“Previous research has shown that loneliness and social isolation are linked with coronary heart disease and stroke, but this has not been investigated in patients with different types of cardiovascular diseases.”

The study investigated whether the poor social network was associated with worse outcomes in 13,463 patients with ischaemic heart disease, arrhythmia (abnormal heart rhythm), heart failure, or heart valve disease.

Data from national registers were linked with the DenHeart survey, which asked all patients discharged from April 2013 to April 2014 from five heart centers in Denmark to answer a questionnaire about their physical and mental health, lifestyle factors such as smoking and social support.

Social support was measured using registry data on living alone or not, and survey questions about feeling lonely – Do you have someone to talk to when you need it? Do you feel alone sometimes even though you want to be with someone? “It was important to collect information on both, since people may live alone but not feel lonely while others cohabit but do feel lonely,” explained Ms. Vinggaard Christensen. Feeling lonely was associated with poor outcomes in all patients regardless of their type of heart disease, and even after adjusting for age, level of education, other diseases, body mass index, smoking and alcohol intake.

Loneliness was associated with a doubled mortality risk in women and nearly doubled risk in men. Both men and women who felt lonely were three times more likely to report symptoms of anxiety and depression and had a significantly lower quality of life than those who did not feel lonely.

Ms. Vinggaard Christensen noted that people with poor social support may have worse health outcomes because they have unhealthier lifestyles, are less compliant with treatment, and are more affected by stressful events. But she said: “We adjusted for lifestyle behaviors and many other factors in our analysis, and still found that loneliness is bad for health.”

She concluded: “We live in a time when loneliness is more present and health providers should take this into account when assessing risk. Our study shows that asking two questions about social support provides a lot of information about the likelihood of having poor health outcomes.”

European guidelines on cardiovascular prevention state that people who are isolated or disconnected from others are at increased risk of developing and dying prematurely from coronary artery disease. The guidelines recommend an assessment of psychosocial risk factors in patients with established cardiovascular disease and those at high risk of developing cardiovascular disease.

The study has highlighted growing concerns about the issue and assumes great significance at places where loneliness is turning into a bane for victims due to lack of support system.

The study assumes significance and greater attention as the world marks the International Day of Older Persons on October 1, each year.

On December 14, 1990, the United Nations General Assembly voted to establish October 1 as the International Day of Older Persons as recorded in Resolution 45/106.

The holiday was observed for the first time on October 1, 1991. The holiday is celebrated by raising awareness about issues affecting the elderly, such as senescence and elder abuse. It is also a day to appreciate the contributions that older people make to society. This holiday is similar to National Grandparents Day in the United States and Canada as well as Double Ninth Festival in China and Respect for the Aged Day in Japan.

ACSM’s primary recommendations focus on four key areas:

Protecting children at risk:

Children and adolescents appear to be at particularly high risk of complications from energy drinks due to their small body size, being relatively caffeine naïve. The message that these beverages are not intended for children needs to be re-enforced and widely disseminated.

Stop marketing to at-risk groups, especially children: Marketing should not appeal to vulnerable populations. Currently, manufacturers of energy drinks advertise on websites, social media and television channels that are highly appealing to both children and adolescents. Target marketing to sporting and other events involving children and adolescents should not permit.

Do not use energy drinks before/during/after strenuous exercise. Regardless of health and fitness levels and until such time that proper safety and efficacy data are available. Energy drinks should avoid before, during or after strenuous activities. Some of the deaths allegedly due to energy drinks have occurred when a person consumed energy drinks before and/or after performing strenuous activities.

More education and data needed:

Investment in awareness and educational resources highlighting the potential adverse effects and energy drinks require safe to use. Consumers should educate with significant efforts. They should clear and present differences between soda, coffee, sports drinks and energy drinks. Energy drink education also should be a priority in school-based curricula related to nutrition, health and wellness.

A research agenda must develop to prioritize key questions about the acute and chronic effects of energy drink use. At a minimum, standard safety and efficacy studies should perform and submit to the FDA by manufacturers. Well-designed and controlled research is required to examine the increasing frequency of adverse events being reported by emergency departments.

Healthcare providers must talk to their patients about energy drink use. And report adverse events to watchdog agencies, like the Poison Control Centers, Consumer Product Safety Commission and the FDA. A national registry should set up to specifically track energy drink side effects with mandate reporting requirements.

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Want to write for InnoHEALTH? send us your article at magazine@innovatiocuris.com

A study of more than 270,000 people, published online recently in the journal Diabetes Care, also found that the more nights employees work, the greater their odds of having the disease, whether they are genetically predisposed to it or not.Healthcare workers, security guards and other employees who periodically work the night shift are significantly more likely to have Type 2 diabetes than workers who work only days, according to a sweeping new study by researchers from CU Boulder and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in Boston.

“Work, particularly night shifts, disrupts social and biological rhythms, as well as sleep, and has been suggested to increase the risk of metabolic disorders, including Type 2 diabetes,” said co-first author Celine Vetter, Director of the Circadian and Sleep Epidemiology Laboratory ( CASEL) at CU Boulder. “Our study is one of the first to show a dose-response relationship, where the more often people work nights, the greater their likelihood of having the disease.”

