Say NO to energy drinks to
maintain your blood pressure!
Are energy drinks your workout companion? If yes, ditch
them because energy drinks might increase your risk of cardiac problems, says a
new study. The researchers found that healthy young adults who don’t consume
caffeine regularly experienced a greater rise in resting blood pressure after
consumption of a commercially available energy drink – compared to a placebo
drink.
How was the study conducted?
In the study, researchers alternately gave a can of a
commercially available energy drink or a placebo drink to 25 healthy young
adults, age 19 to 40 and assessed changes in
heart rate and blood pressure.Blood
pressure and heart rate were recorded before and 30 minutes
after energy drink/placebo drink consumption and were also compared between
caffeine-naive participants (those consuming less than 160 mg of caffeine per
day) and regular caffeine users.
What were the study results?
Participants experienced a marked rise in blood pressure
after consuming the energy drink as compared to the placebo. The effect was
most dramatic in people who did not typically consume much caffeine,
researchers found. Overall, the blood pressure increase was more than doubled
in caffeine naive adults after consuming the energy drink versus placebo, they
found.
Svatikova concluded that consumers should use caution when
using energy drinks because they may increase the risk of cardiovascular
problems, even among young people.
Source: www.thehealthsite.com
17.03.2015
Kidney failure could become a
global pandemic by 2030!
There’s always a flipside to development as problems that
usually belonged to developed nations start haunting developing ones. One of
them is kidney failure and a new study suggests that by 2030 around 5 million
people will need either a kidney transplant or dialysis. This is due to a rise in
kidney-related issues in developing nations of Asia and Africa,
according to a study by the George Institute for Global Health published in the
Lancet. ‘However, the number of people without access to RRT will remain
substantial,’ the study titled ‘Worldwide access to treatment for end-stage
kidney disease: a systematic review’ said.
The largest absolute growth in the number of people
receiving RRT is projected to rise from 0.968 million people in 2010 to 2.162
million by 2030 in Asia. The review said about 2.618 million people
received this life-sustaining treatment worldwide in 2010. However, it
noted ‘at best, only half or less of all people needing RRT worldwide had
access to it in 2010, meaning at least 2.284 million people might have died
prematurely because they did not have access to the treatment in 2010’.
Most of this burden of preventable deaths fell on low
income and middle income countries like India, China, Indonesia, Pakistan and
Nigeria. This data show a pressing need to develop low-cost RRT alternatives to
reduce disparities in access to the treatment, and the importance of
development, implementation, and assessment of cost-effective end-stage kidney
disease prevention strategies.
‘The sad reality is that most of these deaths are
preventable and the biggest burden lies in low to middle income countries where
there are instances of less than a quarter of patients receiving treatment for
kidney failure,’ said Vlado Perkovic of the George Institute and lead author of
the study. He said the way forward is to ‘radically overhaul’ dialysis
technology to lower costs.
‘Dialysis has been around for half a century, yet the
technology hasn’t evolved substantively, remaining hugely expensive despite its
simplicity. Computers have shrunk from the size of buildings to that of a watch
in this time; that’s the kind of radical overhaul needed,’ added Perkovic. As a
result of this research, a worldwide competition is being launched to design
the world’s first affordable dialysis machine, attracting a prize of
$100,000.
Source: www.thehealthsite.com
17.03.2015
Ability is of little account without opportunity
Napoleon
No comments:
Post a Comment