trouble falling asleep and heart attack risk

If you have trouble falling asleep, don't take it lightly -- you could be a candidate for a moderately higher risk of a heart attack. In a recent study, the risk of heart attack in people with insomnia ranged from 27 percent to 45 percent greater than for people who rarely experienced trouble sleeping. Researchers tied in heart attack risks to three major insomnia symptoms. Compared to people who reported never or almost never having these problems, people who had trouble falling asleep almost daily in the last month had a 45 percent higher heart attack risk. Staying asleep almost every night in the last month had a 30 percent higher heart attack risk; and didn't wake up feeling refreshed in the morning more than once a week had a 27...

Read more »

Cranberry juice better at fighting bugs

Cranberry juice is far better than its extract in fighting a bio-film, formed by a resistant layer of bugs that spur infection, new research says. The study explored mechanisms that the virulent form of E. coli bug, the primary cause of most urinary tract infections in people, uses to form bio-films. 'What we have shown is that cranberry juice's ability to prevent bio-films is more complex than we may have originally thought,' said study co-author Terri Camesano, professor of chemical engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). 'For a while, the field focused on these proanthocyanidins or PACs (a group of flavonoids found in cranberry extract), but the data shows that they aren't the silver bullet,' added Camesano, the journal...

Read more »

Eating nuts helps lowers heart disease risk

Nuts and seeds are very beneficial to your health. You must mix your diet every day, eating nuts helps lowers heart disease risk in people with metabolic syndrome (MetS) or those with excess abdominal fat, high blood sugar and high blood pressure, say researchers. MetS symptoms increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and heart disease, the Journal of Proteome Research reported, citing a statement from the University of Barcelona. Cristina Andres-Lacueva and colleagues from the varsity with the Human Nutrition Unit of the Rovira i Virgili University explain that the rise in obesity worldwide means more and more patients have MetS. To check the benefits of nut consumption, researchers put 22 MetS patients on a nut-enriched diet...

Read more »