The Daily HIT

The pancreas is an organ central to processing sugar. Therefore, this is not a shocking report.

Nonetheless, it’s one more reason to eliminate (or at least cut back on) sugary drinks in favor of fruit juice, water, or even tea and coffee.

Chinese men and women living in Singapore who drank two or more soft drinks per week were 87% more likely to contract pancreatic cancer after the researchers adjusted for factors such as smoking (95% CI 1.10 to 3.15), according to the report published Feb. 8 in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.

“In this large prospective cohort of Chinese men and women in Singapore, those who reported regular soft drink consumption were at increased risk of pancreatic cancer when compared with those who largely abstained,” Mark Pereira, PhD, of the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota, and colleagues wrote. “There was no association between consumption of juice and risk of pancreatic cancer.”

While pancreatic cancer is relatively rare, it is one of the most deadly cancers, with less than 5% of patients surviving five years after diagnosis.

A new study in the American Journal of Cardiology reports on a clinical trial using the Ornish program, a combination of a low-fat, plant-based diet, exercise and stress management that has been shown in many rigorous research trials to reverse the arterial plaqueing central to cardiovascular disease.

From a Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine press release:

A low-fat vegetarian diet may help prevent heart attacks, according to a new study in this month’s American Journal of Cardiology. Researchers found that individuals who followed a low-fat vegetarian diet, along with a moderate exercise plan and stress management, measurably improved the function of their endothelium—the inner lining of arteries that is key to preventing heart attacks.

This 12-week study included 43 participants in Dr. Dean Ornish’s Multisite Cardiac Lifestyle Intervention Program. In the control group, the endothelial function worsened.

This will surprise most of us. An Australian study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society finds that adults over 70 who are overweight but not obese are less likely to die in a 10-year period than those with “normal” weight.

This may lead to new guidelines on Body Mass Index (BMI) for older people.

Here’s the story from Science Daily:

The study began in 1996 and recruited 4,677 men and 4,563 women. The participants were followed for ten years or until their death, whichever was sooner, and factors such as lifestyle, demographics, and health were measured. The research uncovered that mortality risk was lowest for participants with a BMI classified as overweight, with the risk of death reduced by 13% compared with normal weight participants. The benefits were only seen in the overweight category not in those people who are obese.

“Concerns have been raised about encouraging apparently overweight older people to lose weight and as such the objective of our study was to examine the major unresolved question of, ‘what level of BMI is associated with the lowest mortality risk in older people?’” said lead researcher Prof. Leon Flicker, of the University of Western Australia. “These results add evidence to the claims that the WHO BMI thresholds for overweight and obese are overly restrictive for older people. It may be timely to review the BMI classification for older adults.”

In those participants who died before the conclusion of the study, the researchers concluded that the type of disease which caused their death, for example heart disease or cancer, did not affect the level of protection being overweight had. To remove any risk of bias in participants with illnesses which caused them to lose weight, and also increased their risk of dying, the researchers contrasted subjects who were relatively healthy compared with those who had major chronic diseases or smoked and found no apparent differences in the BMI: mortality relationship.

While the same benefit in being overweight was true for men and women, being sedentary doubled the risk of death for women, whereas it only increased the risk by a quarter in men.

New research adds to the growing body of data indicating that exercise is good for the mind as well as the body.

Exercise appears to help prevent and improve mild cognitive impairment, two new studies show.Researchers found that people who did moderate physical activity in midlife or later had a reduced risk of mild cognitive impairment and that six months of high-intensity aerobic exercise improved cognitive function in people with mild cognitive impairment.

Mild cognitive impairment is an in-between state between the normal changes in thinking, learning and memory changes that come with age and dementia, one of the studies explained. Up to 15 percent of people with mild cognitive impairment develop dementia each year, compared with 1 percent or 2 percent of the general population.

A large survey of medical students finds that three quarters of them favor greater integration of complementary and alternative approaches into conventional medicine.

In the largest national survey of its kind, researchers from UCLA and UC San Diego measured medical students’ attitudes and beliefs about complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and found that three-quarters of them felt conventional Western medicine would benefit by integrating more CAM therapies and ideas.

The findings will be published in the online issue of Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine (eCAM) on January 20, 2010.

“Complementary and alternative medicine is receiving increased attention in light of the global health crisis and the significant role of traditional medicine in meeting public health needs in developing countries,” said study author Ryan Abbott, a researcher at the UCLA Center for East-West Medicine. “Integrating CAM into mainstream health care is now a global phenomenon, with policy makers at the highest levels endorsing the importance of a historically marginalized form of health care.”

The evidence continues to mount that a whole foods diet is a necessary part of health and health care.

From Medscape:

A traditional or whole diet characterized by vegetables, fruit, whole grains, and high-quality meat and fish may help prevent mental illness — specifically, depression and anxiety. Conversely, a Western diet high in refined or processed foods and saturated fats may increase the risk of depression, new research suggests.A large, cross-sectional study conducted by investigators at the University of Melbourne in Australia shows that women who regularly consume a so-called traditional diet were more than 30% less likely to have major depression, dysthymia, and anxiety disorders compared with their counterparts who consume a Western diet. In addition, the Western diet was associated with a 50% increased likelihood of depression.

