It’s no secret that a diet low in fat can help reduce LDL (“bad”) cholesterol levels. Cutting out fatty foods can also help you shed pounds, but what about the other guy—HDL?

Even after adopting a low-fat diet, heart attack survivors and those at-risk sometimes continue to struggle to boost HDL (“good”) cholesterol. A two-year study led by Dr. Gary Foster of Temple University’s Center for Obesity Research & Education suggests the solution may rest in a low-carb, Atkins style diet.

“When comparing these two popular weight loss plans, none of the existing research had included a comprehensive, long-term, behavioral support component,” Foster said in a news release. “For years, the conventional wisdom was that low-carb diets had a host of ill effects on health, but these results suggest that those concerns are unfounded.”

Although LDL was higher in low-carb dieters in the beginning, both groups had similar levels by the end of the study. There wasn’t a significant weight loss difference between the groups, either.

Low-carb dieters experienced a 23 percent increase in HDL compared to just 12 percent in those who ate less fat. These statistics are comparable to levels in people who rely on medication to regulate good cholesterol.

The reason behind these differences is still a mystery. As for which diet is best, the answer is both.

"It doesn't make a difference for weight loss how you get there," Foster told MSNBC. “Both of these are options. These diets work." The big goal, he said, should be developing good eating habits.

Want to know more? Read the study’s abstract in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

 

What do your teeth and your heart have in common? Plaque. A new study says that your care of one could affect the other. In a recent study, cardiovascular problems occurred more often for people who brushed their teeth less than once a day.

Researchers from the University College London recruited nearly 12,000 for the study. They followed participants for an average of eight years and reported a total of 555 cardiovascular disease “events”, including heart attacks and bypass surgeries.

Participants who brushed their teeth less than once daily were 70 percent more likely to experience such an event. This study also linked less frequent brushing to a higher incidence of C-reactive protein, an inflammatory marker found in the blood that’s associated with heart disease.

This isn’t the first study to associate poor dental health with poor heart health, either. Previous studies have linked heart disease to periodontal (gum) disease.

“We were surprised to find a relationship between tooth brushing frequency and both cardiovascular disease and inflammatory markers in the blood," study co-author Professor Richard Watt of University College London told Business Week. “More research is needed to test if improving patients’ oral hygiene to reduce their gum inflammation has an effect on cardiovascular disease risk.”

Visit Business Week to read more about the study, or see Watt’s research in British Medical Journal.

If you're having trouble keeping your daughter out of the tanning bed, and talking to her about cancer isn't helping, you may consider stressing wrinkles as a consequence of too much tanning time.

To test the effectiveness of an appearance-based intervention, Dr. June Robinson, professor of dermatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and her colleagues assembled a 25-page book detailing the history of tanning and the effects it can have on skin and collagen, as well as tanning alternatives. They distributed the booklets to college-aged women (18-22) who tanned as often as four times per week.

These women said they tanned for one of two reasons: To boost mood (symptomatic of seasonal affective disorder), or because they detested their skin color. Six months after reading the booklet, tanning visits among the young women fell by roughly 35 percent and some eventually gave up tanning all together. Why?

“They’re not worried about skin cancer, but they are worried about getting wrinkled and being unattractive,” Robinson said in a press release. “The fear of looking horrible trumped everything else.”

East Tennessee State University’s Joel Hillhouse, Ph.D, was lead author of the report, and wrote the booklet used in the study. He says this experiment was originally meant to serve as an appearance intervention, which means it would have less of an effect on the group with symptoms of seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

"We found the opposite,” he said. “The intervention worked just as well for people with seasonal affective disorder as for people who didn't like their skin color. That means it's a really good intervention for everyone."

That includes your daughter, your niece, or maybe even your sister. According to the Skin Cancer Foundation, the number of women under age 40 diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma has doubled in the last three decades, and the risk of melanoma increases by 75 percent if she has used a tanning bed before age 35. Talking about responsible tanning is important.

The key?

"You have to balance the positive and the negative forces that motivate someone to change," Robinson said. "First you have the fear that they will look horrible, then you offer a positive—an alternative to meet their needs."

Read The Archives of Dermatology for more about the intervention study, or visit the Skin Cancer Foundation’s site to learn more about melanoma.

Summer is here, which means it will soon be time to hit the beach. Every beachgoer knows the importance of sun block, but are all sunscreens the same? Your sunscreen may protect against sunburn, but not all sunscreens provide equal protection from the UVA rays that cause skin to age.

Comparing Apples to Oranges: UVA&UVB Rays

According to The Skin Cancer Foundation, long-wave UVA rays make up about 95 percent of the UV rays that hit Earth. These rays aren’t as intense, but there are 30-50 times more of them, and they’re present year-round in all daylight conditions. UVA rays have deeper penetration, too, and can cause wrinkles, aging, and skin cancer.

