Everyday Noise Levels May Affect the Heart

Even not-so-loud sounds seemed to raise people's heart rate in small study

By Amy Norton

HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, May 9 (HealthDay News) -- Even the minor noise that fills everyday life, from the ring of a cell phone to the conversation that follows, may have short-term effects on heart function, a small new study suggests.

In the study of 110 adults equipped with portable heart monitors, researchers found that people's heart rate tended to climb as their noise exposure increased -- even when the noise remained below 65 decibels. That's about as loud as a normal conversation or laughter.

There was also a negative impact on people's heart rate "variability" -- a measure of the heart's adaptation to what is going on around you. Greater variability in the interval between heartbeats is better. When people are relaxed, the space between heartbeats is usually a bit longer as they exhale, and shorter as they inhale.

When people are stressed, however, some of that natural variation is lost. And studies have linked lesser heart rate variability to an increased risk of heart attack.

So does all of this mean you need to wear earplugs to protect your heart? Probably not, experts say.

For any one person, the effects of everyday noise on heart function may be small, said Charlotta Eriksson, a researcher at the Karolinska Institute, in Stockholm, Sweden. Eriksson was not involved in the study.

But since we are all exposed to noise, even a minor effect on heart health could be important on the broad "population level," said Eriksson, who has studied the effects of loud traffic -- from roads or airports -- on people's blood pressure and heart function.

Research has consistently found links between loud workplaces and an increased risk of heart disease, said Dr. Wenqi Gan, a researcher at North Shore-LIJ Health System's Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, in Manhasset, N.Y.

The evidence is more mixed when it comes to "community noise," like traffic sounds, said Gan, whose own research has found a connection.

He said the mixed results may be because it's difficult to weed out the effects of community noise on individuals. You might live in a noisy section of a big city, but have good, sound-muffling windows, for example.

"And some people are more sensitive to noise than others," Gan said. If noise affects the heart by stressing people out, he said, then your personal sensitivity to it would be important.

The new findings, reported in the May issue of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, are based on 110 adults who wore portable devices that measured their heart activity and noise exposure during their normal daily routines.

What was "interesting," Eriksson said, is that lower-level noise seemed to curb activity in the parasympathetic nervous system -- the branch of the nervous system that acts as a "brake," lowering heart rate and relaxing the blood vessels, for example.

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Breast-Fed Kids May Have Low Iron Levels, Study Finds

By Serena Gordon
HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, April 19 (HealthDay News) -- Although breast-feeding is generally considered the best way to nourish an infant, new research suggests that in the long term it may lead to lower levels of iron.

"What we found was that over a year of age, the longer the child is breast-fed, the greater the risk of iron deficiency," said the study's lead author, Dr. Jonathon Maguire, pediatrician and scientist at Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute at St. Michael's Hospital at the University of Toronto in Canada.

The study, released online April 15 in the journal Pediatrics, did not, however, find a statistical relationship between the duration of breast-feeding and iron deficiency anemia. Anemia is a condition in which the body has too few red blood cells.

Iron is an important nutrient, especially in children. It is vital for normal development of the nervous system and brain, according to background information included in the study. Growth spurts increase the body's need for iron, and infancy is a time of rapid growth.

The World Health Organization recommends breast-feeding exclusively for the first six months of life and then introducing complementary foods. The WHO endorses continued breast-feeding up to 2 years of age or longer, according to the study.

Previous studies have found an association between breast-feeding for longer than six months and reduced iron stores in youngsters. The current study sought to confirm that link in young, healthy urban children.

The researchers included data from nearly 1,650 children between 1 and 6 years old, with an average age of about 3 years. None of the children had any chronic conditions.

The odds of iron deficiency increased by about 5 percent for each additional month of breast-feeding.

The researchers also noted an association between greater daily cow's milk consumption and lower iron levels, according to the study.

