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Master Your Breath, Master Your Health: The Transformative Power of Controlled Breathing - Neuroscience News
In a group of healthy adults, those who practiced high-resistance IMST for 30 breaths a day for six weeks saw their systolic blood pressure – the first number in a reading – drop by 9 millimeters of mercury.
Step it up: Higher daily step counts linked with lower blood pressure: Smart watches prove useful as a research tool for insights on physical activity and heart health -- ScienceDaily
Over the course of about five months, participants averaged about 7,500 steps per day. Those with a higher daily step count had significantly lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure. In a secondary analysis, the researchers found the association between step count and blood pressure was no longer significant if BMI was taken into account, which suggests BMI might be a mediating factor in the relationship.
Blood pressure recording over 24 hours is the best predictor of heart and vascular disease -- ScienceDaily
"Our research highlights the necessity of using 24-hour measurements to diagnose high blood pressure and to institute and fine tune its treatment," said Dr. Maestre. "Nevertheless, most health insurers in the US reimburse 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring only when blood pressure is found to be high in the clinical setting, but is suspected to be normal otherwise, or if undetected or masked hypertension is suspected. However, 24 hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring is cost effective: It enables the prevention of cardiovascular disease by starting treatment in a timely manner."
A nap a day keeps high blood pressure at bay: Catching some midday shut-eye linked to similar drops in blood pressure seen with other lifestyle changes, some medications -- ScienceDaily
"Midday sleep appears to lower blood pressure levels at the same magnitude as other lifestyle changes. For example, salt and alcohol reduction can bring blood pressure levels down by 3 to 5 mm Hg," said Manolis Kallistratos, MD, cardiologist at the Asklepieion General Hospital in Voula, Greece, and one of the study's co-authors, adding that a low-dose antihypertensive medication usually lowers blood pressure levels by 5 to 7 mm Hg, on average.
Overall, taking a nap during the day was associated with an average 5 mm Hg drop in blood pressure, which researchers said is on par with what would be expected from other known blood pressure-lowering interventions. In addition, for every 60 minutes of midday sleep, 24-hour average systolic blood pressure decreased by 3 mm Hg.
"These findings are important because a drop in blood pressure as small as 2 mm Hg can reduce the risk of cardiovascular events such as heart attack by up to 10 percent," Kallistratos said. "Based on our findings, if someone has the luxury to take a nap during the day, it may also have benefits for high blood pressure. Napping can be easily adopted and typically doesn't cost anything."
Platelet 'decoys' outsmart both clots and cancer: Deactivated platelets offer a potential drug-free, reversible antiplatelet therapy -- ScienceDaily
Now, a team of researchers at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University and several collaborating institutions has created a drug-free, reversible antiplatelet therapy that employs deactivated "decoy" platelets that could reduce the risk of blood clots and potentially prevent cancer metastasis as well. The research is reported in Science Translational Medicine.
"The reversibility and immediate onset of action are major advantages of our platelet decoys, and we envision them to be useful in hospital-based situations such as preventing clotting in high-risk patients just before they undergo surgery, or when given alongside chemotherapy to prevent existing tumors from spreading," said first author Anne-Laure Papa, Ph.D., who was a postdoctoral fellow at the Wyss Institute working with the Institute's Founding Director, Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D. when the research was carried out and is now an Assistant Professor at George Washington University. Ingber is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and the Vascular Biology Program at Boston Children's Hospital, as well as Professor of Bioengineering at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Higher sodium intake associated with increased lightheadedness in the context of the DASH-sodium trial: Study turns common knowledge on its head by challenging experts' traditional recommendations -- ScienceDaily
However, contrary to this recommendation, researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) found that higher sodium intake, when studied in the context of the DASH-Sodium trial (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension), actually increases lightheadedness. These findings challenge traditional recommendations to increase sodium intake to prevent lightheadedness. The study appeared today in the Journal of Clinical Hypertension.
"Our study has real clinical and research implications," said Stephen Juraschek, MD, PhD, the study's corresponding author and a primary care physician at BIDMC. "Our results serve to caution health practitioners against recommending increased sodium intake as a universal treatment for lightheadedness. Additionally, our results demonstrate the need for additional research to understand the role of sodium, and more broadly of diet, on lightheadedness."
Exercise benefits brains, changes blood flow in older adults, study finds: Exercise can impact biomarkers of brain function in a way that might prevent or postpone the onset of dementia -- ScienceDaily
A control group of cognitively healthy older adults without mild cognitive impairment also underwent the exercise training program, consisting of four 30-minute sessions of moderate-intensity treadmill walking per week. But the program yielded different responses from each group.