About 15 million Americans work permanent night shifts, rotating shifts or shifts with irregular schedules. Recent studies have found associations between such shift work and cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer, but few have looked specifically at how different work schedule characteristics impact risk. For the study, Vetter worked along with co-first author Hassan S. Dashti and collaborators at BWH, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Manchester University, to examine data from participants 38 to 71 years old in the UK Biobank.

Participants had provided detailed information on lifestyle, health status and present work schedule; 77,000 also provided in-depth lifetime employment information, and a subgroup of 44,000 provided genetic information. Participants also provided information about their “chronotype,” or whether they were a morning person or night person. Nearly 7,000 people had Type 2 diabetes.

The researchers found that those who worked irregular or rotating shifts that included night shifts were 44 percent more likely overall to have Type 2 diabetes than those who never worked nights. The odds of a person having diabetes rose with nights worked. For instance, those who worked eight or more night shifts per month were 36 percent more likely to have diabetes than day workers.

Notably, those who in their current schedule worked only at night showed no increased incidence of diabetes. This could be because those who tolerate nightshift work better tend to gravitate toward night jobs (permanent night-shift workers were twice as likely to have a “night owl” chronotype). But Vetter also notes that over time, some people may partially adapt to working nights. “If you rotate through a schedule that is always changing between day and night shifts it makes it hard to adapt and you can end up with a chronic misalignment between your lightdark cycle, your sleep-wake schedule, your meal timing, and your physical activity timing.”

Previous research at CU Boulder and by corresponding co-senior author Dr. Frank Scheer, director of the Medical Chronobiology Program and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, has shown that both sleepdebt and body-clock misalignment can impair glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity—a precursor to diabetes.

Vetter notes that while people may not be able to avoid working nights, maintaining a healthy weight and diet, and taking care to get enough exercise and sleep, is likely to mitigate its health risks. This was the first study to look at the genetic predisposition to Type 2 diabetes and its potential modification by shift work, and more studies are needed to replicate those findings.

The authors hope that the research will also inform efforts by employers to help their workers be as healthy as possible.

“Our study findings represent another puzzle piece in this quest towards healthier work schedule design,” they conclude.

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Want to write for InnoHEALTH? send us your article at magazine@innovatiocuris.com

A total of more than 3.4 million individuals without any prior cardiovascular disease in 2001 were included in the researchers’ study linking together seven different national data sources, including two dog ownership registers. The results are being published for the first time in Scientific Reports. The goal was to determine whether dog owners had a different risk of cardiovascular disease and death than non-dog owners.

“A very interesting finding in our study was that dog ownership was especially prominent as a protective factor in persons living alone, which is a group reported previously to be at higher risk of cardiovascular disease and death than those living in a multi-person household.

Perhaps a dog may stand in as an important family member in the single households. The results showed that single dog owners had a 33% reduction in risk of death and 11% reduction in risk of myocardial infarction during follow-up compared to single non-owners. Another interesting finding was that owners to dogs from breed groups originally bred for hunting were most  protected,” says Mwenya Mubanga, lead junior author of the study and PhD student at the Department of Medical Sciences and the Science for Life Laboratory, Uppsala University.

In Sweden, every person carries a unique personal identity number. Every visit to a hospital is recorded in national databases, accessible to researchers after de identification of data. Even dog ownership registration has been mandatory in Sweden since 2001. These scientists studied whether being registered as a dog owner was associated with later diagnosis of cardiovascular disease or death from any cause.

“These kind of epidemiological studies look for associations in large populations but do not provide answers on whether and how dogs could protect from cardiovascular disease. We know that dog owners in general have a higher level of physical activity, which could be one explanation to the observed results. Other explanations include an increased well-being and social contacts or effects of the dog on the bacterial microbiome in the owner,” says Tove Fall, senior author of the study and Associate Professor in Epidemiology at the Department of Medical Sciences and the Science for Life Laboratory, Uppsala University.

“There might also be differences between owners and non-owners already before buying a dog, which could have influenced our results, such as those people choosing to get a dog tending to be more active and of better health. Thanks to the population-based design, our results are generalisable to the Swedish population, and probably also to other European populations with\ similar culture regarding dog ownership,” says Fall.

The study was conducted by researchers at Uppsala University, Karolinska Institutet, Stanford University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

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Read all the issues of InnoHEALTH magazine:
InnoHEALTH Volume 1 Issue 1 (July to September 2016) – https://goo.gl/iWAwN2 
InnoHEALTH Volume 1 Issue 2 (October to December 2016) – https://goo.gl/4GGMJz 
InnoHEALTH Volume 2 Issue 1 (January to March 2017) – https://goo.gl/DEyKnw 
InnoHEALTH Volume 2 Issue 2 (April to June 2017) – https://goo.gl/Nv3eev
InnoHEALTH Volume 2 Issue 3 (July to September 2017) – https://goo.gl/MCVjd6
InnoHEALTH Volume 2 Issue 4 (October to December 2017) – http://amzn.to/2B2UMLw
InnoHEALTH Volume 3 Issue 1 (January to March 2018) – https://goo.gl/fksdQx

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