"There isn't very much iron in breast milk, though breast milk does offer all kinds of advantages, particularly in the first year," Maguire said. "Children who breast-feed longer may not be eating as many complementary foods."

"This is something that parents can consider -- that there's a small but detectable risk of iron deficiency in children breast-fed past one year," he said. "These children may potentially benefit from a diet full of wholesome, iron-containing foods."

Iron-rich foods include those that are fortified with iron, such as cereals; lean beef, lamb and duck; oysters, shrimp, clams and sardines; beans and peas, such as lentils, chickpeas, white beans, kidney beans and lima beans; and spinach and turnip greens, according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

One doctor doubts the new study will change clinical practice.

"This was an interesting preliminary study, but from the standpoint of a practicing physician, there's not much I would change in practice," said Dr. Ruby Roy, a pediatrician at LaRabida Children's Hospital in Chicago, who will still recommend breast-feeding to new mothers.

"Mom's iron passes to baby very efficiently until the child is a little older, and the iron needs increase. I think all toddlers are at risk of iron deficiency," she said, adding that parents could encourage their children to eat more iron-rich foods. Pediatricians also should talk to parents about what foods are good sources of iron, she said.

Copyright © 2013 HealthDay. All rights reserved. SOURCES: Jonathon Maguire, M.D., pediatrician and scientist, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, St. Michael's Hospital, University of Toronto, Canada; Ruby Roy, M.D., assistant professor of pediatrics, and chronic disease, physician, LaRabida Children's Hospital, Chicago; May 2013 Pediatrics

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Despite Big Progress, Many Kids Have High Lead Levels in Blood

Title: Despite Big Progress, Many Kids Have High Lead Levels in Blood
Category: Health News
Created: 4/4/2013 2:35:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 4/5/2013 12:00:00 AM

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I have elevated PSA levels and am scheduled for a prostate biopsy — what can I expect?

Posted June 04, 2013, 2:00 am

I recently had a PSA test and my levels came back elevated. I’m scheduled to have a prostate biopsy. What can I expect?

The prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test is a screening test designed to detect prostate cancer before symptoms develop. An elevated PSA value can suggest that cancer may be present. But only a prostate biopsy can confirm the actual presence of cancer.

A prostate biopsy involves removing snippets of tissue from the prostate and checking them for cancerous cells under a microscope. Your prostate gland lies right next to your rectum, and the rectum is a passageway inside your body.

During the biopsy, your doctor will insert an ultrasound probe into your rectum. The ultrasound probe sends out sound waves that travel into the prostate and bounce back like an echo in a canyon. When they bounce back, they create a picture of your prostate gland. The picture shows the parts of the prostate that look like they might have cancer. This helps identify the best targets for the biopsy.

Guided by the ultrasound picture, the doctor uses a spring-loaded “biopsy gun” that directs a needle into the part of the prostate that looks cancerous. The device quickly sends a needle through your rectal wall and into the prostate. The needle removes small tissue samples — a typical biopsy removes 10 to 12 samples. When the needle is withdrawn from the body, the prostate tissue inside the needle is examined with a microscope to look for cancer.

You may feel a slight pinch as the needle punches into the prostate gland and takes the sample. Most men feel only mild to moderate discomfort.

Possible risks of a prostate biopsy include:

painerectile problemsblood in the urine or stoolshort-term rectal bleedingblood in the semendifficulty urinatingurinary incontinenceurinary tract or prostate gland infection

If your biopsy result is positive, that means it has confirmed the presence of cancer in your prostate. If the biopsy specimen shows cancer, it’s cancer. But some prostate cancers just sit there for the rest of your life and never cause trouble, whereas others do cause problems. The main question your doctor asks when the biopsy is positive: What kind of prostate cancer is this?

The detailed biopsy findings will help you and your doctor decide what kind of prostate cancer you have, the extent and location of the cancer, and how malignant the cells look. This information helps your doctor determine how aggressive your cancer will be and the best course of action.

