Hormone Reduces Mortality in Heart Patients With High BP

(HealthDay News) -- The hormone relaxin reduces shortness of breath and cardiovascular death in people with heart failure who also have high blood pressure, according to a phase 2 trial conducted in eight countries.

The study included 234 people who, within a few hours of arriving at a hospital, were randomly assigned to receive an intravenous infusion of a placebo or varying doses of relaxin -- 10, 30 100 or 250 micrograms/kilogram (µ/kg) -- a day.

Shortness of breath improved in 40 percent of those who were given 30 µ/kg, compared with 23 percent of those who received the placebo.

After 60 days, fewer people given 30 µ/kg of relaxin had died from a cardiovascular cause or had to be readmitted to the hospital because of heart or kidney failure than in the placebo group: 2.6 percent compared with 17.2 percent. After 180 days, there were no cardiovascular deaths in the relaxin group at this dosage, but 14.3 percent of the placebo group had died from cardiovascular causes, the study found.

The study also found that people in the relaxin 30 µ/kg group spent less time in the hospital than did those in the placebo group (10.2 days vs. 12 days) and lived longer after discharge (47.9 days vs. 44.2 days). No safety concerns were noted in the relaxin 30 µ/kg group.

The study was funded by Corthera, and several of the researchers worked for the biopharmaceutical company, which has the rights to develop and market relaxin. The findings were to be presented at the American College of Cardiology meeting in Orlando, Fla., and appear online and in an upcoming print issue of The Lancet.

Over time, standard therapy can resolve shortness of breath and high blood pressure caused by heart failure, but evidence from this study "suggests that early administration of this drug in addition to standard therapy might be associated with more rapid, sustained and complete resolution of acute heart failure, as well as with more favorable long-term outcomes," wrote Dr. John R. Teerlink, of the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center and his colleagues.

On the basis of the study's results, the researchers said they plan to conduct a phase 3 clinical trial of relaxin, at 30 µ/kg, in people with heart failure.

More information
The American Heart Association has more about heart failure.

Health Tip: After a Heart Attack

(HealthDay News) -- After a heart attack heart attack, it's important to reduce or eliminate risk factors for a subsequent attack.
The American Academy of Family Physicians says these factors increase your risk of another heart attack:

• Getting insufficient exercise.
• Having high blood pressure or high cholesterol.
• Being too stressed.
• Being overweight.
• Having high blood sugar, if you're diabetic.
• Being a smoker.
• Drinking too much alcohol.

Connection Between ED and Heart Disease and BP

Connection Between ED and Heart Disease and BP

Excessive Abdominal Fat Is Not Only Ugly but Hazardous to Your Health

By Mike GearyFounder, TruthAboutAbs.com

In America and many western countries the vast majority of people in this day and age have excess abdominal fat. The bad news is excess belly fat isn't just ugly, but is also a dangerous risk factor to your health. Scientific research has clearly determined that although it's unhealthy in general to have excess body fat throughout your body, it's also particularly dangerous to have excess abdominal fat.

There are two types of fat that you have in your abdominal area. The first type that covers up your abs is called subcutaneous fat and lies directly beneath the skin and on top of the abdominal muscles.

The second type is called visceral fat, and that lies deeper in the abdomen beneath your muscle and surrounding your organs. Visceral fat also plays a role in giving certain men that "beer belly" appearance where their abdomen protrudes excessively but at the same time, also feels sort of hard if you push on it.

Both types of fat in the abdominal area are serious health risk factors, but science has shown that having excessive visceral fat is even more dangerous than subcutaneous fat. Both of them greatly increase your risk of developing diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, sleep apnea, various forms of cancer, and other degenerative diseases.

Why visceral fat is particularly dangerous is because it apparently releases more inflammatory molecules into your system on a consistent basis.

If you care about the quality of your life and your loved ones, reducing your abdominal fat should be one of your TOP priorities! There's just no way around it. Besides, a side effect of finally getting rid of all of that excessive ugly abdominal fat is that your stomach will flatten out, and if you lose enough stomach fat, you will be able to visibly see some nice six pack abs that everyone wants.

So what gets rid of extra abdominal fat? Is there actually a tried and true solution beyond all of the gimmicks and hype that you see in ads and on commercials for "miracle" fat loss junk? Continue Reading >>

Working Hard When Tired Raises Blood Pressure

(HealthDay News) -- Doing mental or physical work while exhausted may harm your health, a new study shows.

Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham found that fatigued people had bigger spikes in blood pressure than well-rested people while doing a memorization test.

When fatigued people regard a task as worthwhile and achievable, they increase their effort to compensate for their diminished capability, explained study author and psychologist Rex Wright. As a result, a tired person's blood pressure increases and remains elevated until the task is completed or the person gives up.

"Our findings are relevant to health because of links that have been established between cardiovascular responsiveness and negative health outcomes, including hypertension and heart disease," Wright said in a prepared statement.

"Individuals who experience chronically exaggerated cardiovascular responses are believed to be at greater risk than individuals who do not. Thus, the implication is that chronic fatigue may pose a health risk under some performance conditions," he explained.

In this study, Wright and colleagues told 80 volunteers they could win a modest prize by memorizing two or six nonsense trigrams (meaningless, three-letter sequences) within two minutes. Compared to volunteers with low levels of fatigue, those with moderate fatigue had stronger blood pressure while doing the two-trigram memorization task.

"Presumably this was because the moderately fatigued subjects viewed success as relatively hard, but still possible and worthwhile. Subjects who reported moderate fatigue had relatively reduced blood pressure increases in the six-trigram condition, presumably because they view success there as impossible or too difficult to be worth the effort," Wright said.

Volunteers with high levels of fatigue had low blood pressure increases in both the two- and six-trigram tasks. This likely means they viewed both tasks as too difficult to attempt, the researchers said.

The study was published in the July issue of the International Journal of Psychophysiology.

More information
The MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia has more about fatigue.

High Blood Pressure Still Slipping Past Doctors

(HealthDay News) -- The dangers of high blood pressure are well-known, but a new study finds a lack of routine blood pressure screening in doctor's offices and a low percentage of hypertension patients actually meeting their blood pressure goals after diagnosis.

The Stanford University School of Medicine study, published in the May issue of Hypertension, found that in the offices of private U.S. physicians:

Blood pressure was taken in only 56 percent of all patient visits, and in 93 percent of visits by patients diagnosed with hypertension.
Only 39 percent of patients being treated for hypertension were at the recommended blood pressure levels.
Only 20 percent of hypertensive patients who also have diabetes or kidney disease had their blood pressure controlled.
"Doctors should be screening more routinely during all office visits," study co-author Dr. Randall Stafford, an associate professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, said in a prepared statement. "Dual medication treatment should be seen as standard therapy, and intensive lifestyle changes should be encouraged."

The study analyzed data from a federal 2003-04 survey of services performed in offices of private U.S. physicians. It noted such details as whether the blood pressure cuff was brought out, whether appropriate medications were prescribed, and whether treatment achieved its goal.

High blood pressure affects more than 65 million people in the United States and is one of the most important and preventable risk factors for cardiovascular disease, strokes and kidney disease. High blood pressure, often called "the silent killer," can damage one's body for years before actual symptoms develop.

This lack of symptoms may be a major reason for poor quality of care, researchers said.

"This is a problem that spans much of preventive medicine," Stafford said. "The treatment itself doesn't make patients feel better. If somebody has asthma, they know that if they stop taking medication, they're going to start wheezing. With blood pressure medicines, patients don't feel any different."

Without this noticeable change, many patients stop following the doctor's orders or fail to return for follow-up care.

"We know many patients don't take the medications they were prescribed for the doses that were prescribed nor for the duration that was prescribed," lead author Dr. Jun Ma, an associate staff scientist at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation Research Institute, said in a prepared statement.

Increasing routine blood pressure screenings, even in specialists' offices, could be the first step to improving care, Stafford said.

"Many physicians in specialized practice appear to feel they don't need to measure blood pressure," he said. The thinking goes, "'I'm a dermatologist, so I don't need to screen for high blood pressure.' But because there's a high likelihood of high blood pressure getting missed, we need to take advantage of all opportunities for screening."

Once a doctor diagnoses someone with high blood pressure, the physician must clearly explain the necessary treatments and strongly encourage lifestyle changes.

"Physicians may need to tell patients that it's likely to take two or more medications to get blood pressure under control," Stafford said. "They also need to use a comprehensive strategy to attack high blood pressure that includes recommended changes in lifestyle: weight loss, reduction in sodium, a plant-based diet, increases in physical activity. Both patients and physicians need to take advantage of all available strategies."

More information The American Heart Association has more about high blood pressure.