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La importancia de las horas de sueño !
A Third of U.S. Adults Don't Get Regular, Refreshing Sleep: CDC
Study finds people who work, have a college degree or are married tend to get better sleep
THURSDAY, Feb. 18, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- One of every three Americans doesn't get enough sleep on a regular basis, a new study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.
About 35 percent of U.S. adults are sleeping less than seven hours a night, increasing their risk of a wide variety of health problems, CDC researchers reported on Feb. 18 in the agency's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Getting less than seven hours of sleep a night has been associated with increased risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, frequent mental distress and death, the study authors said.
"People have to recognize that sleep is just as important as what they're eating and how much they're exercising," said Dr. Shalini Paruthi, co-director of the Sleep Medicine and Research Center at St. Luke's Hospital in St. Louis. "It's one of the pillars of good health."
The CDC study is the first to document estimated sleep duration for all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, the researchers said.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) and the Sleep Research Society recommend that adults ages 18 to 60 sleep at least seven hours each night to promote optimal health and well-being.
"There seems to be sort of a good cutoff point, where if you get at least seven hours, your body and brain will function at their best," said Paruthi, noting that a 15-member AASM panel came to this conclusion after reviewing thousands of sleep studies.
The percentage of people getting a good night's sleep varied widely from state to state, ranging from 56 percent in Hawaii to nearly 72 percent in South Dakota, the CDC reported.
Work appears to help people get a good night's rest. People who are unable to work or are unemployed had lower healthy sleep duration (51 percent and 60 percent, respectively) than did employed folks (65 percent), researchers said.
People with higher education also appeared better able to sleep well. The percentage of people who get healthy sleep duration was highest among people with a college degree or higher (72 percent), the survey noted.
Married folks also sleep better, with 67 percent getting healthy sleep compared with 62 percent of people never married and 56 percent of those divorced, separated or widowed, the study showed.
Most people don't get enough sleep because they aren't scheduling a good night's rest as part of their busy day, Paruthi said.
"Our society is very go-go-go. There's a lot of things to get done in one day," she said. "Sleep tends to be something that people fail to prioritize."
Poor health also might play a role in robbing people of rest. About a quarter of the U.S. population suffers from sleep apnea, a condition in which breathing pauses or grows shallow during sleep, said Dr. Jordan Josephson, an ear, nose, throat and sinus specialist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.
Sleep apnea is strongly linked to excess weight, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. The CDC researchers found that people in the southeastern region of the United States and the Appalachian Mountains got the least sleep, and notably, these regions also have high rates of obesity and other chronic conditions.
People who snore and never feel well-rested should keep in mind they might be suffering from sleep apnea, Josephson said.
"If you're snoring, chances are that even if you're getting your seven hours, it's not a good seven hours," he said. "You should see your physician and take it seriously."
The AASM has a list of "sleep hygiene" tips for people who want to improve their sleep. They include:
- Go to bed at the same time each night and rise at the same time each morning.
- Make sure the bedroom is a quiet, dark and relaxing environment, kept at a comfortable temperature.
- Get a comfortable mattress and sheets, and use the bed only for sleeping and sex.
- Exercise regularly and maintain a healthy diet.
- Avoid exposure to screens or bright light prior to bedtime.
- Don't eat a large meal before bedtime, and avoid alcohol and caffeine.
- If you don't fall asleep after 20 minutes, get out of bed and do something relaxing before trying again.
More information
For more information on sleep, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
SOURCES: Shalini Paruthi, M.D., co-director, Sleep Medicine and Research Center, St. Luke's Hospital, St. Louis; Jordan Josephson, M.D., ear, nose, throat and sinus specialist, Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City; Feb. 18, 2016, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
Last Updated:
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Fuente: http://consumer.healthday.com/public-health-information-30/centers-for-disease-control-news-120/a-third-of-u-s-adults-don-t-get-regular-refreshing-sleep-study-708206.html
lunes, 18 de enero de 2016
martes, 15 de diciembre de 2015
The efficacy and safety of probiotics intervention in preventing diabetes
The efficacy and safety of probiotics intervention in preventing conversion of impaired glucose tolerance to diabetes: study protocol for a randomized, double-blinded, placebo controlled trial of the Probiotics Prevention Diabetes Programme (PPDP)
BMC Endocrine Disorders 2015, 15:74 doi:10.1186/s12902-015-0071-9
The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at:http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6823/15/74
| Received: | 26 October 2015 |
| Accepted: | 17 November 2015 |
| Published: | 1 December 2015 |
© 2015 Yan et al.
Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Abstract
Background
Alterations in intestinal microbiota correlate with risk of development of obesity and type 2 diabetes. Probiotics have been suggested to play an important role in the management of dysglycemia, although the evidence is limited. In this study, we aim to explore the efficacy and safety of probiotics intervention in preventing type 2 diabetes in Chinese patients with impaired glucose tolerance.
Methods/Design
A 24-month randomized intervention is conducted from January 2014 to December 2016. The target sample size for intervention is 200 middle-aged men and women aged 30–65 year-old with impaired glucose tolerance. Participants with persistent impaired glucose tolerance were assigned to group A (tablet A) and B (tablet B) in sequential order. The participants and investigators were blinded to the assignment. The primary outcome is development of diabetes. The secondary outcome measures include body composition, biochemical variables and the safety of the probiotics.
Discussion
The results from this trial will provide the evidence on the efficacy and safety of probiotics administration in preventing conversion of impaired glucose tolerance to diabetes in a Chinese context.
Trial registration
Fuente: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6823/15/74
miércoles, 9 de diciembre de 2015
Could Old Gout Drug Offer New CV Benefits?
Colchicine use was associated with fewer cardiovascular events and lower all-cause mortality
The elevated risk of cardiovascular events among patients with gout declined in those who used colchicine, an observational study found.
The incidence rate ratios among colchicine users compared with non-users were 0.52 (95% CI 0.29-0.92) for myocardial infarction, 0.34 (95% CI 0.14-0.71) for stroke, and 0.79 (95% CI 0.24-2.39) for transient ischemic attack, according to Daniel H. Solomon, MD, and colleagues from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
After adjustment for all covariates including age, sex, race, history of CV disease, diabetes, and hypertension, and the use of medications such as statins and aspirin, the risk of a composite CV endpoint that included all these events was 49% lower among gout patients who took colchicine (HR 0.51, 95% CI 0.30-0.88, P=0.016), the researchers reported online in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.
"While we are unable to confirm a causal link in a non-randomized observational study, this study provides justification for a randomized controlled trial of colchicine to reduce CV risk among patients with gout," Solomon and colleagues stated.
Because atherosclerosis is strongly associated with inflammation, there are current efforts to explore the possibility of using immunomodulatory medications including colchicine, methotrexate, and canakinumab (Ilaris) for prevention.
Colchicine "downregulates inflammation through blocking microtubule spindle formation, disrupting inflammasome function, inhibiting cytokine production, and hindering neutrophil chemotaxis," the researchers explained.
Previous studies have suggested that the drug -- used in gout for hundreds of years -- was beneficial for secondary CV prevention in the general population, but little is known about its CV prevention effects in gout patients themselves.
Therefore, the researchers analyzed data from the Brigham and Women's Hospital electronic medical records and the linked Medicare databases for the years 2006 to 2011.
They identified 501 patients with gout who had a first prescription for colchicine during that time, matching them by age, gender, and index date with gout patients without colchicine prescriptions.
Average age was 73, and two-thirds of the study participants were men. The cases and controls were similar in history of heart failure, CV disease, and chronic kidney disease, but cases had more hypertension (77% versus 28%, P<0 .0001="" 16="" allopurinol="" and="" anti-inflammatory="" body="" commonly="" drugs="" em="" especially="" had="" higher="" index="" mass="" more="" nbsp="" nonsteroidal="" statins="" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" used="" versus="">P
<0 .0001="" 1.3="" follow-up="" median="" p="" was="" years.="">
While the rates of myocardial infarction, stroke, and transient ischemic attack were lower in the colchicine group, the rates of revascularization procedures were similar. For coronary artery bypass grafts, the incidence rate ratio was 3.11 (95% CI 0.71-18.62), and for percutaneous coronary intervention the ratio was 1.03 (95% CI 0.59-1.78).
In an additional analysis using all-cause mortality as the outcome, colchicine users had a lower risk, with a hazard ratio of 0.27 (95% CI 0.17-0.43, P<0 .0001="" p="">
Colchicine typically is not used for extended periods, but rather is given for the acute attack or at the initiation of urate-lowering therapy, but some patients with frequent flares have used it long term.
"These results, along with those from prior studies, suggest that long-term colchicine may provide CV risk protection among patients with gout with and without known cardiovascular disease, a group known to experience a 30% to 60% increased risk of CV events," Solomon and colleagues observed.
However, they advised that their findings should be interpreted with caution, noting that prescriptions for colchicine may have been more commonly given to patients willing to take medications, or that providers may have hesitated to prescribe the drug to the sickest patients. There also could have been residual confounding.
"Results from this study may be considered hypothesis-generating for a formal test of whether colchicine reduces CV risk in the setting of a randomized controlled trial," they concluded.
If the drug does succeed in decreasing CV risk in a formal study, it is likely that the effects derive from colchicine's immunomodulatory effects, as it does not lower uric acid, the investigators noted.
