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Monday, March 18, 2013
Amber Le Bon at a Johnnie Walker Blue Label party
Amber Le Bon wears a beaded top and black trousers at a Johnnie Walker Blue Label party - vote on celebrity fashion, style and red carpet looks in GLAMOUR.COM’s Dos and Don’tsContinue reading...
Gisele is the new face of Chanel
Nerve-Stimulating Device Might Ease Migraines
By Alan Mozes
HealthDay ReporterWEDNESDAY, Feb. 6 (HealthDay News) -- Migraine sufferers in search of a non-medicinal alternative for relief may be encouraged by new Belgian research that suggests that 20 minutes a day of nerve stimulation might cut back on the frequency of attacks.
The finding stems from a small study involving 67 migraine patients. All participants were outfitted with a wearable device called a "supraorbital transcutaneous stimulator," or STS, which was placed on the forehead and designed to deliver electrical stimulation to the patient's supraorbital nerve.
Use of the stimulator device was found to be "effective and safe as a preventive therapy for migraine," according to the study.
Study lead author Dr. Jean Schoenen, of the headache research unit in the department of neurology & GIGA-neurosciences at Liege University, and colleagues described the team's findings in the Feb. 6 online issue of Neurology.
Study participants were aged 18 to 65 and were being treated for migraines at one of five headache clinics in Belgium. All routinely experienced a minimum of two -- and an average of four -- migraine attacks per month. Although some had previously tried standard drug-based treatments, none had been taking any type of preventive chronic anti-migraine treatment in the three months leading up to the study launch.
Between 2009 and 2011, the patients were randomly divided into two groups. Both were given identical self-adhesive stimulation electrode pads to place on their forehead for 20 minutes daily over a three-month period. However, one group's electrode was a sham device that exerted an ineffectively weak electrical pulse, while the second group wore a working supraorbital transcutaneous stimulator.
Participants kept migraine diaries, which revealed that although migraine severity did not decrease much, by the third month of the study, those using the working devices saw the frequency of their attacks drop from about seven per month to fewer than five.
Sham device users experienced no such drop-off.
In addition, 38 percent of the working device users saw their attacks drop off by half or more, compared with 12 percent for those using fake stimulators.
Monthly use of anti-migraine drugs to cope with migraine attacks when they occurred dropped by nearly 37 percent among supraorbital transcutaneous stimulator users, with no drop among the sham group.
Schoenen and her associates said that the exact mechanism by which electrical stimulation seems to help migraine sufferers remains unclear, though they suggested it might have something to do with the neurological prompting of a "sedative effect."
Perhaps most important was the finding that none of the stimulator users experienced any side effects.
The researchers point to a previously conducted analysis of studies focusing on the impact of taking a 100-milligram dosage of topiramate -- a standard migraine drug. That analysis showed that the drug was considerably more effective than the nerve stimulator devices in its ability to reduce the frequency of monthly attacks.
Smoking Pot May Raise Stroke Risk in Young Adults
By Mary Brophy Marcus
HealthDay ReporterWEDNESDAY, Feb. 6 (HealthDay News) -- Smoking pot may double a young adult's risk for stroke, new research suggests, but experts point out the study is small and not conclusive.
Scientists from New Zealand presented their data Wednesday at the American Stroke Association annual meeting, in Honolulu.
"Sixteen percent of stroke patients had positive cannabis screens, compared with only 8 percent of control participants," said study author Dr. Alan Barber, a stroke neurologist and professor of clinical neurology at the University of Auckland.
"We think the relationship between cannabis and stroke is certainly plausible," Barber said. "We know [from other studies] cannabis reduces the time to angina, that it's associated with myocardial infarction [heart attack] and heart rhythm problems. It can also cause vasoconstriction. If you constrict arteries in the brain, you can have reduced blood flow.
"We believe the association is not just a chance one, but worthy of further investigation," he added.
Barber's study involved 160 stroke patients and 160 healthy participants, all between 18 and 55, an age range during which people rarely suffer a stroke, he said.
Of the stroke patients, 150 had been admitted to the hospital for an ischemic stroke -- the most common kind of stroke, in which blood flow is blocked to the brain. The other 10 had been admitted for a transient ischemic attack (TIA or "mini-stroke"). All were given urine tests that screened for evidence of marijuana use.
Barber said the ingredients in marijuana show up in urine tests for three or four days if you only use it occasionally, but urine will test positive for the drug for 30 to 40 days in daily users.
The 160 control group patients had come to the hospital as internal medicine admissions with non-stroke diagnoses and did not know they were involved in the study. Their urine samples had been tested for other reasons and were about to be discarded.
"As a consequence, the controls were anonymous -- we only could know age, sex and ethnicity," Barber explained.
The results after the drug screens: Twenty-five (more than 15 percent) of the stroke patients had positive cannabis screens and were also more likely to be male (84 percent) and tobacco smokers (88 percent). Of the control urine samples, thirteen (8 percent) were positive for marijuana.
"There was a doubling for the risk of stroke," Barber said.
