catherine-morgan.com

Health News: DASH Diet Saves Lives, Healthcare Crisis Affecting Prescription Co-Pays, Breast Cancer Screening.

Are you interested in lowering your blood pressure? Reducing your risk of heart disease? If so, you may want to consider the DASH Diet.

When compared to a typical America diet, women following a DASH diet were 24 percent less likely to have a heart attack, and 18 percent less likely to have a stroke. This is a pretty big deal, especially considering that the number one cause of death in women is heart disease.

Diet Reduces Heart Attacks, Strokes.

A large study offers the strongest evidence yet that a diet the government recommends for lowering blood pressure can save people from heart attack and stroke.

Researchers followed more than 88,000 healthy women for almost 25 years. They examined their food choices and looked at how many had heart attacks and strokes. Those who fared best had eating habits similar to those recommended by the government to stop high blood pressure.

The plan, called the DASH diet, favors fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat milk and plant-based protein over meat.

Women with those eating habits were 24 percent less likely to have a heart attack and 18 percent less likely to have a stroke than women with more typical American diets.

From WebMD

A healthy diet rich in fruits and vegetables and low in fat has long been touted as heart smart. Now, increasing evidence suggests that a similar diet reduces blood pressure and decreases a woman’s risk for heart attack and stroke.

Scientists reporting in the April 14 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine have found that healthy, middle-aged women who closely followed the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet have lower rates of cardiovascular disease (CVD) than women who do not follow such diets.

“Our study provides, to our knowledge, the strongest evidence to date on the long-term benefits of the DASH diet in the primary prevention of CVD among healthy subjects,” writes Teresa T. Fung, ScD, of Simmons College, Boston.

National dietary guidelines promote the DASH diet as an example of a healthy eating pattern. The diet comprises plenty of fruits, vegetables, and plant proteins from legumes and nuts, and moderate servings of low-fat dairy products. It is low in meat.

Also See:

Read more »

Popularity: 45% [?]

Share This

Is This Post About Hillary Clinton, Women’s Health, Ellen DeGeneres, or Breast Cancer? All of the above? - by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at BlogHer)

Hillary Clinton was a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Monday. I didn’t actually see it, but I did see several reports of it on the cable news channels. The media was very thorough and quick to compare Clinton’s mock bowling with Ellen, to Obama’s gutter ball of last week. [Personally, up until that moment I had been undecided, but after seeing the riveting side by side bowling comparison, I’m now totally committed to one candidate.]

Anyway, one station was even observant enough to report on the differences between Barack’s “Ellen Show” strategy and Hillary’s…It seems Hillary didn’t do a jig with Ellen, but Barack did. So thanks to Hillary’s appearance on Ellen yesterday, the evening news programs had a lot of great election news to cover. The level of journalistic integrity on this important election coverage was nonexistent. I even continued to see the same coverage several times today, so I could only assume nothing politically relevant happened during Hillary’s appearance on Ellen. However, it wouldn’t actually be safe to assume that.

To my surprise I happened upon this blog post from Shakesville: Hillary and Ellen…

Hillary Clinton was a guest on Ellen yesterday, and, although I haven’t generally been in the habit of posting talk show appearances of the various candidates, I watch all of them (even John McCain—grumble), and I thought this one was worth posting because the two Dem candidates’ positions on gay rights have been the subject of much debate around here recently, and Hillary spoke to Ellen about gay rights and told a very personal story about people who influenced her support of equality and fairness (love that framing!). She also spoke about an objective that I thought would be of interest to a lot of Shakers: Making breast cancer curable in the next decade.

Hillary said what? She wants to make breast cancer curable? That seems like a pretty big deal, but all I had heard was that she couldn’t hit more than one plastic pin down with a plastic ball.

Read more »

Popularity: 51% [?]

Share This

What Women Need To Know About Environmental Causes of Cancer — by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at BlogHer)

Last week the Breast Cancer Fund released it’s State of the Evidence Report for 2008. The 2008 report, provides the most comprehensive listing to-date of chemicals linked to breast cancer. It also provides a much more complex picture of breast cancer causation than traditionally accepted, one in which timing, mixtures and dose of environmental exposures interact with genes and lifestyle factors.