Unlike the group with MCI, whose exercise training decreased cerebral blood flow, the exercise training increased cerebral blood flow in the frontal cortex in the healthy group after 12 weeks. Their performance on the cognitive tests also significantly improved, as was observed the MCI group.
For this study, changes in cerebral blood flow were measured in specific brain regions that are known to be involved in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease, including the insula (involved in perception, motor control, self-awareness, cognitive functioning), the anterior cingulate cortex (involved in decision making , anticipation, impulse control and emotion) and the inferior frontal gyrus (involved in language processing and speech).
Sea invertebrate sheds light on evolution of human blood, immune systems -- ScienceDaily
"The mammalian and Botryllus blood-forming systems also share hundreds of homologous genes, even though the two species are separated by over 500 million years of evolution," said former postdoctoral scholar Benyamin Rosental, PhD.
Rosental shares lead authorship of the study with graduate student Mark Kowarsky. The senior authors are Irving Weissman, MD, the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor for Clinical Innovation in Cancer Research and professor of pathology and of developmental biology; Stephen Quake, PhD, the Lee Otterson Professor in the School of Engineering and professor of bioengineering and of applied physics; and senior research scientist Ayelet Voskoboynik, PhD.
The researchers isolated the Botryllus stem cells that are the foundation of its blood and immune system, as well as the progenitor cells they make on their way to becoming adult blood and immune cells. "Out of all the invertebrates, the Botryllus blood stem cells and progenitors are the most similar to vertebrate blood cells, so it is possible, if not likely, that they are the 'missing link' between vertebrates and invertebrates," said Weissman, who also directs the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and the Ludwig Cancer Center at Stanford.
Synchronizing Gait with Cardiac Cycle Phase Alters Heart Rat... : Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise
Finally, if diastolic stepping is truly advantageous for exercise performance, we wondered if there is any natural tendency for elite runners to step diastolically without prompting. We observed that 3 of the 10 subjects stepped accurately at the diastolic target timing (45% ± 15% RRI) during a substantial portion of their final, unprompted (silent) control period (e.g., see Fig. 2B). In one of those cases, the subject was guided to systolic step timing during the final prompted period but naturally reverted to stepping during diastole when the auditory prompt was removed. By comparison, none of the subjects stepped at a consistent systolic phase during the free stepping control stages. These anecdotal observations are also consistent with the findings of earlier authors, including Niizeki (10), which suggested that the heart automatically adjusts its timing, when HR = SR, to prevent ventricular systole from coinciding with maximal peripheral skeletal muscle contraction.
Under 40 With High Blood Pressure? Be Wary of Heart Risks - The New York Times
About half the group had normal blood pressure of 120/80 or lower. Compared with them, those with elevated pressure — 120-129/80 or higher — were 67 percent more likely to have had cardiovascular problems. People with readings of 130-139/80-89 had a 75 percent increased risk, and those with readings above 140/90 were three and a half times as likely to have some type of cardiovascular disease.
Take a vacation -- it could prolong your life -- ScienceDaily
Participants were randomised into a control group (610 men) or an intervention group (612 men) for five years. The intervention group received oral and written advice every four months to do aerobic physical activity, eat a healthy diet, achieve a healthy weight, and stop smoking. When health advice alone was not effective, men in the intervention group also received drugs recommended at that time to lower blood pressure (beta-blockers and diuretics) and lipids (clofibrate and probucol). Men in the control group received usual healthcare and were not seen by the investigators.
As previously reported, the risk of cardiovascular disease was reduced by 46% in the intervention group compared to the control group by the end of the trial. However, at the 15-year follow-up in 1989 there had been more deaths in the intervention group than in the control group.
The analysis presented today extended the mortality follow-up to 40 years (2014) using national death registers and examined previously unreported baseline data on amounts of work, sleep, and vacation. The researchers found that the death rate was consistently higher in the intervention group compared to the control group until 2004. Death rates were the same in both groups between 2004 and 2014.
Blood pressure declines 14 to 18 years before death: It's normal for blood pressure to trend lower in the elderly--but it foreshadows the end -- ScienceDaily
Blood pressure in the elderly gradually begins to decrease about 14 or so years before death, according to a new study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine.
Researchers from UConn Health and the University of Exeter Medical School in the U.K. looked at the electronic medical records of 46,634 British citizens who had died at age 60 or older. The large sample size included people who were healthy as well as those who had conditions such as heart disease or dementia.
They found blood pressure declines were steepest in patients with dementia, heart failure, late-in-life weight loss, and those who had high blood pressure to begin with. But long-term declines also occurred without the presence of any of these diagnoses.
