Type D personality may hunt your health

Doctors need to focus on their heart patients' psychological well-being in addition to their physical well-being, suggests a new study in the journal Circulation.

According to the research, patients with what's known as a "type D" personality -- meaning a distressed and generally pessimistic outlook on life -- may be more likely to face poor health after having an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) put in place than other patients with the same device.

An ICD monitors the heart and shocks it back on course if its rhythm becomes life-threatening.

"In my opinion, screening patients would be a worthwhile endeavor, as it will provide important information to health care professionals managing and caring for ICD patients on the patient's psychological vulnerability," researcher Susanne Pedersen, PhD, tells WebMD in an email.

Pedersen, a psychologist at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, and her colleagues followed 383 patients -- nearly 80% of them men -- for a year. Each participant completed a health questionnaire to assess their health before being fitted with an ICD. The participants were also evaluated psychologically to determine whether they had a type D personality.

Type Ds Are High-Risk Patients

Type Ds have a lot of negative emotions and tend to keep the emotions to themselves. Nearly a quarter of the patients enrolled in the study had a type D personality.

At three-month intervals, the participants re-evaluated their health using the same questionnaire they were given at the beginning of the study.

By the end of the study period, the researchers were able to show that those with a type D personality had significantly lower health scores than those without the distressed personality. Type D defibrillator patients reported greater difficulty performing everyday tasks, functioning at work, and interacting with others. They also suffered more from severe and debilitating pain.

The researchers also studied the reports of patients whose ICDs had delivered a shock to them during the year-long period. Overall, about 14% of all patients enrolled in the study experienced a shock. While the health rating scores of such patients were as much as 13 points lower than other patients, Pedersen and her team found that type D patients who received a shock scored as many as 30 points lower.

Patient Counseling and Psychological Intervention Likely to Help

Pedersen says it's important for doctors to emphasize to their patients that the majority of people who need an ICD do well with the device. But it is also essential that patients, particularly those with type D personalities, understand that their outlook on life will influence how they fare.

"Heart disease and receiving an ICD are major life events, but it is possible to lead a normal life with an ICD, and the art is to engage in activities that are important to patients and from which they derive joy and happiness," says Pedersen. "This may be easier said than done, but being aware of it and working on it, if necessary with the help of health care professionals, can provide patients with a full life, with a good quality of life."

Cardiologist Byron Lee, MD, a defibrillator specialist at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, agrees with Pedersen that doctors, including himself, need to take into account their ICD patients' psychological well-being.

"We're so focused on the body and its diseases that we don't pay enough attention to their state of mind before or after their procedure," say Lee, who was not involved in the research. "This study underscores the need to pick up on this, and it shows that that can be done with very simple questionnaires."

Lee says that such screening could lead to psychological interventions aimed at relieving a patient's emotional distress before that distress causes real harm.

We should focus on preventing cancer

Lifestyle choices people make and that society can influence in a number of ways, from tobacco use to diet and exercise, play a significant role in causing cancer, as it was published in The Times of India.

Specifically, the researchers cite data demonstrating that smoking alone is responsible for a third of all cancer cases in the United States. 

Excess body weight and obesity account for another 20 per cent.

However, beyond individual habits, the structure of society itself – from medical research funding to building design and food subsidies – influences the extent of the cancer burden and need tp be changed to reduce it. 

The obstacles to implementing broad cancer prevention strategies are skepticism that cancer can be prevented, short-term focus of cancer research, intervening too late in life to prevent cancer, research focussing on treatment, not prevention and many others.

One example is the relatively quick elimination of unhealthy trans fats from the national diet. And the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has reported that lung cancer rates are declining in both men and women, supporting the benefits of tighter tobacco control policy.

If we want to change health, we need to change policy. Stricter tobacco policy is a good example. But we can’t make policy change on our own. We can tell the story, but it requires a critical mass of people to talk more forcefully about the need for change.

Vaccine could cure more than 90% percent of cancers

The vaccine targets a molecule present in 90 percent of all cancers and it is the first time that is tested in humans.

The results of the study in patients with cancer of the blood, found to have a greater immunity to the disease after receiving the vaccine. Three of the seven patients who completed treatment are now free of the disease.

The therapeutic vaccine is designed to be administered to patients to help their bodies fight most cancers, is also aimed to preventing the disease.

Researchers believe the vaccine could also deal with breast, prostate, pancreas, bowel and ovarian cancer.

Even tumors resistant to treatments with the best drugs on the market, including Herceptin ‘wonder drug’ for breast cancer, may be susceptible to the vaccine.

If all goes well, the vaccine called ‘ImMucin’ could be on the market in 2020.

