Obesity Rates Rising Among Women: CDC

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, June 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) — More American women than ever are obese, while the number of men carrying around far too many pounds has held steady, new research shows.

And a second study finds U.S. teens are another group that continues to struggle with obesity.

“Obesity remains a public health concern,” said Cynthia Ogden, an epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. She worked on both reports.

“Our study didn’t look at why, we just looked at the trends to see what was happening,” she explained. More research is needed to determine the reasons for the continuing obesity epidemic, she added.

The statistics are sobering.

Forty percent of American women and 35 percent of men were obese in 2013-2014, reflecting an increase among women but not among men, the report found.

Among children, 17 percent were obese in 2011-2014, while nearly 6 percent were extremely obese. The prevalence of obesity seesawed among young children, but increased slightly among teens, researchers found.

Dr. David Katz is director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, in Derby, Conn., and president of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine.

“Given all the high-profile attention to the obesity epidemic in America, even by those in the White House, we might be surprised and appalled that, overall, obesity rates are rising, not falling, and that the best news in the mix is stabilization of alarmingly high rates in a few select groups,” he said.

But even as health experts fret about obesity and its consequences, American culture “ignores it, denies it or simply profits from it,” said Katz.

To get a picture of the obesity trends among adults, Ogden and her colleagues used data from a national health survey that includes weight and height statistics. They collected data on more than 2,600 men (average age 47) and more than 2,800 women (average age 48) who were part of the survey in 2013 and 2014. In addition, they collected data on more than 21,000 men and women from surveys conducted from 2005 to 2012.

From 1980 to 2000, the prevalence of obesity increased among both men and women. From 2003 to 2004, the rate of obesity increased significantly for men but not for women, the researchers found.

There were no significant increases for men or women from 2003-2004 through 2012.

However, in 2013-2014, there was an increase, with 38 percent of American adults classified as obese. Nearly 8 percent were extremely obese, including 5.5 percent of men and almost 10 percent of women, Ogden’s team found.

Ogden’s group did find that men who smoked were less likely to be obese. Although smoking was not a factor in obesity among women, education was. Women with more than a high school education were far less likely to be obese, Ogden noted.

Among nearly 41,000 children and teens, Ogden and her colleagues found that over approximately 15 years obesity increased until 2003-2004, then decreased among children aged 2 to 5.

Among those aged 6 to 11, obesity increased until 2007-2008, then leveled off. Among teens 12 to 19, obesity increased through 2013-2014.

The reports were published June 7 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Katz sees the obesity epidemic as a cultural problem.

“We continue to aggressively market [the] food and drink most implicated in obesity and chronic disease,” he said.

“We live in a culture where we know food is willfully engineered to be all but addictive, but express no outrage and take no action,” Katz said. “We lament epidemic obesity even as we propagate it. We could fix this any time we decide we care enough about it to bother trying.”

More information

To learn more about obesity in America, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Do Big Bottles Kickstart Infant Weight Issues?

By Christine Chen
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, June 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Feeding babies formula from a big bottle might put them at higher risk for greater-than-normal weight gain and weight-for-length size, a new study suggests.

Researchers who assessed 298 babies found bottle size in early infancy is an important factor when measuring for unhealthy weight gain and higher risk for obesity at 6 months of age.

“Potentially, they were being overfed,” said Dr. Charles Wood, a pediatrician and co-author of the study.

“We’re trying to figure out the modifiable factors in early life that can prevent obesity or promote healthy growth in the first year of life,” added Wood, of the division of general pediatrics and adolescent medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The study concluded that reducing bottle size might be one way to reduce early onset obesity. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports childhood obesity has more than doubled in the United States in the past 30 years.

The infants in this study were fed exclusively by bottles containing formula, not breast milk or expressed breast milk, between the ages of 2 months and 6 months.

Almost half the parents used a “large” bottle, defined as one that held 6 or more ounces of formula. Overall, weight gain averaged about 6 pounds, but infants fed with a large bottle gained about 7 ounces more and had larger weight-for-length size by the 6-month mark.

