This just in from Reuters health news:
“Calcium supplements, which many people consume hoping to ward off osteoporosis, may increase the risk of heart attack by as much as 30 percent, researchers reported Friday.
These tiny tablets which carry concentrated doses of calcium were also associated with higher incidences of stroke and death, but they were not statistically significant.
The researchers advised people consuming calcium supplements to seek advice from their doctors, take more calcium-rich foods and try other interventions like exercise, not smoking and keeping a healthy weight to prevent osteoporosis.
“People regard calcium supplements as natural but they are really not natural at all,” Ian Reid, professor of medicine at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, said in a telephone interview.
Reid and colleagues in Britain and the United States conducted a meta-analysis encompassing 11 studies that tracked nearly 12,000 elderly people over four years.
Half of them were given calcium supplements and the other half placebo or dummy pills with no therapeutic content. The results were published in the British Medical Journal.
“What we found was a 30 percent increase in heart attacks in the people who were randomized to take calcium,” Reid said.
“If you have 1,000 people taking calcium for five years, we will expect to find 14 more heart attacks, 10 more strokes and 13 more deaths in the people given calcium than they would have had if they hadn’t been treated with calcium,” Reid said.
“That is 37 more adverse events and we expect 26 fractures being prevented. So calcium is associated with more bad things happening than with bad things prevented.”
While experts are not certain about the biological mechanism by which calcium supplements may damage the body, studies in the past have linked high levels of blood calcium to more heart attacks and damage to blood vessels, Reid said.
“When you take calcium supplements, your blood calcium level goes up over the following four to six hours and goes up to the top end of the normal range,” he said.
“That doesn’t happen when you have calcium to eat in your diet because the calcium from food is very slowly absorbed and so the blood calcium level hardly changes at all.”
Higher blood calcium may lead to the formation of plaques in blood vessels, which can lead to heart attack, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases, Reid explained.
“People have always focused on fat levels in the blood as driving that process (plaque formation) but there is increasing evidence now that calcium levels in the blood might drive that as well,” he added.”
Source
The following research comes from the BBC news on natural proteins which can heal the heart after a heart attack:
“Scientists have found a naturally occurring protein can protect against heart cell damage after a heart attack. Nerve growth factor (NGF) was thought to act only on nerve cells in the body, but mounting evidence suggests it acts on heart muscle cells too.
A Bristol Heart Institute team tested NGF in rats and this had promising results, Cell Death and Differentiation journal reports. They are hopeful that the treatment would also benefit humans.
Some other growth factors are already used clinically to treat different diseases
Lead researcher Dr Costanza Emanueli
Heart disease
is the most common cause of death in the UK. In 2004, there were about 231,000 new heart attacks.
Heart attacks happen when one of the coronary arteries carrying oxygen-rich blood to the heart muscle is blocked.
If the blood supply is cut off, a part of the heart muscle dies. And this can lead to complications such as heart failure.
Drugs are already available to help prevent and minimise the damage caused by a heart attack.
These include aspirin, which works by thinning the blood to improve blood flow, and clot-busting drugs called thrombolytics to dissolve clots in the artery.
Dr Costanza Emanueli and her colleagues found that injecting the gene for NGF into the hearts of rats having a heart attack stopped heart cells dying off.
Dr Emanueli said: “This is the first time that a pro-survival effect of NGF in the heart has been found.
“Some other growth factors are already used clinically to treat different diseases, and our study shows that NGF may be a novel way of protecting the heart from further damage following a heart attack.”
Professor Jeremy Pearson of the British Heart Foundation, which provided funding for the work, said: “Dr Emanueli’s research opens up the exciting and unexpected possibility of helping to repair damaged hearts by using a natural factor previously only thought to help nerves grow.”
News Source: BBC NEWS
A meal at a fast food restaurant could expose children to “staggeringly” high levels of salt, a survey has suggested.
Lobby group, Consensus Action on Salt and Health (Cash), found one meal from Pizza Hut contained four times the daily limit of salt for a six-year old.
KFC also did poorly in the analysis of hundreds of food items, which also included McDonalds and Burger King.
All the restaurant chains said they had reduced salt levels considerably in their products in recent years.
The government recommends a maximum of 6g of salt per day for adults, 5g a day for children aged 7-10 and 3g for children aged 4-6.
According to the Cash survey, a family of four sharing a Pizza Hut meal deal – consisting of one Cheesy Bites Meat Feast, one medium Super Supreme, a portion of garlic bread, a portion of potato wedges, chicken wings, and a cheesecake desert – could eat 12.3g of salt each.
The amount of salt consumed in one meal is more than twice the daily limit for an adult and four times the daily limit of a six year old.
A family meal from KFC – consisting of eight mini breast fillets, two regular popcorn chicken portions, four regular fries, a large portion of BBQ beans, a large coleslaw and a 1.5 litre Pepsi shared equally between four – could contain 5.2g of salt per person.
Of meal combinations aimed specifically at children, the salt content varied from 4.3g of salt in a Pizza Hut chicken wrap and a soft drink to 0.6g in a McDonald’s Happy Meal of chicken nuggets and a fruit bag.
CASH said all the restaurants had information on the salt content of their food on the company websites, but Pizza Hut and KFC had no information at the point of sale.
The saltiest individual meals:
Pizza Hut Meat Feast Italian Pizza Plus (meat feast pizza, potato wedges, cheesecake) 9.7g
KFC Variety Meal (three chicken pieces, two hot wings, Colonel’s Crispy Strip, regular fries, regular diet coke) 6.3g
Burger King Chicken BLT Baguette Meal (chicken BLT baguette, regular fries, regular coca cola) 4.8g
McDonalds Quarter Pounder with Cheese Meal (quarter pounder burger with cheese, medium fries, medium coca cola) 3.2g
They called for all restaurants to carry nutrition information so people could make informed choices.
“It is over four years since the maximum daily limits for salt were established for adults and children,” said Professor Graham MacGregor, chairman of Cash.
“And yet this survey shows that the salt levels in some of these meals are staggeringly high.
“How can these companies justify selling food that contains more than the maximum daily limit for adults and children in a single meal?”
He added that high levels of salt in childhood contributed to increased blood pressure and risk of heart attack in later life.
A spokesperson for Pizza Hut said the pizzas highlighted in the survey are not part of a family meal deal and that they had been working since 2004 to cut the salt in their foods.
Lower salt options
McDonalds Chicken McNuggets Meal (six chicken nuggets, medium fries, medium coca cola) 1.5g
KFC Colonel’s Meal (two chicken pieces, regular fries, regular diet coke) 2.5g
Burger King Hamburger Meal Deal (hamburger, regular fries, regular coca cola) 2.96g
Pizza Hut Seafood Lovers Pan Pizza Plus (seafood pizza, garlic bread, chocolate fudge cake) 4.7g
“Every sensible parent knows that Pizza Hut is an enjoyable treat and we have significantly reduced the salt levels in our products over the past few years.”
A spokesperson for KFC said they had reduced salt by up to 30%.
“We were the first – and remain the only – fast food chain to have removed salt from our fries, leaving customers to choose whether they want to add salt or not.”
McDonalds said they had worked hard to make significant reductions in salt levels and would continue to do so.
Burger King said their burgers had no added salt.
News Source: BBC NEWS
