-forgotten promise.
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8 Hours of Sleep: a Heart-Healthy Goal for 2009
Tweet Share on Facebook December 24, 2008 Comment (14)Who would have thought that how we sleep would turn out to be a coronary artery risk factor every bit as important as smoking or high blood pressure? But that's how it is shaping up. The recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association is making the sleep-heart connection impossible to ignore: In short, as hours of sleep drop toward five or fewer from the eight hours most humans seem to need, the chance of developing coronary disease in young middle-aged men and women grows in close proportion. The JAMA study used a relatively new low-dose CT scanning technique to detect calcium buildup in arteries long before patients have the slightest inkling any plaque is there.
Accelerating hardening of the arteries in those skimping on sleep is consistent with many prior observations. For example, people afflicted with chronic loud snoring, a sleep disrupter known particularly to men, experience more heart attacks and higher blood pressure than those who sleep like a baby. And a 10-year study involving thousands of middle-aged women found that those who slept for five or fewer hours a night had a greater chance of suffering heart attacks than similar women who managed a good eight hours of sleep. (Prudence in all things: Getting too much sleep wasn't the best either—with those exceeding nine hours bumping up their heart risk.)
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Men: Even a Little Extra Weight Hurts the Heart
Tweet Share on Facebook December 23, 2008 Comment (3)The 21,091 smart, healthy men who joined the Harvard-based Physicians' Health Study with no evidence of coronary disease over 20 years ago are now proving by their own good or bad behavior the value of the advice they have been giving to their patients for years about the effect of weight, exercise, and diet on the heart.
In a just released report in the journal Circulation, even modestly increased weight was associated with an increase in heart failure resulting from heart attacks, diabetes, or high blood pressure. In this group, which now averages 53 years of age, for every pound added on, the risk of heart trouble grew, so that obese physicians faced a sobering 180 percent increase in their chance of heart failure compared with their leaner colleagues.
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Weight-Loss Potions Have Hidden Surprises
Tweet Share on Facebook December 23, 2008 Comment (2)The Food and Drug Administration is not the Grinch who stole Christmas for warning just before the holiday that a passel of weight loss drugs—28 to be exact, all currently available over the counter or on the Internet—can be dangerous to people's health. In fact, the agency may be a health savior for lots of people who have been lulled into taking diet potions that might work but bear surprise ingredients, two of which are particularly concerning.
Most of these products contain some level of sibutramine, the active agent in the FDA-approved and controlled weight-loss drug Meridia. Meridia is prescribed (along with a sensible diet) for morbid obesity (a BMI greater than 30) or for those who are overweight and also have complications like diabetes. Sibutramine works on the brain to decrease the yearning for more food while eating by altering some key neurotransmitters like serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine. But messing with these brain chemicals can bring other effects, including elevation of blood pressure in a group of patients already prone to hypertension.
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Burning Calories Snoring Is a Loud Distress Call
Tweet Share on Facebook December 17, 2008 Comment (25)Some people are suggesting it might be good news that loud snorers—who are typically overweight—use up more calories than those who sleep quietly. I'd say, to the contrary.
These are not the calories burned off during an aerobics class or a 20-minute jog in the park but rather an energy expenditure that reflects a body struggling to breathe instead of resting. And when those noisy fitful nights are habitual and cause daytime sleepiness, snoring is linked to chronic hypertension, elevated pressure in the arteries of the lungs, and a markedly greater risk of heart attack and stroke.
Loud snoring is often dismissed with humor or with irritation—by those in nocturnal earshot—when in fact the snore deserves the same respect and sympathy as is granted the wheeze of an asthmatic. And unlike most wheezes, heavy snoring is usually accompanied by spurts of dangerously slow or interrupted respiration so that oxygen in the blood drops. Falling oxygen sounds alarm bells, telling the body that its survival is being threatened. Adrenaline surges and, along with other protective responses, becomes a biological stressor that the body pays for in the long run.
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Treating and Preventing the Heparin Problem
Tweet Share on Facebook December 4, 2008 Comment (7)Kudos to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for tracking down the deadly contaminant in the widely used intravenous blood thinner heparin early this year, as just detailed in the New England Journal of Medicine. Working closely with the Food and Drug Administration, local and state public health officials, and a team of researchers, the CDC found that certain lots of heparin were adulterated with a heparin-like compound, oversulfated chondroitin sulfate.
The adulterated product found its way around the world, into at least 21 dialysis facilities and some heart clinics in at least 11 states. Once it was identified, there was an extensive recall by producer Baxter Healthcare, and the deadly problem stopped. But only after numerous acute drug reactions and close to 100—or perhaps more—deaths.
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Generic Drugs: Cheaper, Yes; Same Quality, Maybe Not
Tweet Share on Facebook December 3, 2008 Comment (16)Generic drugs are significantly cheaper and, according to the Food and Drug Administration, are bioequivalent to the drugs they are designed after. No surprise therefore that an analysis of 47 articles comparing brand and generic cardiovascular drugs, just published by researchers at Harvard in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed similar clinical results. The findings were comforting, but as the researchers noted, these were short-term evaluations, and many of the studies were supported by generic drug companies.
But the comparisons raise another uncertainty that was barely a consideration a decade ago: Unlike most patented and many brand-name drugs, the generics are far more likely to be made in factories in parts of the world like India that have cheap labor and overhead. China—which has suffered a string of manufacturing scandals, including one involving contaminated heparin that led to serious and deadly allergic reactions in the United States—is gearing up to become a major producer of generic drugs and is expected to compete with the likes of India at even lower prices.