“Bottle-fed infants might be at greater risk of being overfed, especially if the parent pushes the infant to finish the bottle, even if the baby is giving fullness signs,” Wood added.

Other research has reported that formula-fed infants are at a greater risk of obesity later in life. Researchers have also found that babies who are fed breast milk from the bottle, versus by breast, also gain more weight.

The American Academy of Pediatrics says both breast milk and formula are safe and healthy. However, the academy suggests exclusively breast-feeding for the first year for overall health and reducing the risk of obesity. A variety of solid, healthy foods and a cup can be introduced at 6 months, they advise.

“I’m a pediatrician, and breast-feeding is a top priority,” said Wood. “But there is a significant percentage of families that feed formula. This is a start to looking at bottle sizes to help promote healthy growth.”

Dr. Elsie Taveras, an associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School in Boston, said women choose to bottle-feed for many reasons. “We need to get away from bottle versus breast, to a certain extent, and among the mothers who are bottle-feeding, we need to give them equal guidance,” said Taveras.

With bottle-fed babies, “the additional milk in the bottle might be a bigger cue than the infant satiety that the feeding isn’t complete, especially when a parent isn’t as aware of knowing when he or she is full,” she added.

Taveras applauded this study for its look at portion control. And she suggested that parents work with their child’s pediatrician to understand infant signs of hunger and fullness. Caregivers should not let remaining milk in a bottle represent a need to keep feeding, she said.

Wood and Taveras said parents should watch for these signs:

• Hunger: Open mouth, lip smacking, hand in mouth, leaning toward bottle (crying is an extreme sign of hunger).
• Fullness: Turning or pulling away from the bottle, batting the bottle, shaking head, acting distracted and looking around during feeding, falling asleep.

“Every baby eats differently, but at 2 months, they’re taking in about 4 ounces. Ideally, with a young infant, you want to fill up a bottle to 4 ounces and see whether they need more, then make more. It really goes back to seeing if they’re full,” Wood suggested.

The study authors added that more research is needed to understand fully the link between bottle-feeding and obesity risk. The researchers will track these children as they get older and ascertain whether the weight gain at this stage is significant.

The study was published online June 7 in the journal Pediatrics.

More information

For more on infant feeding, head to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

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Cutting Back on Wine? Try a Smaller Glass

TUESDAY, June 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Like wine just a little too much sometimes? You may sip a little less over an evening if it’s served in smaller goblets, a new British study finds.

“It’s not obvious why this should be the case, but one reason may be that larger glasses change our perceptions of the amount of wine, leading us to drink faster and order more,” said lead researcher Rachel Pechey, of the University of Cambridge.

In the study, Pechey’s team tracked customers’ purchases of wine in a restaurant/bar over 16 weeks. Every two weeks the restaurant changed the size of its wine glasses, alternating between the standard 10-ounce size and 12-ounce and 8-ounce sizes.

The amount of wine served each day by the establishment was 9.4 percent higher when it was sold in larger (12 ounce) glasses compared to standard-sized glasses, even though the amount of wine served in the glasses each time remained the same.

There were “inconclusive” findings when the smaller (8 ounce) glasses were substituted for the standard-size glasses, the researchers said.

The bottom line, though, was that “we found that increasing the size of wine glasses, even without increasing the amount of wine, leads people to drink more,” Pechey said in a university news release. She works in Cambridge’s Behavior and Health Research Unit.

The findings suggest “that avoiding the use of larger wine glasses could reduce the amount that people drink,” said study co-author Theresa Marteau, who directs the research unit.

“We need more research to confirm this effect, but if it is the case, then we will need to think how this might be implemented,” Marteau said. “For example, could it be an alcohol licensing requirement that all wine glasses have to be below a certain size?”

The study was published June 6 in the journal BMC Public Health.

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism offers tips for cutting down on drinking.

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Double Stem Cell Transplant May Help Fight a Childhood Cancer

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, June 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Young children with a rare and often deadly cancer of the nervous system might have a better chance of survival if they receive two stem cell transplants, a new study reports.

The double stem cell transplant allows children with neuroblastoma to withstand two rounds of chemotherapy rather than one, improving their odds by killing more cancer cells, said lead researcher Dr. Julie Park. She is a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine, in Seattle.

