ARE YOU GETTING ENOUGH?
A study
indicates that getting less than seven hours sleep a night may significantly
increase the risk of suffering heart disease. Researchers found that people who
get more rest are less likely to have calcium clogging their arteries, which
can lead to heart attacks and heart failure. Scientists believe that the body
is better able to clear the build-up from the crucial blood vessels if it gets
more rest. High levels of cholesterol, high blood pressure
and smoking/are known to affect the risk of suffering hardened arteries.
Scientists have proven
that the amount of regular sleep a person gets can also affect their chances of
developing the condition. They tested 495 people, aged from 35 to 47, over five
years, none of whom had evidence of hardened arteries at the start of the
study. By the end, however,12% of the volunteers were
sufferers. Most people in the study got between six and seven hours sleep a
night. After adjusting for factors,
including age and sex, researchers found that one extra hour of sleep, a night
could cut the chance of developing hardening of the arteries by 33% according
to the results published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Christopher Ryan King, from the
Future studies will be
needed for crucial extensions to these results, he said, for example does sleep
moderate the rate at which calcification accumulates?
The British Heart
Foundation commented that it is not yet clear quite how sleep affects heart
disease risk but this study adds to previous research suggesting that getting
enough sleep may help, to keep our heart and circulation healthy. Sleep is
essential for our body’s ability to repair itself. Experts recommend that adults should get
between seven and eight hours sleep a night.
STATINS.............YET AGAIN!
A
rheumatologist, Dr. Andrew Bamji, writing in the
Daily Mail recently, recounts the problems he had with statins
prescribed to lower his high cholesterol level.
He developed tenosynovitis, severe tendon
inflammation, a condition he recognised from his own experience in treating his
patients. The condition manifested
itself by a pain in the shin - an unusual location for tenosynovitis
- and this led him do a little research.
The only similar case he could find was linked to a patient on statins. He decided
to stop his statin and within a couple of weeks the
pain was gone. He then went to his
General Practitioner and between them they tried many variants of the drug but
all gave problems, night cramp, muscle pain, severe muscle disorder known as myopathy and general fatigue. Whenever he stopped the statin the symptoms went away within a few weeks. He realised that many of his own patients
with musculoskeletal problems such as polymyalgia -
pain, stiffness and tenderness in the muscles - were on statins.
These he advised to try stopping the statin and in most cases their problems disappeared. He argues that taking a
statin only marginally improves the chances of
dying from a heart attack and if the side effects are so bad, why bother. As for the suggestion of giving all the
elderly a statin (a cheaper alternative to treating
coronary heart disease) he points out that elderly people must be the fittest
to have survived and it is questionable whether they should be given pills to
prevent a condition they do not have.
One imagines that the majority of THROB members are on statins and if that includes you, then it is certainly
worth seeing your GP if you have any of the side effects referred to
above.
NOTES
FROM THE BCPA
I receive a copy of the BCPA Journal which is
the official magazine of the British Cardiac Patients Association and this issue
contained several articles which are of interest to THROB Members.
There has been a three year clinical
trial using 10,000 patients run, at the
There was also an article on the use of
acupuncture as a treatment for heart disease. I am an enthusiast for many complementary
treatments and would be happy to try acupuncture. I was, however, pleased to
see that the article only recommended acupuncture as an adjunct to drug therapy
and medical interventions and not as a replacement. It is, I believe, foolish
to rely on complementary techniques to the exclusion of current medical
thinking.
Finally, there was an article which
reported the Government announcement that, within three years, they would like
to have a service whereby at least 97% of heart attack patients would have
immediate angioplasty rather than thrombolysis. It is
estimated that this would reduce the death rate by about 5% to 7%, saving 240
lives a year. This would require a major change in the way the ambulance
service handles emergency calls, as patients would be taken directly to a
cardiologist who would not necessarily be in the nearest hospital. There have
been trials on this in various parts of the country and it has been routine
practice in the
Roger Mills
MICRO-ROBOTICS TO THE RESCUE
A tiny
robot that could be injected into a patient’s blood stream to carry out
potentially life-saving operations has been designed by scientists in
Scientists
at
Prof.
