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Increasing “good” HDL cholesterol

Kimberly Scardicchio over at Eat Know How posted a great guide yesterday to HDL (High-density lipoprotein, or “good,” cholesterol), LDL (low-density lipoprotein, or “bad,” cholesterol) and how to get the right balance of the two (high HDL and low LDL).

Her tactics:

1) Walk for 30-60 minutes, five times a week.

2) Consume HDL-rich foods such as extra virgin olive oil (or, as Rachel Ray so annoyingly says, “EVOO”), walnuts, fish and fiber.

3) Cleanse your body with water, lemon water and moderate amounts of red wine.

She also makes an interesting point: LDL cholesterol only becomes harmful when it becomes oxidized, via contact with free radicals. We all know how to eradicate those puppies: lots and lots of antioxidants! That means good, old-fashioned fruits and veggies.

So what have we learned? It’s as simple as always: stay active, eat healthy foods, and throw in a little red wine for good measure.

Marijuana use can destroy gum tissue

Bad news for all you 4:20 enthusiasts: a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association says that heavy marijuana smokers have up to three times the risk of developing periodontal (gum) disease as non-potheads.

After adjusting the data to account for tobacco use, gender and a lack of dental care, the researchers found that those in the high-use group had a 60 percent increased risk of early periodontal disease, a 3.1 times greater risk of more advanced gum disease, and a 2.2 times increased risk of losing a tooth due to gum disease, compared to those who didn’t use marijuana.

“We think that it is the same as with tobacco smoke: That is, the effect is not directly on the gums as smoke is inhaled. Instead, it acts through toxins being absorbed into the bloodstream via the lungs and then affecting the body’s ability to heal itself after bursts of destructive inflammation in the gums,” [lead author W. Murray] Thomson said.

And periodontal disease is no joke—it’s been shown to have strong links to mouth cancer and pancreatic cancer.

In short, and in shameless cliché, the best line of defense is a good offense: don’t smoke tobacco or marijuana, and keep up with your dental hygiene.

Malaria deaths drop in Africa with nets and new meds

Good news in the fight against malaria, a leading killer of poor children in African countries: efforts by groups in four African countries to distribute mosquito nets and a new drug called artemisinin appear to have drastically reduced the number of malaria-related deaths, according to the World Health Association.

The number of Ethiopian children who died of malaria in Ethiopia dropped more than 50 percent; in Rwanda, the number decreased more than 60 percent in just two months.

This is encouraging, but as the article says, malaria isn’t the only cause of death in African children: many also die of diarrhea, pneumonia or measles. With any luck, vaccination and other preventive efforts will prove as effective for those health problems as this was for malaria.

Alcohol and exercise a winning combo

I was really excited about this until I got to the age recommendation.

It seems that moderate amounts of alcohol (one to two drinks per day) can have nearly the same effect on your heart health as moderate exercise. And a combination of the two is like a one-two heart health punch:

People who don’t drink at all and don’t exercise had the highest risk of heart disease. People who drink moderately and exercise had a 50% lower risk. Teetotaling exercisers had a 30% decreased risk, as did moderately drinking couch potatoes. “There’s an additional protective effect to doing both,” says Gronbaek. “That’s the new finding.”

Unfortunately for us young whippersnappers, it seems this benefit only occurs in exercising drinkers over 45. Well, maybe we can practice until then, eh?

Skip the hot tap water to avoid lead contamination

Yesterday Erin Goeres at Women’s Health magazine blogged about something I’ve always questioned: is there anything wrong with using hot water from the tap when you’re going to be boiling it? Now I always thought the cold-water-for-boiling phenomenon had something to do with either taste or speed of boiling (not that that would make sense… hmm…). But as it turns out, the New York Times reports, there’s a much bigger problem in the picture here: lead contamination.

Evidently plumbing pipes (especially in older homes, but even in brand-new ones) can contain lead, and hot water running through those pipes towards your tap is more likely to dissolve the lead and bring it on out to your kettle than is cold water. And if you think that boiling the water will remove the lead, think again: the story says that boiling can actually make the lead more concentrated.

Now Brita claims its filters help get rid of the lead in water, but if, as the Times article says, “even newer plumbing advertised as ‘lead-free’ can still contain as much as 8 percent lead,” I’m not sure I exactly trust anything but good ol’ cold water.