Three years after diagnosis, about 61 percent of children who received a double transplant remained alive and cancer-free, compared to 48 percent of children who only received a single transplant, the researchers reported.

Survival improved even more when kids also were treated with immunotherapy drugs, which boost the ability of their immune systems to find and destroy cancer cells, the researchers said.

“This finding will change the way we treat children with high-risk neuroblastoma in North America, which still claims many young lives and is in urgent need of better treatments,” Park said in a news release from the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Park presented the research findings Sunday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting, in Chicago. Research presented at meetings is typically considered preliminary until peer-reviewed and published in a medical journal.

Neuroblastoma affects the body’s sympathetic nervous system, which consists of nerve fibers or cells that lie outside the brain or spinal cord and help control automatic bodily functions, according to the American Cancer Society.

Only 700 new cases of neuroblastoma are diagnosed each year in the United States. But, it is the second most common tumor in children and the most common cancer in infants, researchers said in background notes.

Usually, fewer than half of kids with high-risk neuroblastoma live five or more years past diagnosis, the researchers said.

The chemotherapy regimen doctors use to treat high-risk neuroblastoma is extremely toxic, as much as 10 times more so than chemo used against other childhood cancers, said Dr. Clarke Anderson, a pediatric oncologist with City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, Calif.

Park agreed. “It’s really aggressive treatment,” she said. “It’s probably the most aggressive treatment we give for any childhood cancer.”

Heavy doses of chemotherapy have been shown to improve survival in neuroblastoma, but such toxic treatment severely damages the bone marrow, where new blood cells are produced.

Because of this, kids who undergo this treatment are given a stem cell transplant to restore their bone marrow to health, using stem cells harvested from their own bodies prior to chemotherapy.

Park and her colleagues figured that if one round of chemo and stem cell transplant is good, then two rounds back-to-back might be even better.

They treated 652 patients newly diagnosed with high-risk neuroblastoma, about 3 years old on average, between November 2007 and February 2012. Nearly nine out of 10 kids had stage 4 neuroblastoma.

The children were randomly assigned to receive either one or two rounds of chemotherapy followed by stem cell transplants. In each group, about three out of four kids also were randomly selected to receive immunotherapy on top of chemotherapy.

After three years, 61.4 percent of kids who underwent a tandem stem cell transplant had not died or experienced a recurrence or worsening of their cancer. This compared to 48.4 percent of kids who underwent a single transplant, the researchers said.

Children in both groups who also received immunotherapy did even better. Researchers achieved a three-year event-free survival rate of 73.2 percent for tandem-transplant patients, and 55.5 percent for single-transplant recipients.

“The addition of the immunotherapy is just amazing,” Anderson said. “If you look at what it’s done, those kids that got the double transplant who also had immunotherapy afterward, it’s just amazing.”

For most of these kids, remaining alive and cancer-free after three years is an encouraging sign, Park said.

“We know that most neuroblastoma recurrences occur within two to three years from diagnosis, and that patients who have not had a recurrence at three years have a better chance of long-term survival,” Park said.

The addition of a second round of chemo and stem cell transplant did not appear to increase the rate of severe toxicity, she added. Fewer treatment-related deaths occurred among tandem transplant recipients, compared with single transplant patients.

“Kids are resilient,” Anderson said. “Chemotherapy even in a single transplant is very strong. To have two of them, it’s really hard. But kids are resilient. They recover quite well, and in most cases they tolerate quite well.”

More information

For more on neuroblastoma, visit the American Cancer Society.

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Healthy Fats in Mediterranean Diet Won’t Boost Weight

MONDAY, June 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) — An eating plan that includes healthy fats such as olive oil and nuts isn’t likely to cause weight gain, a new study finds.

That’s good news for people who’d prefer to try the Mediterranean diet — which includes healthy fats — over a diet that’s low in fat. And the study authors suggest that current health guidelines may be creating an unnecessary fear of these healthful fats.

“More than 40 years of nutritional policy has advocated for a low-fat diet, but we’re seeing little impact on rising levels of obesity,” said study lead author Dr. Ramon Estruch, of the University of Barcelona in Spain.

