Word: cholesterol
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...hard not to be impressed by findings like that, but a skeptic will say there's nothing remarkable - much less spiritual - about them. You live longer if you go to church because you're there for the cholesterol-screening drive and the visiting-nurse service. Your viral load goes down when you include spirituality in your fight against HIV because your levels of cortisol - a stress hormone - go down first. "Science doesn't deal in supernatural explanations," says Richard Sloan, professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center and author of Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion...
...with increased risk for early heart attacks. This was the first time the gene chip was used to look at heart attacks, according to Altshuler. Genetics are already considered an important casual factor in early heart attacks. The predictive power of genetics may someday become greater than that of cholesterol measurement, Altshuler said. In a world where pharmaceutical companies are trying to market genetic tests to diagnose disease, the study may provide information for potential drug therapies. However, according to O’Donnell, “more evidence” is still necessary...
...Archives of Internal Medicine, scientists at Tel Aviv University found that patients taking statins for up to five years reduced their risk of death from any cause by 45%, compared with those not taking statins. Granted, most of the people who benefited had high levels of LDL cholesterol, the "bad" cholesterol, to start, so they were more likely than others to be helped by the drugs' ability to prevent plaque build-up in artery walls. But many patients also had never had a heart attack or other heart event. That means statins may have helped stave off such an event...
...that's the case, it would add to the growing list of statins' unexpected benefits. Initially the drugs were designed to inhibit the liver's ability to make cholesterol, but it turned out that they not only lowered LDL, but raised levels of HDL, or good cholesterol, in the blood as well. In the early 2000s, researchers reported that statins also reduced inflammation, a process that appears to contribute to the rupture of unstable plaques in the heart vessels, which triggers heart attack...
...fall, a large trial of middle-aged people who had not had a heart attack but showed signs of inflammation suggested that statins could reduce their risk of having a first heart attack by 45% to 47%. If more studies like these confirm the drugs' beneficial role in reducing cholesterol, inflammation and heart disease, doctors may someday consider advising otherwise healthy people to lower their levels of cholesterol and inflammatory protein markers below currently accepted limits - whether they make lifestyle changes or use medications such as statins...