James Friend, who helped to design the device, said that it could be used to
great effect. He said: “We have a neurologist on the team who deals with stroke
patients who come in needing urgent treatment. At the moment about 30 per cent
of his interventions fail or end up killing the patient. One of our hopes would
be that these microbots can increase his success
rate, by allowing him to act more quickly and with greater precision.
Researchers
plan to attach a scraping device to the microbot,
which they say would help to clear blockages in arteries. The microbot could also be used to collect cells for tests and
carry a camera to show doctors the inside of blood vessels, as reported in the
Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering. The
team has tested the device in human blood and in artificial arteries and later
this year it will begin experiments in pigs.
(All
this within a size of two human hairs!
Someone has to be pulling my leg!
Ed.)
FRUIT AND NUT RISOTTO
4 tablespoons
olive oil
chicken or vegetable stock cube
225g brown
rice
2 onions
(chopped)
1 green pepper
(de-seeded, chopped)
150g cashew
nuts
200g mushrooms
(sliced)
4 tomatoes
(skinned and chopped)
50g raisins
salt and fresh-ground black pepper
Fry the rice
in half the oil for about 3 minutes. Cover with stock and cook for 45
minutes. Fry onions in the rest of the
oil until soft. Add the green pepper,nuts and mushrooms and cok for about 7 minutes.
Add thecooked rice, tomatoes, raisinsand adjust seasoning to taste. Reheat the mixture gently. Serves four.
(Based on a
recipe by Carole Handslip)
NUT AND VEGETABLE LOAF
25g butter
1 small onion (chopped)
1 small carrot (chopped)
1 stick of celery
(chopped)
1 tablespoon tomato
puree
225g tomatoes (skinned
and chopped)
2 eggs
1 tablespoon chopped
parsley
salt
fresh ground black pepper
225g mixed nuts (finely
chopped or minced)
Melt the butter in a pan
and add onion, carrot and celery. Cook until softened. Add tomaotes
and tomato puree and cook for 5 minutes.
Put the eggs into a bowl beat well adding parsley, salt and pepper. Stir in the
nuts and vegetables. Transfer to a
greased ovenproof dish, place in a preheated oven(
MEDITERRANEAN
DIET
A Mediterranean style
diet has been well studied in patients with coronary heart disease.
The origin of this diet
spreads across 16 different countries and is usually defined as the
diet that was consumed in
many regions of
1960’s. This style of diet is characterised by large amounts of
olive oil, nuts, seeds, whole
grains, fruits, vegetables,
and oily fish with a reduction in saturated fats and processed
foods. In November’s edition
of the THROB newsletter the benefits of oily fish were
considered. Over the next few
issues of the newsletter each component of the
Mediterranean diet will
be discussed. However, to achieve maximal benefits from the diet
each aspect should be
included in your diet on a regular basis. Consuming large amounts
of olive oil, nuts, seeds,
whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and oily fish with a reduction in
saturated fats and processed
foods will help reduce cardiac mortality by 31%.
In this additional
article I will focus on nuts, which form part of the Mediterranean diet.
Studies have suggested
that those who eat nuts on a regular basis (
less likely to suffer from
heart disease. The cardioprotective effect of nuts
have been
attributed to the high amounts of
unsaturated fat, protein, vitamin E, fibre, potassium
and magnesium, which are
found in most nuts. In addition, nuts are also low in salt.
The consumption of nuts
in small amounts can be eaten as a healthy snack between
meals and they have the
advantage of satisfying appetite. Although, nuts are very good
for us they contain
monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats which are high in calories. Therefore,
if you are trying to lose weight, limit your nut consumption to
NUT TYPE Approx. No. per Calories
25g portion
almonds 23 153
brazil nuts 7 170
cashews 20 152
chestnuts 3 43
hazelnuts 15 162
macademias 15 187
peanuts 20 141
pistachios 25 150
walnuts 4 172
The above table was adapted from the HEART UK Fact Sheet
on nuts (available at
www.heartuk.org.uk)
Finally, remember............Do not eat nuts if you have
a nut allergy!