“Our study shows that a Mediterranean diet rich in vegetable fats such as olive oil and nuts had little effect on body weight or waist circumference compared to people on a low-fat diet. The Mediterranean diet has well-known health benefits and includes healthy fats, such as vegetable oils, fish and nuts,” Estruch explained in a journal news release.

However, he also pointed out that not all fats are created equal. “Our findings certainly do not imply that unrestricted diets with high levels of unhealthy fats such as butter, processed meat, sweetened beverages, deserts or fast-foods are beneficial,” Estruch added.

The study included more than 7,400 women and men in Spain, aged 55 to 80. The study participants ate one of three eating plans: an unrestricted-calorie Mediterranean diet rich in olive oil; an unrestricted-calorie Mediterranean diet rich in nuts; or a low-fat diet meant to avoid all dietary fat.

All the participants had type 2 diabetes or high heart risk. More than 90 percent were overweight or obese, the study authors noted.

After five years, total fat intake fell from 40 percent to 37 percent in the low-fat diet group, and rose in both Mediterranean diet groups, from about 40 percent to 42 percent. The percentage of proteins and carbohydrates decreased in both Mediterranean diet groups, the findings showed.

People in all three groups lost some weight: an average of almost 2 pounds (0.88 kilograms) per person in the olive oil group, 1.3 pounds (0.60 kg) in the low-fat diet group, and 0.9 pounds (0.40 kg) in the nut group, the researchers said.

Waist circumference did increase slightly in all three groups, though less so in those on the healthy fat diets. The low-fat group had an increase of about a half-inch (1.2 centimeters) per person. The olive oil group saw an increase of about one-third of an inch (0.85 cm), and the nut group only saw an increase in waist circumference of 0.14 inches (0.37 cm), the study authors reported.

The report was published June 6 in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.

“The fat content of foods and diets is simply not a useful metric to judge long-term harms or benefits,” Dariush Mozaffarian, professor in the School of Nutrition Science & Policy at Tufts University in Boston, wrote in an accompanying commentary.

“Energy density and total caloric contents can be similarly misleading. Rather, modern scientific evidence supports an emphasis on eating more calories from fruits, nuts, vegetables, beans, fish, yogurt, phenolic-rich vegetable oils, and minimally processed whole grains; and fewer calories from highly processed foods rich in starch, sugar, salt, or trans-fat,” Mozaffarian explained.

“Dietary guidelines should be revised to lay to rest the outdated, arbitrary limits on total fat consumption. Calorie-obsessed caveats and warnings about healthier, higher-fat choices such as nuts, phenolic-rich vegetable oils, yogurt, and even perhaps cheese, should also be dropped,” Mozaffarian wrote.

More information

HealthLink BC has more on the Mediterranean diet.

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The Facts About Parkinson’s, the Disease Muhammad Ali Fought for Decades

Photo: Getty Images

Muhammad Ali may be most famous person ever to have had Parkinson’s Disease, but it’s by no means a rare condition.

An estimated 4 to 6 million people around the world suffer from Parkinson’s, 1 million of them in the United States. What’s more, experts say that number is likely to rise as the population ages. 

In fact, getting older is probably the most common risk factor, says Britt Stone, MD, a movement disorders neurologist at Baylor Scott & White Health in Round Rock, Texas. 

Most Parkinson’s cases strike after age 60, but 15% of cases are in people under 50, and 10% are in people younger than 40, according to the National Parkinson Foundation. This is called young onset Parkinson’s; it’s the diagnosis that actor Michael J. Fox received when barely 30 years old. Muhammad Ali was diagnosed in his early 40s, marking his case a relatively unusual one as well.

RELATED: Michael J. Fox discusses Muhammad Ali’s impact on Parkinson’s

 

Parkinson’s also affects men slightly more than women, but otherwise is mostly an equal opportunity disease, affecting a range of races and ethnicities, as well as people in different regions and with different incomes.

Biologically, Parkinson’s happens when the neurons that produce dopamine start to die. “Dopamine is a really important chemical for lots of things—mood, ability to move in an organized and predictable fashion,” says Dr. Stone. 

