Women generally have a longer life expectancy than men, a phenomenon often attributed to biological, behavioral, and lifestyle factors. Now, findings from a recent study demonstrate that women achieve greater benefits from equivalent amounts of moderate-to-vigorous activity than men do, reducing their risk of premature death from all causes by 24 percent. Researchers asked more than 412,000 healthy men and women in the United States to provide information about their physical activities, including the frequency, duration, intensity, and type. Then, they looked for links between physical activ... exercise mortality cardiovascular
Read moreFrom the article: The research found people who smoked and had a family history of stroke were more than six times more likely to suffer a stroke than those who did not smoke and did not have a family history of stroke or brain aneurysm. The study also found that people with a family history of stroke could cut their risk by more than half by quitting smoking. The results were the same regardless of high blood pressure, diabetes, alcohol use, body mass index and education level. View publication (https://n.neurology.org/content/72/1/69) ... genetics tobacco stroke aneurysm
Read moreJust one night of sleep deprivation can impair arterial function, and chronically poor sleep increases the risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Conversely, high intensity interval exercise can improve multiple markers of heart health. In this report, researchers tested the effects of exercise on flow mediated dilation, a measure of vascular function, in sleep-deprived participants. Flow mediated dilation is a measure of how wide an artery expands in response to increased blood flow. Meals high in fat normally cause dysfunction in blood vessels, impairing their ability to dilate. Previous... exercise heart disease cardiovascular
Read moreFrom the article: > "What this study shows is that large doses of vitamin C, when ingested orally by mice, actively stimulate bone formation to protect the skeleton. It does this by inducing osteoblasts, or premature bone cells, to differentiate into mature, mineralizing specialty cells." [...] > The mice who received an ovariectomy -- and no vitamin C -- had a much lower bone mineral density (BMD) versus controls, whereas mice who received a ovariectomy and large doses of vitamin C, had roughly the same BMD as the controls, suggesting vitamin C prevented BMD loss in this group. ... aging vitamin c bone
Read moreTwo proteins that play a role Alzheimer’s disease have now been shown to act as prions, misfolded proteins that spread by infecting other normal proteins to adopt the same misfolded shape. In this study, specific self-propagating prion forms of the proteins amyloid beta and tau were detected in postmortem brain tissue of 75 Alzheimer’s patients. Higher levels of these prions in human brain samples were also associated with early-onset forms of Alzheimer's disease and younger age at death. The study was published in Science Translational Medicine. This UCSF press release does a great job at sum... alzheimer's protein
Read moreBreast cancer patients had been treated with weekly paclitaxel for up to 12 weeks followed by four cycles of doxorubicin plus cyclophosphamide. After treatment, most patients had an increase in markers of metastasis with a few people increasing more than fivefold. More 50% of patients moved from low/intermediate- into a high-risk group for developing distant metastasis. Mice with breast cancer tumors were also treated with the same chemo drugs and they were found to initially reduce tumor growth but they also increased blood vessel growth and repair mechanisms allowing for more aggressive tumo... cancer breast cancer
Read moreFTA: > In a study published earlier this year in JAMA Neurology, researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that in a nine-year span from 2003 to 2012 there was a 32 percent spike in strokes among 18- to 34-year-old women and a 15 percent increase for men in the same range I wonder if there's any interesting associations they haven't mapped out... like an increase in NSAID (/news/t/nsaid) use in that group? It's interesting that women seem to be more affected. ... brain obesity heart disease mortality
Read moreSkin cells from a donor were reprogrammed to become stem cells and then turned into a certain type of retinal cell that was transplanted onto the retina of the patient who has age-related macular degeneration. So far the man's vision has not declined which means it might be working. The use of donors to make reprogrammed stem cells is new but the idea is to create a stem cell bank where people that have the same antigen type can be recipients of the stem cell therapy. Very exciting times ahead! ... technology aging stem cells
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