Metabolic syndrome

Diet soda tied to health risks

Researchers have found a correlation between drinking diet soda and metabolic syndrome and elevated blood pressure. The syndrome is the collection of risk factors for cardiovascular disease and diabetes that include abdominal obesity, high cholesterol and blood glucose levels.

The scientists gathered dietary information on more than 9,500 men and women ages 45 to 64.

Overall, a Western dietary pattern - high intakes of refined grains, fried foods and red meat - was associated with an 18 percent increased risk for metabolic syndrome, while a "prudent" diet dominated by fruits, vegetables, fish and poultry correlated with neither an increased nor a decreased risk.

But the one-third who ate the most fried food increased their risk by 25 percent compared with the one-third who ate the least, and surprisingly, the risk of developing metabolic syndrome was 34 percent higher among those who drank one can of diet soda a day compared with those who drank none.

"This is interesting," said Lyn M. Steffen, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota and a co-author of the paper, which was posted online Jan. 22 in the journal Circulation. "Why is it happening? Is it some kind of chemical in the diet soda, or something about the behavior?"

New York Times News Service

Circulation

Help for severely blocked leg arteries

A new procedure launched at the Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago last month offers hope to patients with critical limb ischemia (CLI), or severely blocked leg arteries.

Doctors transplanted a purified form of the patients' own stem cells into their leg muscles to grow new, small blood vessels and restore circulation in their legs. Two patients underwent the procedure. They are the first subjects in a 20-site national trial.

Without successful treatment, CLI patients have diminished blood flow, which causes wounds that don't heal and gangrene that can lead to loss of toes, feet or legs. It results in more than 100,000 amputations a year.

A CLI patient has pain when walking and, as the disease progresses, even when sitting. Because blood flow is decreased even more when lying down, many patients have to sleep sitting up to lessen the pain.

Although people who smoke or have high cholesterol, diabetes or high blood pressure are more likely to get CLI, patients can develop the disease without those risk factors.

After the trials are completed in late 2009, a larger study will be conducted for FDA approval.

A treatment for CLI could be available by 2012.

Chicago Tribune

Longevity

Go to bed mad, possibly die younger

Going to bed while mad at your spouse could mean fewer mornings left in your lifetime.

That's because a University of Michigan study led by professor emeritus Ernest Harburg has shown that ignoring the timeworn advice of not going to bed angry makes you twice as likely to die younger.

Harburg studied four types of couples: ones in which the wife suppressed her anger while the husband expressed his, couples where the wife expresses anger and the husband suppresses, couples where both spouses express anger and couples where both spouses suppress anger.

The spouses who both suppressed their anger died in double the numbers of the couples who got things out in the open in a constructive way. "There are good fights, and there are bad fights," Harburg cautioned. "A good fight is: 'What's the problem and let's solve it.' It's the solving of the problem that makes the stress go away."

In a bad fight, though, one spouse is being attacked unfairly and doesn't say anything. Instead, he or she suppresses it, stews about it and replays it in his or her mind.

"Your anger continues in your body and influences and affects your blood pressure and the respiratory system," Harburg said.

Chicago Tribune