Lack of dopamine accounts for the “big four” symptoms of Parkinson’s: tremor, stiffness in the limbs, slowness of movement, and problems with balance. 

“There can be slowness of movement, which can look like a softer voice, slower walking, not swinging your arms when you walk,” says Dr. Stone.

Patients might also have a slow blink rate, have trouble rolling over in bed, buttoning clothing, and their faces may not be as expressive as before. 

RELATED: The Complicated Link Between Depression and Brain Diseases

Very little is known about what causes the dopamine neurotransmitters to die. “Twenty percent of patients with Parkinson’s disease have a genetic condition that explains their disease,” says Diego R. Torres-Russotto, MD, director of the Movement Disorders Program at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. “The other 80% are patients that get the disease and we are not sure why.”

It’s likely that environmental exposures can trigger Parkinson’s in people who are already susceptible, he says. Many believe that pesticides, such as Agent Orange used during the Vietnam War, are a culprit. 

There’s also speculation that repetitive brain injuries—such as those sustained by Ali over his long boxing career—might be a risk factor for Parkinson’s, but there’s no real evidence to back this up.

Even though Parkinson’s is usually not diagnosed until most of the cells that produce dopamine are damaged, people often live long productive lives after that. “The way the disease happens in every patient is different,” says Dr. Torres-Russotto. “The progression and the signs and symptoms vary a lot among different individuals with Parkinson’s disease.”

RELATED: 15 Diseases Doctors Often Get Wrong

Parkinson’s has no cure, but there are treatments, including medications to boost dopamine levels in the brain. Some people also benefit from deep brain stimulation, when electrodes are implanted into the brain.

Lifestyle factors, especially physical activity, can make a big difference in quality of life for people with Parkinson’s, says Dr. Stone.

“Our goal is to make Parkinson’s Disease be the kind of thing that’s in your head, but in the back, not dictating your day-to-day life,” she says. 

And Muhammad Ali is one great example of that.

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Among U.S. Military, Army Members Face Highest Suicide Risk

By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, June 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Suicide rates have been increasing among all active U.S. Navy, Air Force and Army personnel, but those in the Army appear to be most at risk, new research indicates.

An analysis of all U.S. military suicides between 2005 and 2011 revealed that the suicide rate among Army members was roughly double that seen among the second highest risk group, the Marines.

The investigation further revealed that guns are the principal cause of most military suicides. Firearms were implicated in more than 62 percent of all suicide cases that have a definitive cause of death, the study found.

“The trends in suicide are similar to what others have found,” said study lead author Andrew Anglemyer, from California State University, Monterey Bay. “The differences in those rates between services are striking, though. Not only are most suicides in the active duty military among the Army personnel, but the suicide rate among Army personnel is the highest and has been every year since 2006.”

Suicide was the 10th leading cause of death in the United States as of 2010. And the current investigation comes amid a rising suicide rate among military personnel throughout the last 15 years of continual war. In fact, the U.S. military has seen its overall suicide rate nearly double between 2001 and 2011, the researchers said.

Surprisingly, a separate report found that it wasn’t the soldiers serving in combat positions who were most at risk of suicide. Since the Iraq and Afghanistan wars began, those in the Army at highest risk of a suicide attempt had never been deployed. In fact, that study found that two months into service was the riskiest time in terms of suicide. The report was released last month from the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, in Bethesda, Md.

The latest study looked at suicides among all active-duty enlisted U.S. military personnel as recorded by the “Suicide Data Repository.” This listing combines information from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Death Index, and the Military Mortality Database.

The research team identified 1,455 U.S. military suicides between 2005 and 2011. The Army had the highest rates between 2006 and 2011. There were between roughly 19 and 30 cases of suicide for every 100,000 soldiers. The most commonly held positions were in infantry or special operations, the study found.

The lowest suicide rate — nearly 10 suicides for every 100,000 — was seen among both Air Force and Navy personnel in the year 2005, the study showed.