There is a major caveat regarding factory-farmed meat, which accounts for almost all meats sold and eaten in North America.

But one caveat here, said Dr. Jacka, is high-quality meat, which is difficult to come by in the United States. This is because most of the cattle in North America are raised — from birth to death — in feed lots, where they are fed a corn-based diet.

This method of raising cattle may have a “profound impact” on the quality of the meat, said Dr. Jacka. “It increases saturated fat and decreases very important good fatty acids. Whereas in Australia, red meat, such as beef and lamb, comes from pasture-raised animals, so it has a much healthier fatty acid profile,” she said.

A World Health Organization survey confirms that this is a world-wide phenomenon, and not an encouraging one.  The WHO’s use of the word “epidemic” to describe the situation conveys a serious concern that this procedure, life-saving for mother and/or baby when necessary, is drastically overutilized.

The boom in unnecessary surgeries is jeopardizing women’s health, the U.N. health agency warned in the report published online Tuesday in the medical journal The Lancet.

Unnecessary C-sections are costlier than natural births and raise the risk of complications for the mother, said the report surveying nine Asian nations. It noted C-sections have reached “epidemic proportions” in many countries worldwide.

China’s C-section rate, nearly half of all births, “leads” the world. The U.S. rate is now at 31%. Nations from Paraguay to Thailand are also reporting all-time highs for the procedure.

It’s by no means risk-free.

Women undergoing C-sections that are not medically necessary are more likely to die or be admitted into intensive care units, require blood transfusions or encounter complications that lead to hysterectomies, the WHO study found.

U.S. studies have shown babies born by cesarean have a greater chance for respiratory problems. The Asia survey found the procedure benefits babies during breech births.

Whether convenience- or profit-driven, this is an alarming trend.

A new study from the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, published in The Journal of Clinical Oncology, adds to the growing body of evidence supporting the valiue of acupuncture.

A new study provides more evidence that acupuncture can help ease hot flashes in women with breast cancer who are being treated with the “anti-estrogen” drug tamoxifen. Acupuncture, researchers found, is free of side effects and has a side benefit for some women: an increased sex drive.”Acupuncture appears to be at least as effective as drug therapy,” Dr. Eleanor M. Walker of Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and her colleagues report, “and it may provide additional and longer-term benefits without adverse effects.”

Breast cancer patients with estrogen-sensitive tumors are typically given estrogen-blocking drugs for years at a time. These drugs, which include tamoxifen, bring on menopausal symptoms like hot flashes and night sweats.

The antidepressant drug Effexor (venlafaxine) is the standard treatment for these symptoms, Walker and her team note in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, but it can have unpleasant side effects, including dry mouth, nausea, and constipation. Non-drug treatments with few or no side effects are “urgently needed,” they add.

Here’s a key take-away point. Both drugs therapy and acupuncture helped during the treatment phase of the study, but after treatment stopped the drug therapy group returned to square one while the acupuncture group held onto their improvement.

Both treatments reduced hot flashes, night sweats, and symptoms of depression to a similar degree, and also significantly improved mental health, the researchers found. But within two weeks after treatment ended, women in the Effexor group saw their hot flashes increase; this didn’t happen in the acupuncture group.

Both groups experienced side effects. But the side effects of the drugs were bad and the side effects of the acupuncture were quite welcome.

Eighteen women in the Effexor group had side effects, such as dizziness and anxiety, while none of the women given acupuncture had such side effects. About a quarter of the women given acupuncture said their sex drive had increased. “Most women also reported an improvement in their energy, clarity of thought, and sense of well-being,” Walker and her team note.

New York is a clear national trendsetter on public health issues. Salt, whose damaging effects on high blood perssure have been well-known for decades, is the newest target of Mayor Bloomberg’s health department.

Kudos to them!

On Monday, the Bloomberg administration plans to unveil a broad new health initiative aimed at encouraging food manufacturers and restaurant chains across the country to curtail the amount of salt in their products.

The plan, for which the city claims support from health agencies in other cities and states, sets a goal of reducing the amount of salt in packaged and restaurant food by 25 percent over the next five years.

Public health experts say that would reduce the incidence of high blood pressure and should help prevent some of the strokes and heart attacks associated with that condition. The plan is voluntary for food companies and involves no legislation. It allows companies to cut salt gradually over five years so the change is not so noticeable to consumers.

“We all consume way too much salt, and most of the salt we consume is in the food when we buy it,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the city health commissioner, whose department is leading the effort. Eighty percent of the salt in Americans’ diets comes from packaged or restaurant food.

From Germany, a new approach to an old condition — tinnitus, or ringing in the ears.

The researchers allowed patients to choose their favorite music, which was then “notched” — a one-octave frequency band, centered on the frequency of the ringing experienced by the subject, was filtered out. The subjects listened to the music on average about 12 hours a week.

After a year, the researchers report in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, those who listened to this custom-notched music reported a significant improvement in their tinnitus — the ringing was not as loud — compared with others who listened to music that was notched at frequencies not corresponding to their ringing frequency.

The healing arts need more of this kind of creativity.