Can Vitamins, Minerals and Supplements Help You Live Longer?

Most people, if questioned, would say that they want to live longer. There are all kinds of methods that people use to attempt longevity, but one that they should pay closer attention to is using vitamins, minerals and supplements.

 

Living for a long time has foundations in wellness and wellbeing; if you focus on keeping yourself healthy, you are likely to avoid the diseases that could shorten your life. More nutrients should be linked to more years on your life, as your body will be in the best possible condition. But are vitamins in the form of pills just as beneficial as vitamins that you can get from your diet?

 

As you get older, the nutrients that you need in order to keep your body healthy change, and that is when the vitamins and supplements market comes into its own. Pills can be targeted at specific age groups, be that sportsmen, teen girls or menopausal women, in order to make sure that they get the exact nutrients that they require.

 

Nevertheless, research continues to turn up mixed results about whether dietary supplements are beneficial, harmful to your body or are simply of no benefit or harm whatsoever.

 

There are some things, however, that are associated with longevity, and which could be tried if you are hoping to extend your life. Beta carotene, for example, is associated with lowering your risk of cancer, but this only works in dietary form, not when taken as a supplement. Calcium has also been shown to increase mortality, and can be taken in pill form. There are risks to taking regular calcium, however, so this should only be done so with the support of your doctor. Vitamin D also tends to work in collaboration with calcium to help keep your bones healthy and to protect you against certain cancers. Taking vitamin D supplements is widely believed to be safe.

Categories: live, live longer, longer, minerals, Mortality, nbsp, Supplements, vitamins, vitamins minerals

Warning: Bipolar Women at Risk of having Shorter Life

Women who suffer from the mental health disorder bipolar disease are at risk of dying significantly earlier than other people, a new study has revealed. The researchers at Stanford University found that women whose wellness is affected by bipolar disorder die around nine years earlier than most people, and men who suffer from bipolar disorder are likely to die around eight and a half years earlier than other people.

 

Researchers identified numerous reasons why their wellbeing was likely to be affected in this way, including links with heart disease, COPD, diabetes, pneumonia, influenza, unintentional injuries as well as suicide. Cancer was also a factor in many women with bipolar disorder. Results of the survey were published in a journal called JAMA Psychiatry.

 

Scientists looked at data from a Swedish study which examined 6.5 million adults, 6,618 of whom were suffering from bipolar disorder.

 

Women who have bipolar disorder were found to be twice as likely to die from cancer as those who did not have bipolar disorder. Women were also at increased risk of suicide as they were 10 times more likely to commit suicide than the average person. Men followed closely behind, being 8 times more likely to commit suicide due to bipolar disorder than people who do not have bipolar disorder.

 

Normal death rates sit at around 14 deaths per 1,000 people in the general population, but when just looking at data from those with bipolar disorder, the rates were more than double this. There were strong links to diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, pneumonia, flu and diabetes in these cases.

 

It had commonly been believed that increased rates of mortality amongst those with bipolar disorder were simply down to increased rates of suicide, but the study observed that although this was a risk factor, it was not the entire picture by any means.

Categories: bipolar, bipolar disorder, commit suicide, Death, Disorder, disorder nbsp, increased rates, Mortality, people, Women, years earlier

Is Arthritis Linked to Higher Post-MI Death Risk?

It is now known that rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients had significantly higher long-term death rate after myocardial infarction (MI) than did matched MI patients without RA. This was revealed in a review of a population-based cohort of patients. The RA patients also exhibited an increased risk of recurrent ischemia when compared to those patients who did not have RA.

A team of researchers analysed a set of data from the Rochester Epidemiology Project, which includes all of the records from health care providers for the population of Olmsted County, Minnesota. They looked specifically at 77 RA patients and 154 age- and sex-matched patients without RA who had an MI between 1979, and 2010.

Overall, around 55 per cent of patients in both cohorts were female. The mean age at MI was 72.4 years old. It was known that there were no significant differences between cohorts regarding MI risk factors such as hypertension, dyslipidaemia, diabetes, smoking status and weight. MI characteristics, severity, and electrocardiogram findings were also known to be similar.

Additionally, the RA patients and the other patients who were unaffected were known to have no differences in treatment during and after MI and in-hospital mortality. Mortality at 30 days post MI and at 1 year post MI was also similar.

The similarities ended for long-term mortality. The authors of the study discovered that during a median follow-up of 2.6 years among the RA cohort, 55 of the patients died. That is compared to the 85 patients who died over a median 2.7 years in the control cohort.

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Is Arthritis Linked to Higher Post-MI Death Risk?