Because this study was presented at a medical meeting, the data and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Two experts said the study is worthwhile, but doesn't lead to any concrete conclusions.
"It's not a strong study, not one you can hang your hat on, but it's better than others we've got," said Dr. Daniel Labovitz, director of the Stern Stroke Center at Montefiore Medical Center, in New York City.
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Diet Drinks As Mixers May Make for More Potent Cocktails
By Serena Gordon
HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, Feb. 5 (HealthDay News) -- Calorie counters, beware: Drinking diet "mixers" with alcohol intensifies the effects of the booze, according to the findings of breathalyzer tests.
Preliminary research on the use of different mixers, such as juice, soda or diet soda, suggests that diet soda might increase breath alcohol content more than higher calorie sugary beverages.
"The key thing is to be aware of this phenomenon," said study author Cecile Marczinski, an assistant professor in the department of psychological science at Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights.
"People tend to think that cutting calories is important, but when you're drinking alcohol, calories help slow down the release of alcohol to your liver and brain," Marczinski said.
Breath alcohol concentration, which is what police measure to determine if someone has consumed more than the legal limit of alcohol, is affected by different factors. Food in the stomach can lower breath alcohol concentration by up to 57 percent compared to drinking on an empty stomach, according to background information in the study.
Because many people are concerned about their weight, particularly young women, the researchers wanted to see how a drink mixer might affect breath alcohol levels.
For the study, released Feb. 5 online in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, the researchers recruited eight males and eight females, average age 23, to attend three study sessions. At one session, they drank vodka mixed with regular Squirt, a soda. At another, they drank vodka mixed with diet Squirt, which is artificially sweetened with aspartame. At the final session, a placebo session, they drank regular soda with a small amount of alcohol on the top of the drink to create the smell of booze.
At each session, the study volunteers drank the equivalent of three to four bar drinks in a short period of time, said Marczinski. Breath alcohol content was measured eight times in the three hours following the drinks' consumption.
Breath alcohol levels peaked 40 minutes after the study volunteers had their drinks. When the alcohol was mixed with regular soda containing sugar, the peak breath alcohol level was just under the legal limit at 0.077. But for diet soda drinkers, the peak was at 0.091, which is above the legal limit for driving a car.
Breath alcohol levels remained higher for the diet soda/alcohol drinkers for the entire three-hour period.
After drinking, the researchers also had the study volunteers perform a test on the computer. Participants who downed the diet drinks performed slightly worse, although they didn't notice any difference in the way they felt or performed.
"They were slower to respond. It was a small difference, but it was statistically significant," said Marczinski.
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Which Fats Really Are Good for Your Heart?
Feb. 6, 2013 -- The standard advice about which fats are best for heart health is under debate again.
Triggering it is new research, just published in BMJ, finding that a form of omega-6 fatty acid found in vegetable oils may actually boost heart disease risk. Omega-6 fatty acids are a type of polyunsatured fat, which has generally been considered heart healthy.The new findings could significantly alter the advice about which type of fats to eat, some experts say. The new research warrants another look at the current recommendations, says a spokesperson for the American Heart Association.
WebMD turned to the study author and other experts to sort out the findings -- and to figure out which fats to eat now.
First, a refresher course on fats:
Saturated fats, found in high-fat dairy, meats, and fried foods, as well as trans-fats, found in processed foods such as chips and cookies, should be limited. Experts agree they raise the risk of heart disease.Unsaturated fats, in moderation, are considered heart-healthy, overall. These include monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated. Monounsaturated fats are found in olive oil, nuts, and other foods. Polyunsaturated fats can be broken down into two types: omega-6 fatty acids, found in soybean oil, corn oil, and safflower oil; and omega-3 fatty acids, also in soybean and canola oil and in nuts and some fish as well.What's the ''back story'' on omega-6 fatty acids?
While polyunsaturated fatty acids -- which include omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids -- are viewed as heart-healthier fats, the information about the benefits of omega-6 fatty acids is more limited, says Christopher Ramsden, MD, a clinical investigator at the National Institutes of Health. He led the research.
Because many oils often contain both, it has been difficult to know which is healthier than the other.
The benefits of foods with both omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids (such as many vegetable oils) may be due more to the omega-3 fatty acids, says Ramsden. "We suspect that omega-6 might not be as healthy as omega-3," he says.
Different fatty acids may have different effects on heart health, he says.
What exactly did the study look at?
Ramsden and his team recovered some unanalyzed data from the Sydney Diet Heart Study, conducted from 1966 to 1973. The study included 458 men, ages 30 to 59, with a history of heart attack or other heart problems.
One group was told to reduce their saturated fat intake to less than 10% of daily calories and increase their polyunsaturated fat intake to about 15% of calories. They were told to use safflower oil or safflower oil margarine, which has linoleic acid, a form of omega-6, but no omega-3 fats.
The other group received no specific instruction on diet.
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Karolina Kurkova wears a blue fringed dress at The Face studios in NY - vote on celebrity fashion, style and red carpet looks in GLAMOUR.COM’s Dos and Don’tsContinue reading...
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