The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
The authors reported financial relationships with Lilly, Pfizer, Amgen, and AstraZeneca.
LAST UPDATED
Primary Source
Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases
Source Reference: Solomon D, et al "Effects of colchicine on risk of cardiovascular events and mortality among patients with gout: a cohort study using electronic medical records linked with Medicare claims" Ann Rheum Dis2015; DOI: 10.1136/annrheumdis-2015-207984.
Fuente: http://www.medpagetoday.com/Rheumatology/GeneralRheumatology/54805?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2015-11-21&eun=g419731d0r
jueves, 3 de diciembre de 2015
domingo, 18 de octubre de 2015
New four-drug mixture reverses Type 1 diabetes in mice
Anew, four–drug cocktail has shown a novel ability to reverse established Type 1 diabetes in some mice, University of Florida Health researchers have found. Fifty percent of mice that were treated with the four drugs had their established diabetes go into remission, according to the findings. The drug cocktail also succeeded in reversing new–onset cases of Type 1 diabetes in 83 percent of the mice. But it’s the drugs’ effectiveness with established cases that is particularly encouraging because that has the most potential to translate into helping human patients, said Michael Haller, M.D., an associate professor of pediatrics in the UF College of Medicine and a pediatric endocrinologist with the UF Diabetes Institute. The findings were published recently in the journal Diabetes. The combination treatment also may be more translatable to human clinical trials because it uses a lower dose of the drug thymoglobulin, which researchers said makes it safer and causes fewer side effects. In addition to thymoglobulin, the other drugs tested were granulocyte–colony stimulating factor, a dipeptidyl peptidase IV inhibitor and a proton pump inhibitor. When used together, the four drugs have a synergy that makes them substantially more effective than they are individually, researchers found. The study did not determine why the four–drug cocktail was effective in some mice but not others.
Fuente: http://www.mdlinx.com/endocrinology/medical-news-article/2015/10/15/6371233/?news_id=561&newsdt=101715&utm_source=WeeklyNL&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_content=Weeks-Best-Article&utm_campaign=article-section&category=latest-weekly
Fuente: http://www.mdlinx.com/endocrinology/medical-news-article/2015/10/15/6371233/?news_id=561&newsdt=101715&utm_source=WeeklyNL&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_content=Weeks-Best-Article&utm_campaign=article-section&category=latest-weekly
martes, 29 de septiembre de 2015
¿Son los holandeses los más altos del mundo por comer más queso?
thinkstock
A principios de este año, un museo de Ámsterdam fue la escena de un terrible crimen.
Mientras revisaban la sala, los trabajadores del museo descubrieron con horror que una de las piezas más valiosas de la exhibición -un pequeño y brillante objeto con 220 diamantes- había desaparecido.
Un video de seguridad mostró a dos jóvenes con gorras de béisbol merodeando cerca de la caja donde se exponía la obra: alguien había robado la cortadora de queso más cara del mundo.
En algunos países, un robo en el museo nacional del queso puede sonar como la trama perfecta de una película para niños.
Pero en Holanda el queso es un asunto serio.
Para los holandeses, los productos lácteos no son solamente alimentos básicos, sino símbolos nacionales.
Boska
Y también la parte fundamental de su importante industria de exportación.
"Las posaderas del mundo"
El amor de los holandeses hacia los productos lácteos es, en gran medida, consecuencia directa de su geografía única.
Hace 400 años, gran parte del país estaba sumergido bajo el agua y parte del resto era una marisma pantanosa.
"Las posaderas del mundo", así fue cómo un visitante del siglo XVII describió al país, "lleno de venas y sangre, pero ningún hueso".
Durante los siglos siguientes, Holanda se embarcó en un extraordinario proyecto de reconstrucción.
Miles de canales fueron excavados y drenaron los pantanos con cientos de molinos de viento que bombeaban agua.
El país de las vacas
El nuevo terreno resultó perfecto para cultivar hierba húmeda, alimento ideal para las vacas.
Pronto, se empezaron a ver miles de estas criaturas pastando felizmente por las nuevas tierras.
ALAMY
La raza más popular del país -la frisona blanca y negra- se hizo mundialmente famosa.
Una de ellas, la vaca Pauline Wayne, llegó incluso a vivir en la Casa Blanca, proporcionando leche para el presidente William Howard Taft y concediendo "entrevistas" para el Washington Post.
La leche se convirtió en Holanda en una bebida popular, en una época en la que el agua potable escaseaba.
Toda la leche que no se bebía servía para fabricar mantequillas o quesos, que a menudo recibían el nombre de las ciudades donde se creaban, como es el caso del Gouda.
