Health & Medicine
Health Watch: More Dairy Whiplash
Got diabetes? About 18 million Americans do, and another 41 million might be at risk because they're overweight, eat poorly, or have a family history. Got low-fat milk? A new study suggests it might lower diabetes risk just a little--but even the researchers behind the work say it's too soon to start chugging. "I'm actually very concerned about recommending a high-dairy diet to the general public," says Frank Hu, a nutritionist at the Harvard School of Public Health and coauthor of the study in last week's Archives of Internal Medicine. "Dairy has both beneficial and adverse effects." On the good side, Hu and colleagues found that among 41,000 men followed for 12 years, 2 to 3 cups a day of low-fat milk reduced diabetes risk by about 20 percent. But other work indicates that a lot of dairy raises the risk of prostate cancer. Got confusion? "People get very frustrated with all these eating recommendations: 'Milk is good; milk is bad,' " says Amy Campbell, a dietitian at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston. Don't get hung up on it, she advises. A diet rich in whole grains lowers diabetes risk much more, as much as 40 percent. That's what people should concentrate on.
Health Watch: At Risk for Sudden Cardiac Death
Heart attacks can kill people without any warning. Last week, researchers reported some ways to find these apparently normal people before their hearts abruptly stop. Men with a high resting heart rate, more than 75 beats per minute, were nearly 3 1/2 times as likely to die suddenly from a heart attack as those with fewer than 60 beats per minute, according to a study in last week's New England Journal of Medicine. The study, which followed French men for more than 20 years, also showed that those whose heart rates shot up higher during exercise and decreased quickly upon stopping were less likely to die from a sudden heart attack. That profile, says Tim Church, who has done similar research at the Cooper Institute in Texas, is typical of someone in good shape. Heart rate can often be improved with exercise. Researchers say they do not know if a similar result would be found in women.
Health Watch: Clues for a Prostate Cancer Decision
For the more than 230,000 men in the United States diagnosed with prostate cancer each year--30,000 of whom will die of the disease--the diagnosis is riddled with uncertainty. As many as half of all men eventually develop prostate cancer, but many live with the slow-growing tumors for decades. On the other hand, for men who have aggressive tumors, treatments including surgery or radiation may save their lives but can result in impotence and incontinence. Cancer specialists and their patients have a dilemma: how to decide for whom the benefits of treatment outweigh the risks.
Last week, a new Swedish study published in the New England Journal of Medicine shed some light. Researchers studied 695 men with early prostate cancer. Half the men were treated with surgical removal of the prostate, and half received no treatment except "watchful waiting." After about eight years, the men in the surgery group had 44 percent as many deaths from prostate cancer as those in the "watchful waiting" group. In addition, their cancers were less likely to spread to other organs. Those who benefited most from surgery were under age 65 with advanced tumors. Still, 85 percent of the "watchful waiting" group lived more than eight years. Another recent study of men with low-grade prostate tumors found "watchful waiting" to be effective for 15 years after diagnosis. "The problem is," says Anna Bill-Axelson, lead author of the study, "we don't have any tools to say who will have a life-threatening prostate cancer. The majority don't."
This story appears in the May 23, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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