Heena Sharma Blog

It turns out that drinking multiple diet drinks daily may not be a very good idea for post menopausal women. A new study finds that it is associated with an increased risk of having a stroke caused by a blocked artery. The study was published in Stroke, a journal of the American Heart Association. The study is one of the first to look at the association between drinking artificially sweetened beverage and the risk of specific types of stroke in a large, racially diverse group of post-menopausal women. Compared with women who consumed diet drinks less than once a week or not at all, women who consumed two or more artificially sweetened beverages per day were: 23 per cent more likely to have a stroke; 31 per cent more likely to have a clot-caused (ischemic) stroke; 29 er cent more likely to develop heart disease (fatal or non-fatal heart attack); and 16 per cent more likely to die from any cause. Furthermore, researchers found risks were higher for certain wome...

According to a recent study, pregnant women with higher intake of the Mediterranean diet have 32 per cent lower risk of having children with an accelerated growth pattern, as compared to offspring of women that did not follow such diet. The Mediterranean diet is characterised by a high content of fruits, vegetables, olive oil, legumes and nuts. This healthy diet pattern has earlier been associated with lower obesity and cardiometabolic risk in adults. This study, conducted at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, aimed at evaluating the association between adherence to a Mediterranean diet during pregnancy and growth patterns and cardiometabolic risk in early infancy. The findings of the study are published in the Journal of Pediatrics. It was performed with data of over 2,700 pregnant women, who filled in a questionnaire on dietary intake in the first and third trimester of pregnancy. In addition, the diet, weight and height of their offspring were followed-u...

Turns out, women who are naturally early risers were found to have a lower risk of developing breast cancer . According to a study, one in 100 women who considered themselves morning people developed breast cancer , compared with two in every 100 women who called themselves evening people. Cancer risks associated with a person's body clock and sleep patterns have been reported in previous researches as well as any genetic factors underlying this. Self-reported preferences for mornings or evenings (by their own definition of that preference) were recorded in more than 180,000 women, led by Dr. Rebecca Richmond, a researcher. The team of researchers also analysed genetic variants linked to whether someone is a morning or night person in more than 220,000 women to find out if these could help provide a causal link to breast cancer. Read Complete Article Business Standard

Women, please take a note. Losing weight can help lower the risk of developing breast cancer in the post-menopausal stage, a new study has found. The study, published in the journal CANCER , found that among post-menopausal women, participants who lost weight had a lower risk of developing invasive breast cancer than those who maintained or gained weight. "Our study indicates that moderate, relatively short-term weight reduction was associated with a statistically significant reduction in breast cancer risk for postmenopausal women," said co-author Rowan Chlebowski from the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, California. Although obesity has been strongly related to breast cancer risk, studies examining whether weight loss might reduce postmenopausal women's risk have provided mixed results, the researchers said. For the study, the research team analysed information on 61,335 women participating in the World Health Initiative Observationa...

Apart from building healthy bones, vitamin D also may reduce cancer risk as well as breast cancer mortality, especially in women with a lower body mass index. Breast cancer remains the most common cancer in women worldwide and is the leading cause of death from cancer in women. Reproductive risk factors such as early onset of puberty, late menopause, later age at first pregnancy, never having been pregnant, obesity, and a family history have all been shown to be associated with breast cancer development. The role of vitamin D concentration in the development of breast cancer, however, continues to be debated. Researchers involved in the study concluded that postmenopausal women had an increased risk of vitamin D deficiency at the time of their breast cancer diagnoses, associated with higher rates of obesity than women of the same age group without cancer. Read Complete Article