In conjunction with the release of this report, they also held a blogger-only telephone conference to discuss the report. The informative conference featured Janet Gray, Ph.D., and Breast Cancer Fund Executive Director Jeanne Rizzo, R.N., and for an hour they took questions from bloggers on the latest studies linking environmental exposures to breast cancer.

Findings…

While each study, chemical and exposure source alone doesn’t tell the whole story, looking at them together allows us to better understand how to prevent the disease. Learn more about major emerging themes in breast cancer causation through the links below.

Read more »

Popularity: 49% [?]

Share This

In Health News: Autism Debate, Drive-Thru Mastectomies, and the HPV Vaccine (Gardasil) - by Catherine Morgan (cross posted at BlogHer)

When I heard this story, about a family with a child who appeared to developed Autism after her childhood immunizations, I wondered how this might affect other families dealing with this devastating disease. Also in the blogs, is a petition that women can sign, supporting an end to drive-thru mastectomies. And end they should, this practice is a disgrace, as well as a travesty against women. And, my pet-peeve issue (Gardasil) is also in the news.

Autism…

From Revolution Health - The Autism Debate Continues

This week news spread of results of a Georgia court case in November, which states that the parents of 9-year old Hannah Poling will receive compensation because multiple vaccines contributed to her symptoms of autism. Not all the details are known, as the court case has been “sealed,” but it appears that Hannah has an underlying mitochondrial disorder. After she received five shots in July 2000, at the age of 19 months, she developed a high fever and inconsolable crying within 48 hours. Within three months after receiving the vaccine, she went from being a normal, verbal toddler to one who showed signs of autism and, for a while, lost her ability to speak. She now requires one-on-one care at all times.

Also See:

Read more »

Popularity: 51% [?]

Share This

The Invisible Toxins In Everyday Products — by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at BlogHer)

A disturbing story came to light this week, from CNN’s Planet In Peril series. Our children are being exposed to such high levels of industrial chemicals, that studies are showing many of them to have up to seven times greater levels in their blood than their parents. Think about that for a minute. If their levels are this high now…How high do you think they will be by the time they are adults?

With so many cancers and chronic illnesses being blamed on environmental causes…How sick do you think these children might be by the time they are parents? How many might be unable to be parents? We are talking about chemicals that are known carcinogens, and known to be in products we and our children are using every day. It’s a much larger problem than I had ever realized…especially for our children.

Of course, we can not be sure how these exposures will affect our children’s future health, only time will tell. But, if these studies are any indication, the future is very troubling.

Read more »

Popularity: 73% [?]

Share This

Breast Cancer Treatment…What Is Your Life Worth? — by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at BlogHer)

Revolutionary new cancer drugs offer hope where there was none. But the price tag may be too high for some to bear.

Many Americans are already having to decide between food on the table and their prescription medications. The health care crisis is hitting hard, and the cost of prescription drugs is sky-rocketing. But what happens when you have to decide between expensive breast cancer treatments to save your life, and paying the mortgage on your house? How much could you afford to spend, to save your life? It’s not even a fair question to ask, but many cancer patients are being forced to answer it.

Read more »

Popularity: 48% [?]

Share This

Click here to see what the numbers mean in this picture.

Breast Cancer Awareness: The Environmental Risks — by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at BlogHer)

I was honored to be asked and participate in a phone conference this week on breast cancer, sponsored by LUNA and the Breast Cancer Fund, together they have established Pure Prevention. The call brought two nationally recognized environmental health experts, Dr. Janet Gray and the Executive Director of the Breast Cancer Fund, Jeanne Rizzo, to answer questions from a selected group of health bloggers. It was an hour conference that anyone can listen to here.

The focus of this conference and Pure Prevention, is to look at ways a woman can lower her risk of breast cancer by lowering her environmental risks. Many of these risks I was not even aware of, so I am grateful to have been a part of this discussion. My thanks to Cynthia Samuels for inviting me to participate.

Because only 1 out of 10 women who have breast cancer have a genetic history of the disease, what women put on and in their bodies can make the difference. Pure Prevention is a new campaign that seeks to expand on the “cure-centered” breast cancer conversation by helping women identify the environmental causes of the disease and inspiring them to make smart choices about the products they use every day.

Read more »

Popularity: 59% [?]

Share This