Además, el cuero de vaca se utilizaba como cimiento para edificaciones en Ámsterdam.
Un gran negocio
A día de hoy, Holanda cuenta con más de un millón y medio de vacas lecheras -casi tantas como Bélgica, Dinamarca y Suecia juntas.
Estas vacas producen cada año más de 12 millones de toneladas de leche y 800.000 toneladas de queso.
Según la asociación lechera Zuivel NL, las cerca de 18.000 granjas holandesas proveen 60.000 puestos de trabajo en el país.
Y cada año, Holanda exporta cerca de 7.000 millones de euros (US$7.800 millones) en productos lácteos a países tan lejanos como China, Nigeria o Arabia Saudita.
Las vacas lecheras se han convertido, de hecho, en uno de los pilares que ayudaron al despegue de la economía holandesa.
Pero el negocio de los productos lácteos en el país no consiste sólo en la exportación; los propios holandeses consumen grandes cantidades de estos productos.
Para ellos, la leche y el queso son alimentos básicos, parte esencial de su compra semanal -como el arroz lo es en China o las bolsas de té lo son para los ingleses.
AFP
Se dice que una sexta parte de la compra de un holandés se compone de productos lácticos.
En un año, un holandés consume de promedio más del 25% de productos lácteos que sus homólogos británicos, americanos o alemanes.
Sin embargo, la cocina holandesa no tiene gran reconocimiento a nivel internacional. Los platos populares se componen de verduras como repollo y patata.
El queso es una gran excepción, un alimento que puede transformar al holandés más humilde en un quisquilloso gourmet.
Los mercados holandeses venden queso en una impresionante variedad de tamaños, edades y sabores, desde Maasdammer, con sus agujeros al estilo suizo, al Komijnekaas, del tamaño de una rueda de carro.
Quizás el queso más famoso es el esférico Edam, recubierto de cera para ayudar a retener la humedad y apilado en las estanterías de los supermercados.
En 1840, un acorazado uruguayo llegó a utilizar estos quesos holandeses como bolas de cañón, rompiendo el principal mástil y rasgando las velas de un rival argentino.
Hoy en día, este tipo de quesos se comen en el país incluso en el desayuno.
Getty
Los trenes de la mañana se llenan de pasajeros comiendo sándwiches caseros de queso y pan integral, a menudo acompañados de un yogur o un vaso de leche.
Cuenta una leyenda urbana que un ejecutivo incluso se quejó a la aerolínea nacional KLM sobre la comida que servían en clase preferente -no era necesaria tanta comida caliente y champaña, dijo. Un sabroso sándwich de queso y un vaso de leche eran más que suficiente.
Tierra de gigantes
Uno podría pensar que una dieta con tantos lácteos no es buena para conservar la cintura, pero los holandeses parecer haber crecido en el sentido contrario.
A mediados del siglo XIX, un holandés medía 1,63 centímetros de alto -era 7,5 centímetros más bajo que un americano medio.
Sin embargo, tras 150 años de una dieta rica en leche y queso, los holandeses lograron sobrepasar a los americanos y a todos los demás.
Durante aquella época, los hombres medían de promedio 1,83 centímetros y las mujeres 1,70 centímetros.
Pasaron de estar entre los más bajos de Europa a convertirse en los más altos del mundo.
Los científicos continúan debatiendo las causas de este "estirón": una alimentación mejorada, democratización de la salud, factores genéticos o selección natural, son algunos de los motivos en el centro de la discusión.
Un dato importante es que el crecimiento parece ser contagioso: los inmigrantes que viven en Holanda normalmente crecen mucho más que los compatriotas que permanecen en sus países de origen.
Thinkstock
Por lo tanto, es perfectamente posible que la adicción de los holandeses a los productos lácteos haya jugado un papel fundamental en la conversión de este país en una nación de gigantes.
Durante los últimos años, los productores de leche en Europa han atravesado tiempos difíciles. Sus exportaciones a Rusia -un mercado importante para el queso holandés- colapsó el año pasado durante el conflicto en Crimea.
Este año, la abolición por parte de la Unión Europa de las cuotas de producción de leche obligó a bajar los precios hasta en un 20% de algunas partes del continente.
Pero para la mayoría de los holandeses, el amor por la lactosa permanece intacto.La leche sigue siendo una de las bebidas favoritas y el queso, una "religión" nacional.
La cortadora de diamantes que fue robada en el museo del queso nunca fue encontrada.
En su desesperación, Boska, la compañía que lo fabricó, ofrece una recompensa que espera atraer el interés de sus compatriotas: quien encuentre la máquina de cortar recibirá la fondue de queso más grande del mundo.
Fuente: http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2015/09/150929_salud_nutricion_holandeses_queso_lb?SThisFB
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