Of all the military cases, men accounted for the lion’s share of suicides at 95 percent. More than three-quarters of the suicides involved white service members. Marital status didn’t appear to exert any influence on suicide risk. The vast majority of suicides (87 percent) involved service members who had no more than a high school education, the research revealed.

Across all military branches, the average age at suicide was 25. The median length of time served by a military member who took his life was four years, the study said.

Firearms were the most common means used in suicide. Soldiers and Marines who had served in combat infantry or special operations were the most likely to use firearms to die by suicide, the study said.

“The reasons for the differences in suicide risk between services are not well understood,” Anglemyer said. “Some have speculated that it may be deployment-related, but this has not yet been fully worked out.”

“Future investigations of mission-specific factors contributing to a service member’s risk for suicide are needed,” added Anglemyer. He will be an assistant professor with the operations research department at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., as of mid-June.

Psychologist Alan Peterson contended that the suicide differences between the branches of the military “reflect the tremendous burden accepted and sacrifices made by the U.S. Army over the past 14 years.”

“More U.S. Army personnel have been deployed, injured and killed in action than for all other U.S. military branches combined,” said Peterson. He is chair of psychiatry and chief of behavioral medicine at the School of Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. He also serves as an associate director of research at the university’s Military Health Institute.

The study was published in the June 6 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

More information

Learn more about suicide risk factors at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

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Beware of Bleeding Risks With Antacids Containing Aspirin

MONDAY, June 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Antacids that contain aspirin may cause stomach or intestinal bleeding in rare cases, U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials said Monday.

Since it issued a warning about serious bleeding risk with aspirin in 2009, the FDA has recorded eight new cases of serious bleeding caused by aspirin-containing antacid products sold over-the-counter, which include Alka Seltzer and Bromo Seltzer. In some of those cases, patients required a blood transfusion, the agency said in a news release.

“Take a close look at the Drug Facts label, and if the product has aspirin, consider choosing something else for your stomach symptoms,” Dr. Karen Murry Mahoney, deputy director of the division of nonprescription drug products, said in the release.

“Unless people read the Drug Facts label when they’re looking for stomach symptom relief, they might not even think about the possibility that a stomach medicine could contain aspirin,” she added.

“Today we’re focusing on bleeding risk specifically with antacid-aspirin products used to treat upset stomach or heartburn. We’re not telling people to stop taking aspirin altogether,” Mahoney said.

People with a higher risk of serious bleeding with aspirin-containing antacid products include those: aged 60 and older; with a history of stomach ulcers or bleeding problems; who take blood-thinning drugs; who take a steroid medicine such as prednisone to reduce inflammation; who take other medicines containing non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen or naproxen; those who drink three or more alcoholic drinks a day.

Warning signs of stomach or intestinal bleeding include feeling faint, vomiting blood, passing black or bloody stools, and abdominal pain. If you have these signs, consult a health care provider right away.

“Some people may have been taking aspirin-containing antacid products frequently for a long time. Apart from the bleeding risk, it’s not normal to have frequent or chronic upset stomach or heartburn. You should talk to a health care provider if that’s happening,” Mahoney said.

More information

The American Academy of Family Physicians has more on antacids.

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Shift Workers at Greater Risk of Heart Ills, Study Says

MONDAY, June 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Sleep deprivation and an abnormal sleep cycle may increase the risk of heart disease, especially for shift workers, a small study suggests.

“In humans, as in all mammals, almost all physiological and behavioral processes, in particular the sleep-wake cycle, follow a circadian rhythm that is regulated by an internal clock located in the brain,” said study lead author Dr. Daniela Grimaldi.

“When our sleep-wake and feeding cycles are not in tune with the rhythms dictated by our internal clock, circadian misalignment occurs,” added Grimaldi, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University in Chicago.

The study results suggest that shift workers “who are chronically exposed to circadian misalignment, might not fully benefit from the restorative cardiovascular effects of nighttime sleep following a shift-work rotation,” she added.

The study included 26 healthy people,
aged 20 to 39, who were restricted to five hours of sleep for eight days with either fixed bedtimes or bedtimes delayed by 8.5 hours on four of the eight nights.