If no cancerous cells are found in the samples, that’s a good sign. But there’s still some room for doubt. About 10 percent of biopsies are “false negatives.” This means they have missed existing cancer.

Yes, the prostate biopsy can have side effects and can sometimes miss cancer. But the development of ultrasound pictures and biopsy guns and needles has made the diagnosis of prostate cancer much more accurate and has saved many lives.

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Cholesterol Levels May Vary By Season

Title: Cholesterol Levels May Vary By Season
Category: Health News
Created: 3/7/2013 12:36:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 3/8/2013 12:00:00 AM

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Cholesterol Levels May Vary By Season

Brazilian study doesn't necessarily mean that heart attack or stroke risk rises in winter

By Steven Reinberg

HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, March 7 (HealthDay News) -- Cholesterol levels increase with winter's arrival and drop again as warmer weather returns, a new study by Brazilian researchers suggests.

"In the winter, people should be careful with their cholesterol levels," said lead researcher Dr. Filipe Moura, a doctoral student at the State University of Campinas.

Whether these changes in cholesterol are putting patients at risk for heart attacks or stroke isn't clear, Moura said. It's a complex picture and these changes might have a role, but there are many other factors, he added.

There are several possible reasons cholesterol varies by season, Moura said, including changes in diet, exercise and exposure to the sun.

"In the winter, people consume more calories and eat fattier foods, which could have an effect on their bad cholesterol," he said. "Also, it's common for people to exercise less during the winter and stay in more."

People also get less sun in the winter, so they get less vitamin D, which can have an effect on cholesterol, Moura said. He also noted that during the winter people are prone to colds and the flu, which can effect cholesterol levels.

The study findings were scheduled to be presented Saturday at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology in San Francisco.

Moura's team collected data on more than 227,000 people who had their cholesterol checked in primary-care centers in the Brazilian city of Campinas between 2008 and 2010.

The researchers found that during the winter, low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or "bad" cholesterol, rose an average of 7 milligrams per deciliter compared to the summer, which is about an 8 percent increase during the cold months. During the summer, levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL), the "good" cholesterol, rose about 9 percent, but so did levels of fats in the blood called triglycerides, which rose about 5 percent, the researchers found.

This is different than what other studies have found, Moura said. A possible explanation is Campinas's climate. The city's elevation is roughly 1,800 to 2,500 feet above sea level, and the winters are mild and dry.

Moura said these changes may be even more extreme in the United States, Europe or other areas that have bigger climate changes between winter and summer.

He next plans to look at patients with heart disease to see whether the seasonal change in cholesterol results in more heart attacks.

What these findings mean for patients isn't clear, said Dr. Gregg Fonarow, a spokesman for the American Heart Association and a professor of cardiology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

"This study suggests there may be modest seasonal variation ... with higher LDL levels in winter months compared to summer, but further studies are needed to confirm these findings and whether there is any meaningful impact on cardiovascular risk," Fonarow 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.

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Higher Indoor Humidity Levels Might Slow Flu's Spread

By Alan Mozes

HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Feb. 28 (HealthDay News) -- As the flu season continues to pack a punch for some Americans, new research suggests there might be a simple way to reduce the risk for infection in an indoor setting: hike up humidity levels.

By raising indoor relative humidity levels to 43 percent or above, investigators reported that they were able to quickly render 86 percent of airborne virus particles powerless.

The finding is reported in the February issue of the journal PLOS One by a team led by John Noti, a senior service fellow with the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's Health Effects Laboratory Division at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Morgantown, W.V.

To assess the role of humidity in flu transmission, Noti and his colleagues relied on mechanized mannequins and tissue cultures rather than actual humans.

Placed in a tightly sealed and disinfected model of a hospital examination room, a coughing mannequin served as a flu patient and was outfitted with aerosolized viral solution. The viral solution was projected into the air via five mechanized "coughs," spread out over one-minute intervals.