Tim Grove
IT’S
ALL IN THE GENES!
Around one in 100 people has a gene
defect that almost guarantees heart failure, scientists have found. The gene is
believed to have first appeared in
Dr Kumarasamy Thangaraj from
For people whose ancestry can be traced
to the Indian subcontinent, the risk is much higher. They have more than a one
in 25 chance of inheriting the mutation, which is a deletion of 25 letters of
code from the heart protein gene MYBPC3.
Sir Mark Walport,
the director of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute,
who took part in the study said the findings were of
great importance. Heart disease is one of the world’s leading killers, but now
that researchers have identified this common mutation carried by one in 25
people of Indian origin we have hope in reducing the burden that the disease
causes. The research should lead to better screening to identify those at risk
and may ultimately allow the development of new treatments. Such harmful
mutations are normally, rare because they get weeded out by natural selection.
The MYBPC3 mutation is an exception.
.............A WEBMASTER
WORRIES....................................
As you may know our
Webmaster, Sid, has been doing battle with the British Heart Foundation (BHF)
concerning the state of their website and also with
"Thank you for your
email and your continued involvement with Heart Support Groups and the BHF. Let
me first explain why this information isn’t currently available, and then I
will outline our plans change this situation. At present our data-protection
agreement with our Heart Support Groups states that we will only share contact
information with patients or carers looking for support. This
was arranged so that groups were able to opt into a relationship with our
fundraising team and were not approached by non-BHF parties including
researchers and pharmaceutical companies. Due to this data-protection agreement
we are unable (and historically have not felt that it is appropriate) to
publish the contact information given to us by the groups on the BHF website.
It was our belief that we were acting in the best interest of our groups by
doing this. However, recent feedback from yourself, and other Heart Support
Group members who attended our 2008 networking days have alerted us to the fact
that many groups would be happy to for their details to be available more
widely .Our difficulty is that with only 30% of our Heart Support Groups
represented at the networking days, we cannot simply assume that all groups are
happy for their details to be published. As the majority of contact details
provided are people’s home addresses we feel strongly that we need to ask
people’s permission before we change the way we handle the data they provide. We have now finalised our communications
schedule for Heart Support Groups in 2009, and I am able to confirm that in
early March all of our Heart Support Groups will be contacted to ask them
permission to publish their contact details on our website. We are also giving
the groups the option of displaying a link to their own website (if they have
one), and writing a paragraph about their group which will be displayed with their
contact details. Groups who do not respond will be followed up with a second
letter in early April. It is our hope that a high percentage of groups will
give us permission so that we are able to build up a comprehensive database
that can be viewed online".
Our Sid was delighted by
the news of the BHF intentions but worried that they didn't provide the
complete picture and emailed the BHF and
"Good to hear from
you and good to hear of your good intentions. I am very delighted to hear what
the BHF is intending to do. Such a database could however be implemented in
stages starting even now with the Heart Support Groups that are willing to have
their contact details “exposed” bringing other Groups “on line” as and when
they agree. The problem would still remain as to how to include non-BHF related
Heart Support Groups in such a scheme. It would seem to me that the easier and
better option would be for the
No sooner had Sid’s
email hit the ether than back came
1. People looking for
one would find details of both, raising their awareness of both.
2. Each Patient Support
Group (PSG) would have a page that they could easily edit (just need a
password) to put up meeting times, photos, notices and a description of what
they do, basically giving each an easily maintained webpage at no cost to
themselves, obviously this could be linked to their own site if they already
have one.
3. General
Practitioners, Rehabilitation people, BHF Area Teams, and the PSGs could use it to tell people from other areas where the
facilities exist. It also provides for a member of a PSG moving their residence
to another district to identify a new local Heart Group.
4. It would help to map
where programmes have a local group to refer-on to and where there is lack of a
PSG and other Phase 4 long-term provisions.
Well that's wonderful,
and if and when it all gets put into place our Sid can stop
worrying........about this, anyway...
David Read