A higher heart rate during the day was seen in both groups, to a greater extent at night when sleep deprivation was combined with delayed bedtimes. Also, there was an increase in levels of the stress hormone norepinephrine in the sleep-deprived and delayed-bedtime group.

Norepinephrine can narrow blood vessels, raise blood pressure and expand the windpipe, the researchers noted.

They said sleep deprivation and delayed bedtime were also associated with reduced heart rate variability at night and reduced vagal activity during deeper sleep phases that normally have a restorative effect on heart function. The main effect of the vagal nerve on the heart is the lowering of the heart rate, the study authors said.

Shift workers should be encouraged to eat a healthy diet, exercise regularly and get more sleep to protect their hearts, the researchers said.

The study was published June 6 in the journal Hypertension.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about shift work.

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Women More Prone to Anxiety Than Men, Review Finds

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, June 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Struggling with anxiety? Then odds are you’re a woman and you live in either North America or Western Europe.

That’s the conclusion of a new British study that found that women are twice as likely to suffer from anxiety as men.

Moreover, people in North America and Western Europe are more prone to anxiety disorders than those from other parts of the world. In North America, nearly eight of 100 people suffer from anxiety — the most in the world. In East Asia, it’s fewer than three in 100 — the lowest, the review authors noted.

“Anxiety is important and shouldn’t be overlooked,” said lead researcher Olivia Remes, who’s with the department of public health and primary care at the University of Cambridge’s Strangeways Research Laboratory. “Sometimes people think that anxiety is just a part of their personality or that there’s nothing they can do about it, but there is.”

Anxiety disorders are characterized by excessive worry, fear and avoidance of potentially stressful situations, such as social gatherings.

“There are treatments, including psychological treatments and medication, and other things people can do to help their mental health, such as physical activity, meditation and yoga,” Remes said.

For the review, Remes and her colleagues looked at more than 1,200 previously published studies about anxiety, and focused on 48 of them.

The investigators found that from 1990 to 2010, the overall number of people with an anxiety disorder remained about the same — approximately four out of every 100.

Women were nearly twice as likely as men to have an anxiety disorder (9 percent). And as many as 10 percent of men and women under 35 had an anxiety disorder, the researchers found.

It’s not known why women seem more prone to anxiety, but it could be differences in brain chemistry between the two genders, Remes suggested.

Women are also more likely to suffer from other mental health problems, such as depression, she said. In addition, men may also be less likely to report mental health problems.

It’s not known why young people are more likely to develop anxiety. It might be that older people are better able to hide their anxiety, Remes said.

In addition, those suffering from other health problems are more likely to have anxiety disorders, with as many as 70 percent reporting anxiety among their physical ills, the review found.

Among people with heart disease, for example, about 11 percent living in Western countries have an anxiety disorder, especially women, Remes said. People with multiple sclerosis are the most affected, with as many as 32 percent reporting an anxiety disorder.

In addition, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which is an anxiety disorder, may sometimes only affect women during pregnancy and after giving birth, the researchers found. Only one in 100 in the general population is affected by OCD. But, among pregnant women, the number is doubled and slightly higher than that among women right after giving birth, the review showed.

In the United States, anxiety disorders are estimated to cost $42 billion a year. In the European Union, more than 60 million people suffer from anxiety disorders in a given year, according to background information in the report.

Remes and her colleagues also found that information for some populations was lacking or of poor quality. This was particularly true for certain communities, such as native populations in North America, Australia and New Zealand.

“Anxiety can be expressed differently in other cultures,” Remes said. “For example, social anxiety in the West — people are worried that people are always looking at them, being critical — they are extremely self-conscious, whereas people in Asian cultures are afraid of causing others offense.”

Dr. Jeffrey Borenstein is president and CEO of the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation in New York City. He said more research is needed on anxiety disorders and treatments that are culturally sensitive.

“Anxiety disorder hasn’t gotten the attention it should,” he said.

“There are effective treatments, including talk therapy, medication and lifestyle changes,” Borenstein said. “There are a number of steps people can take to help their condition.”

The study findings were published in the June issue of the journal Brain and Behavior.

More information

For more about anxiety, visit the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health.

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