Although the effects of UVB rays are more superficial, they can cause serious damage to the epidermis. These rays are responsible for skin reddening and those nasty sunburns you get at the beach. UVB damage is more visible, and can also lead to skin cancer.

SPF: Get to Know Your Sunscreen

“For sunscreen to be really effective in preventing skin cancer, it has to provide broad-spectrum coverage,” Dr. Henry Lim, chairman of dermatology at Henry Ford Hospital, told MSNBC. “The U.S. is the only country with no guidelines for UVA protection, so consumers here have no way of knowing.”

One common misconception about a sunblock’s sun protection factor (SPF) is that the numbers—15, 30, and clear up to 100—indicate the level of protection. In actuality, it represents the amount of time a person can be exposed before the skin starts to redden. Dr. James Spencer, a St. Petersburg, Florida, dermatologist explains:

“SPF is very misleading,” he told MSNBC. “If I were a logical consumer, I would think that SPF 30 is twice as good as SPF 15. But SPF 15 blocks 94 percent of UVB rays. SPF 30 blocks 97 percent. Past 30, there isn’t much additional benefit to be had.”

Where to go from here:

The best thing you can do for your skin is to protect against both UVA and UVB rays.   Seek shade during peek daylight hours (10 am to 2 pm), wear clothing that will cover or protect the skin, and find a sunscreen that has ingredients that protect against both UVA and UVB rays. These ingredients include dioxybenzone, ecamsule, oxybenzone, titanium dioxide and zinc oxide.

Read more about UV rays at MSNBC.com, or contact the FDA about establishing guidelines for UVA protection.

Smoking, heavy drinking, a poor diet, and too much time spent on the couch are bad for your health, but they may also be taking years off your life. These four bad habits could actually be causing your body to age up to 12 years, research suggests.

Nearly 4,900 men and women age 18 or older were randomly chosen to participate in a University of Oslo study examining the effects of certain habits—smoking, excessive alcohol consumption (3 or more drinks for men, and two or more for women), getting less than 2 hours of exercise per week, and not eating well (specifically, not enough fruits and vegetables).

The study began in 1985, and followed participants for 20 years, checking death certificates and doing follow-ups. Of the 314 participants who had all four habits, almost one-third died over the duration of the study, while less than 10 percent of the 387 people who had none passed away.

Heart disease and cancer topped the list for cause-of-death for people who had a combination of these habits, while the health of those still living was “equivalent to being 12 years older” than their healthier counterparts.

Lead researcher Elizabeth Kvaavik thinks these findings may be the extra incentive some people need to improve their lifestyles.

"You don't need to be extreme to be in the healthy category,” Kvaavik said in a news piece by MSNBC. "These (healthy) behaviors add up, so together it's quite good…It should be possible for most people to manage."

Kvaavik and her colleagues acknowledge that changing these habits may not be easy, but that they pay off.

“The combined effect of poor health behaviors on mortality was substantial, indicating that modest, but sustained, improvements to diet and lifestyle could have significant public health benefits,” authors of the study concluded.

Visit the Archives of Internal Medicine to read more on the study.

Despite the economic state of our nation, more Americans than ever are bringing home the bacon—to eat with eggs, on cheeseburgers, or sandwiched between two slabs of fried chicken. The new Double Down by KFC  has plenty of mouths watering, and plenty of nutritionists and cardiologists cringing and wondering what to do about the U.S. bacon infatuation.

One pound of bacon (16-20 medium slices) can contain as much as 81 grams of fat, most of which (68 grams) is heart-clogging saturated fat. The Double Down is loaded with 540 calories and 32 grams of fat (10 g saturated). The recommended daily limit for saturated fat is 16 grams.

Bacon’s saturated fat is different from the mono- and poly-unsaturated fats found in fish, nuts and olive or soybean oils. While these fats can help lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease, too much saturated fat can clog arteries and increase the risk of heart attack. The high sodium levels (up to 10,487 mg per pound) can also cause a cholesterol spike.

The good news is you don’t have to choose between saving your heart and nurturing your soul. As with caffeine and sweets, the key to this affair of the heart (or the stomach) is moderation.

“As a flavoring and ingredient, [bacon is] wonderful,” dietitian Susan Moores of the American Dietetic Association told MSNBC. “As a diet mainstay, not so much.”

A few strips now and then won’t hurt you, and there are plenty of other options to help tide you over. Turkey bacon, for example, has about half the fat and sodium. Canadian bacon and reduced-sodium bacon are also healthier options. Traditional bacon isn’t completely off limits, either.

“It all boils down to: How much?,” Moores says.

For the full story on America’s most delicious love affair, visit MSNBC.