(Or–dare I name that taboo product?–bottled water.)

Football fans beware: heart attack risk may rise on Super Bowl Sunday

According to a new German study in the New England Journal of Medicine, the number of heart attacks and other cardiac emergencies doubled in Munich when the German team played in the World Cup last summer.

“I know a little bit about the Super Bowl,” study author Dr. Gerhard Steinbeck of Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich said in a telephone interview. “It’s reasonable to think that something quite similar might happen.”

The study authors blame emotional stress for the spike in cardiac emergencies, but they say that the traditional wolfing down of junk food, booze and cigarettes may also be to blame.

And heart attacks aren’t the only hazard for sports fans–at least not for the guys. An oft-cited study (such as in this article from Esquire via msn.com) found that testosterone levels of fans are affected by the results of games–fans of the losing team experience a drop in T levels, while the winning team’s levels rise.

Now, guys–who knows? You may get lucky on Sunday and avoid that so-sad T-level drop. But even if your beloved team wins, you could be putting the old ticker in danger.

Maybe it’s best if you just turn off the TV and check the scores on SI.com.

Riiiight.

Sedentary lifestyle ages DNA, too

No one actually thought sitting around on the couch would help your overall health, of course. But this is an interesting development: researchers at King’s College London found that people who lead a sedentary lifestyle age faster than their more active counterparts in terms of risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, etc. and—here’s the kicker—their DNA actually aged more quickly, too.

Here’s the skinny:

Lynn F. Cherkas, Ph.D., of King’s College London, and colleagues studied 2,401 white twins, administering questionnaires on physical activity level, smoking habits and socioeconomic status. The participants also provided a blood sample from which DNA was extracted. The researchers examined the length of telomeres–repeated sequences at the end of chromosomes–in the twins’ white blood cells (leukocytes). Leukocyte telomeres progressively shorten over time and may serve as a marker of biological age.

Telomere length decreased with age, with an average loss of 21 nucleotides (structural units) per year. Men and women who were less physically active in their leisure time had shorter leukocyte telomeres than those who were more active.

[...]

“The mean difference in leukocyte telomere length between the most active [who performed an average of 199 minutes of physical activity per week] and least active [16 minutes of physical activity per week] subjects was 200 nucleotides, which means that the most active subjects had telomeres the same length as sedentary individuals up to 10 years younger, on average.”

Now as a follow-up editorial by a different aging researcher says, people with sedentary lifestyles differ from active people in lots of ways, and while the researchers did control for many variables, it’s quite possible that they missed something important. But this DNA connection is fascinating—I bet we’ll be seeing more and more studies like this as we strive to learn more about how our health affects our DNA, and vice versa.

Pill lowers ovarian cancer risk, raises divorce risk?

According to a new British study, women taking the birth control pill for 15 years halved their chances of developing ovarian cancer, and their risk remained low even 30 years later, after they had stopped taking the pill.

This affirms what other researchers have found in the past, and it’s also been discussed that the pill lowers women’s risk of developing endometrial cancer. However, the pill has also been found to raise the risk of both breast cancer and cervical cancer, as well as cardiovascular disease, according to the National Cancer Institute.

But here’s something you may not know: birth control pills actually affect the way your body smells, and the way you perceive the scents of others. This very strange article from Psychology Today highlights some of these changes in a section called “The Divorce Pill?” The author explains that women naturally are attracted to the scents of men whose genes differ from their own, but that pill users prefer the scents of men who are genetically similar to them.

The great cayenne pepper experiment

Right after posting the cayenne pepper tip from Men’s Health (and after noting that my headache was stronger than ever), I just couldn’t resist trying it. Let’s hope this photo doesn’t haunt me for the rest of my life. Ah, the internet.

I mixed the prescribed 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne with 4 ounces of warm water in a teacup. Swished a Q-Tip around in the solution, and stuck it right up there. Surprisingly, the mixture didn’t burn at all (I think my cayenne is a little old and not as spicy as it once was), so I added a bit more and repeated.

15 minutes later, my nostrils are still on fire. But – tah-dah! – the headache is gone! I’m sold.