Power of positive thinking
Men who thought they had a lower risk of dying from heart disease turned out to be right over the next 15 years, no matter what their conventional risk factors showed. The death rate for men who had the optimistic point of view was only one-third that of those who listed themselves as being at average risk, said a report in the July/August issue of the Annals of Family Medicine.
But the happy result of an upbeat outlook was not seen among the women in the study.
“The next step is to test under what conditions holding an optimistic view is most helpful and under what conditions it is not helpful,” said lead researcher Dr. Robert Gramling.
Meanwhile, there is no harm in feeling cheerful about cardiovascular health, as long as you follow the advice about the value of a good diet, exercise, blood pressure control and the like, Gramling said.
Nuts! Another thing to give up
Recent research has found that regular consumption of nut products during pregnancy raises the odds of having a child with asthma symptoms by nearly 50 percent.
Dutch researchers found no association between maternal consumption of vegetables, fish, eggs, milk or milk products and the development of asthma. They also found no association between rare consumption of nuts and asthma symptoms.
However, daily consumption of nut products increased the odds that a child would have wheezing by 42 percent, shortness of breath by 58 percent and steroid use to ease asthma symptoms by 62 percent.
The study was published in the July 15 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
Blood sugar and heart surgery
Maintaining proper blood sugar levels after heart surgery is essential, whether one is or isn’t a diabetic, a new study shows. The British report, published in Circulation, shows that poor blood sugar control in post-heart surgery patients is linked to a fourfold increase in death and major complications, such as heart attack, neurological, kidney, lung and gastrointestinal injury.
The research, involving 9,000 heart surgery patients, was conducted by a team at the University of Bristol in the U.K. More than half of the patients who developed moderate to poor blood sugar control after surgery were not thought to be diabetic, the researchers found.
Lead researcher Raimondo Ascione of the Bristol Heart Institute called for doctors to issue strict protocols to actively manage blood sugar in all patients admitted for major surgery.