Ten years ago, soy products were recommended to postmenopausal women to reduce LDL (bad) cholesterol levels. New research indicates that soy may not help as much as previously thought, and a re-evaluation by the FDA may challenge soy producers’ claims about their products as heart healthy.

Many women experience sharp increases in LDL levels during menopause when their bodies no longer produce estrogen. More women also see a hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis) and an increased risk of heart disease.

Soy products contain isoflavens, natural compounds that mimic estrogen.  These are supposed to increase estrogen levels, and thus improve cholesterol. Keeping cholesterol in check can help coronary artery disease, the leading cause of death in American women.

For the study, 62 women under age 65 with moderate-high cholesterol were asked to increase either soy or casein (milk protein), intake for one year. While HDL (good) cholesterol levels increased slightly for women consuming soy, they experienced little or no change in LDL levels.

“The aim of this study was to examine the effects of soy protein consumption on heart disease risk in postmenopausal women,” authors of the study wrote. “These findings, as well as those from other studies, lend credence to the decision of the Food and Drug Administration to reevaluate the soy protein health claim issued a decade ago.”

Learn more about heart health, or read the study's abstract in Menopause.

You can test your blood sugar, you can test your blood pressure, but did you know you can test your risk of falling? You can now thanks to a screening tool developed by the University of Missouri School of Health Professions.

University of Missouri associate professor Carmen Abbott created the test to help predict an individual’s risk of falling, which they hope will help reduce the risk of injuries.

“It’s very important for adults to understand their won fall-risk factors,” Abbott said in a press release. “This test can become a primary prevention strategy that can be used in regular screenings.”

The test is made up of 16 parts, including a questionnaire and physical tests. It includes questions about fall history, what types of medication an individual takes, and whether he or she experiences dizziness. The physical tests include strengthen balance and range of motion exercises.

Testing each person allowed researchers to develop a customized risk prevention plan. “Personalizing the risk exercise prescription palatable to an individual that has not taken physical activity or the idea of decreased physical function seriously,” authors wrote.

In the University of Missouri press release, Abbott offers tips for people who wish to improve their coordination and reduce their risk of falls.

“It’s very important for adults to understand their own fall-risk factors,” she says. “What’s more important is for adults to know their risk and stay as active as possible.”

Get the most bang for your buck this spring—use your tax return to treat yourself to a movie or a nice vacation. Several new studies say life-experience purchases are more rewarding than material ones.

“We found that participants were less satisfied with their material purchases because they were more likely to ruminate about other options they might have chosen,” authors of the study wrote.

In one test, participants were asked to recall one material purchase and one experiential purchase of equal value. They rated their purchases on level of importance, past and present satisfaction and regret. Each time, experiential purchases were ranked more important and more satisfactory.

Researchers think this may be because it is more difficult to evaluate material choices foregone than experiences missed. They say there is likely to be a hint of remorse in any decision, but it is much more distinguished when buying things that can easily be replaced.

“Mentally exchanging an experience involves deleting a part of the self, something that people are understandably reluctant to do,” authors of the study explained. “(They) tend to be experienced, remembered, and evaluated more in their own terms, and less in terms of how they compare to alternative experiences.”

As for that tax return, consider carefully before committing to a new ottoman. A happier you is a healthier you, and a weekend getaway might be the ticket (no pun intended). If you can’t quite budget a vacation in Venice or a tour of Tahiti, a movie or dinner out will do.

The study can be found in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The key to a strong memory may be rest. Resting after learning something new appears to help create a stronger, more vivid memory.

Information comes from a study by NYU assistant professor of psychology Lila Davachi and doctoral candidate Arielle Tambini. The study’s purpose was to examine the relationship between two parts of the brain related to memory—the hippocampus and neocortex—and the long-term storage of memory following rest.

Resting after gaining new information allows the mind to process that information, and store it into long-term episodic memory. While former studies have shown that this process is highly effective in sleep, this experiment tested the effects of “awake rest”--rest without sleeping.

The hippocampus is responsible for regulating emotion and memory; the neocortex for language, conscious thought and emotional response. Researchers used object-face and scene-face encoding, the brain’s process of changing information from one form to another, to determine how these two areas of the brain reacted to form memories.

Participants were shown images of people coupled with either objects or scenery (called encoding tasks), and asked how likely these images were to go together. Testing began 40–50 minutes after the first encoding task and 70–80 minutes after the second.

According to Davachi, brain regions remained active during rest, which suggests that memories were being replayed and reinforced. Participants with stronger relationships between the hippocampus and neocortex had better memory, especially of the face-object pairing.

“It will be essential for future studies to assess how connectivity during post-task offline periods (rest) relates to more extended measures of long-term memory consolidation,” authors wrote. “It will be interesting to explore the relationship between longitudinal measurements of enhanced connectivity and behavioral measures of memory consolidation.”

Take a short-term memory test or read the full study in the January issue of Neuron.