Instead of attacking cancer cells, like many drugs, new treatment harnesses the power of the immune system to fight tumors.

Baked potato better than other superfood

The potato is a food that for many, is prohibited because it helps to gain weight, but is ignored by the large amount of vitamins, minerals and nutrients.

Experts say “The potato is actually better for the body than other traditional ‘superfoods’, such as bananas, broccoli, beets, nuts and avocados.”

The researchers said, “Baked potato has five and a half times more fiber than bananas and is equipped with more vitamin C found in three avocados.”

Last year, another study found that “the consumption of potatoes twice a day can lower blood pressure, contrary to popular belief, it is not fattening.”

The new research also found that “the potato contains more of the mineral selenium than the average child receives from all seeds and nuts they eat.”

A New Study Discover Sucralose Causes Cancer

A new study discover that mice have a higher risk of developing cancer after eating the popular British-made low-calorie artificial sweetener sucralose. According to post-mortems, the more sucralose male mice consumed, the higher was their likelihood of developing leukemia.

Hundreds of millions of people all around the world consume artificial sweeteners, which can be found in a large variety of foods and drinks, including soft drinks, cakes and foods for diabetics, as well as medicines. The increasing problem of obesity in developed countries, which started in the 70's in Europe and the U.S., has led to increasing demands for reduced-calorie foods and drinks. However, the expansion of the artificial sweetener market has also led to rising concerns amongst consumers in terms of safety and potential long-term health effects, especially with regard to the potential cancer risks.

Major consumers, especially children and pregnant women are advice to avoid consuming artificial sweeteners whenever possible until appropriate studies provide sufficient evidence that rodents are no longer underlying the risk of cancer, and that the risk of cancer in humans, due to artificial sweeteners, has therefore been eliminated. 

Plenty of fruit and vegetables are vital for cancer survivors

Exercise, Eat Healthily, And Maintain Ideal Bodyweight

A cancer survivor who want to minimize their risk of that cancer recurring, or another cancer developing, should eat a healthy diet, do plenty of exercise, and maintain a healthy body weight, says the American Cancer Society in its new guidelines. 

The more overweight a cancer survivor is, the higher is his/her risk of recurrence. The proportion of patients who are overweight on the day of their cancer diagnosis is much higher than in the rest of the population.

For those diagnosed with cancer, as well as patients who survive the disease, maintaining a healthy body weight is crucial.

Maintain a healthy weight by:

~  Controlling your calorie intake. This means being careful with high-calorie foods

~ Consuming fewer high-sugar or high-fat drinks

~ Consuming plenty of fruit, vegetables, whole grains and fiber

~ Must be are physically active -> Regular physical activity

Several studies and peer-reviewed articles in academic journals have demonstrated that regular physical activity has a considerable impact on the cancer survivors' quality of life.

More recently, studies have shown that being physically active after being diagnosed with cancer lowers the risk of the disease coming back when the cancer has gone. Studies on patients with ovarian, prostate, colon and breast cancer have convincingly proven this.

Diet :

>  Plenty of fruit, vegetables (and wholegrains) are vital for cancer survivors

Some studies have shown that people who eat lots of fruit and veggies, plus whole grains, have better survival rates after diagnosis.

Similar to what we've seen for cancer prevention, it looks like it's the overall dietary pattern that is important for cancer survivorship -it's not one food, or even one food group, that makes the difference. It's likely the combination of many different nutrients coming from many different foods, working together, that offers the best protection.

According to the studies, cancer survivors should make sure that their diet is:

> High in whole grains, vegetables and fruit

> Has a higher proportion of fish and poultry than red or processed meats, when considering animal-sourced proteins

> Dairy fat choices should be low-fat ones, rather than high-fat

> Butter and trans fats should be replaced by nuts and olive oil

Strawberries And Blueberries Halt Cognitive Decline In Elderly

Some researchers reported elderly individuals who eat plenty of strawberries and blueberries are less likely to experience cognitive decline, compared to those who rarely or never eat berries. Adding flavonoids-rich berries to elderly people's diet could delay their cognitive decline by up to two-and-a-half years.

Flavonoids, compounds which exist in plants, are extremely powerful antioxidants and anti-inflammatory substances. Scientists say inflammation and stress play a major role in cognitive decline, and that consuming plenty of flavonoids helps reduce their effects.

Previous studies had already shown that consuming flavonoids, especially anthocyanidins, can improve cognitive functions. However, they were all either animal studies or very small human ones.

The researchers emphasized that despite having taken some factors into account, there might still be others which are linked to higher berry intake which could affect their findings. For example, possibly those who eat more berries also exercise more.