Categories: Arthritis, cohort, Long term, MI, Mortality, Patients, post mi, RA, ra patients, risk, years

Die-abetes: Do Patients Need to Do More to Survive?

In spite of the fact that many diabetics take care of the wellbeing by taking medications and pursuing an effective, wellness lifestyle, diabetes survival rates don’t seem to be improving. According to emerging research, published in Population Health Metrics, more needs to be done to extend diabetic lives.

If you have diabetes or pre-diabetes (dysglycemia), it is recommended that you maintain a healthy weight, eat healthy foods, stay physically fit, and take certain medications to achieve target blood sugar levels. However, a new study – led by Andrew Stokes, a PhD student in demography at the Population Studies Centre at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia – has shown that while these approaches may improve health, survival rates for dysglycemic patients do not appear to be improving.

Alongside his colleague Neil Mehta from the Department of Global Health at Emory University in Atlanta, Stokes evaluated the numbers on 10,291 non-diabetic patients, 2,339 with pre-diabetes and 2,050 with diabetes.  All subjects participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, and were aged 35 to 74 at baseline. Stokes and Mehta compared the mortality rates of two populations—one from 1988 to 1994 and one from 1999 to 2002.

The mortality rate for individuals with pre-diabetes increased from 11.19 to 14.02 deaths per 1,000 person-years, and from 20.34 to 20.82 deaths per 1,000 person-years in people with diabetes. The study’s authors noted that the death rate change for those with diabetes and pre-diabetes was a ‘non-significant increase in mortality over time,’ but when compared to the decreasing death rate of populations with normal blood sugar or no diabetes, (7.81 to 6.04 deaths per 1,000 person-years) it was a different story.

According to Stokes, ‘We found that individuals with pre-diabetes and diabetes, taken together, experienced persistently higher mortality rates compared to the normo-glycaemic population during 1988-2006, with no evidence of a narrowing gap.’ He added that pre-diabetic people have not been officially diagnosed with diabetes, and so they are particularly vulnerable to premature death because they are not receiving treatment.

‘The lack of improvement in mortality in the dysglycemic population is concerning and suggests that individuals with pre-diabetes and diabetes should be an important focus of future interventions aimed at improving population health in the US,’ concluded the authors. ‘Future work should verify these findings in larger datasets and using more recent cohort experience. Trends should also be examined in more detail—by gender, race/ethnicity and separately for individuals with pre-diabetes versus diabetes,’ Stokes added.

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Die-abetes: Do Patients Need to Do More to Survive?

Categories: Mortality, Prediabetes, Research

Why Are There More Heart Attacks but Fewer Deaths?

In the past five years, the rate of people in Singapore suffer a heart attack has increased, whilst there has been a significant decrease in the number of deaths. Wellness experts surmise that this is due to a greater awareness of heart health, and better prevention and treatment of heart attacks.

The latest figures from the Ministry of Health (MOH) that the wellbeing of more and more people is affected by heart attacks, rising from 7,242 in 2008 to 7,813 in 2011. However, the number of people who died from heart attacks fell from 1,557 in 2008 to 1,102 in 2011. The statistics also show that Malays have also taken over from Indians as the highest risk group.

According to Associate Professor Tan Huay Cheem, director of the National University Heart Centre (NUHC), it used to be the case in Singapore that patients had to wait an average of 95 minutes at the hospital before an artery was unblocked, but, four years later in 2011, the average time from arriving at the hospital to unblocking an artery has gone down to 66 minutes. He also pointed to emergency stenting – keeping the blood vessel open with a metal scaffolding – as a reason why survival rates have been boosted.

After adjusting for an older population, the MOH reported that the rate of heart attacks per 100,000 people had fallen steadily from 45 in 2008 to 30 in 2011. However, that doesn’t mean Singapore is out of the woods just yet, as Associate Professor Terrance Chua, deputy medical director of the National Heart Centre, cautioned that heart attacks continue to be a major concern, due to the fact that they occur more commonly in the older age groups and the country’s population is ageing.

He said, ‘Heart disease and stroke combined accounts for one in three deaths in Singapore. Hence, it is still a major cause of death and disability, adding that ‘we cannot afford to be complacent,’ as the rates of diabetes and obesity in Singapore are rising, and both diseases are known to increase the risk of heart attacks. When it came to the Malayan increase, Professor Tan noted that Malays take a longer time to get medical help, which could reflect poorer understanding of the disease and its symptoms among them.

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Why Are There More Heart Attacks but Fewer Deaths?

Categories: heart attacks, Mortality, Singapore