At the same time, a breathing mannequin (serving as a caregiver) was set to face the coughing mannequin at a distance of a little less than 7 feet. The breathing model was programmed to inhale in sync with the coughing, and aerosol samples of inhaled air were collected at various points around the mouth of the caregiver for up to five hours post-coughing.

Throughout testing, humidity levels were adjusted from a low of 7 percent relative humidity to a high of 73 percent.

The result: the team found that when humidity levels were set to 43 percent, only 14 percent of the virus particles that were released were able to transmit the influenza virus, compared with a transmission rate of 70 percent to 77 percent in a relatively low-humidity environment (23 percent).

What's more, the protective impact of higher humidity levels appeared to be rapid, with the majority of viral inactivation taking place within 15 minutes of when viral particles were first "coughed" into a high-humidity environment.

The study authors cautioned that it remains to be seen whether humidity adjustments can undermine infection risk as effectively in a real-world setting.

If confirmed, however, the protective impact of humidity levels of 40 percent and above probably would be of the most practical benefit in hospital settings, where the ability to protect medical staff by strictly regulating humidity levels would be most feasible.

"I totally buy this," said Dr. Marc Siegel, a clinical associate professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City. "It's very hard to prove that lower humidity increases the risk of transmissibility, but it's not surprising because the reasoning makes sense, which is that droplets fall to the ground in high humidity because water travels on dry air, not on water. If you combine airborne viral droplets with water droplets, they fall."

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Foods Might Serve Up High Levels of Chemicals Found in Plastics

By Carina Storrs

HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 27 (HealthDay News) -- Bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates, two types of chemicals in plastics that have been linked to a number of health effects, could still find their way into your body even if you avoid foods that are shipped, stored or cooked using plastic materials, new research suggests.

The findings are based on a small study that followed 10 families for five days. Half of the families got catered meals made with fresh, local ingredients that were not stored or prepared with plastics.

The other half got a handout on how to avoid BPA and phthalates in their diet, such as not microwaving foods and drinks in plastic containers and avoiding food in cans, which are often lined in BPA-containing material.

"We fully expected to see reductions in the catered-diet group, and hoped the other group would also have reductions" in their levels of these chemicals, said study author Dr. Sheela Sathyanarayana, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Instead, the researchers found that all but one person in the catered-diet group had a spike in phthalate levels in their urine during the five-day diet intervention, and a more modest increase in their BPA levels. In contrast, the group that got handouts had steady levels of these chemicals over the study period.

The researchers then tested the ingredients in the catered diet to track down the source of phthalate exposure and detected high levels in milk, butter and cream, and also in some of the spices, such as cinnamon and ground coriander.

"Several studies have found that high-fat dairy tends to contain high concentration of phthalates, maybe because of phthalates in the plastic tubing that milk goes through to get to the final containers, and it may be in animal products, such as feed," Sathyanarayana said.

Overall, the more processed the food, the more likely it could come into contact with materials that contain phthalates, and phthalates can easily leach from these materials into food, Sathyanarayana explained. Spices could be one type of highly processed food, she added.

Unfortunately, consumers have no way of knowing which products or brands contain phthalates because manufacturers themselves don't know whether their processing materials contain phthalates, Sathyanarayana added.

Brent Collett and his wife and kids were one of the families that received the catered diet for Sathyanarayana's study. At the end of the study, Collett and the other families received a letter telling them their phthalate and BPA levels and the foods that contained phthalates.

"To have ingredients [such as coriander] that is not a major part of diet lead to this increase was a bit of an eye-opener," said Collett, a psychologist at Seattle Children's Hospital. "There would be no way we as consumers could do any better" than the catered diet in this study at avoiding plastics, he added.

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FDA Should Work to Cut Sugar Levels in Sodas, Experts Say

Title: FDA Should Work to Cut Sugar Levels in Sodas, Experts Say
Category: Health News
Created: 2/13/2013 12:35:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 2/14/2013 12:00:00 AM

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