Newsbriefs: Dietary Patterns; Exercise Pills; Sleep; ACL Reconstruction
Focus on Dietary Pattern, Not Individual Foods.
Four dietary patterns are linked with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer mortality, a recent study concludes. These include: The USDA dietary guidelines, Harvard’s Healthy Eating Plate, the Mediterranean diet, and the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) Eating Plan (see HealthNews, August 2014 for more detail on the DASH diet). All four diets’ principles are roughly the same—consume whole grains, vegetables, fruit, and plant-based proteins, and decrease consumption of fats, red meats, and sugar. Study results were published in The Journal of Nutrition, May 2014.
Take Your Exercise Pill!
A meta-analysis of 19 exercise and drug trials comprising more than 339,000 participants found that exercise can be as effective as medications on mortality outcomes, specifically, as secondary prevention of coronary heart disease, stroke rehabilitation, heart failure treatment (albeit, diuretics were found more effective than exercise), and diabetes prevention. People who exercise have a higher quality of life and improved health compared to those with sedentary lifestyles. Similar findings have been shown in arthritis, cancer, diabetes, heart disease and respiratory illnesses, among other chronic conditions, the authors say. The World Health Organization’s Global Burden of Disease study ranks physical inactivity as the fifth leading cause of disease burden in Western Europe—but also as one of the top modifiable risk factors, along with smoking. Exercise should be considered as a viable alternative to, or along with, medications, the authors recommend. John Ioannidis, MD, DSc, director of the Stanford Prevention Research Center at Stanford University School of Medicine, led the study, along with Huseyin Naci, research fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The study was published in the British Medical Journal.
Lose Weight to Improve Sleep and Mood.
Obese adults who lost at least five percent of their body weight experienced better and increased sleep duration after six months of weight loss, according to findings presented at a meeting of the International Society of Endocrinology and the Endocrine Society in June 2014. Participants also reported improvements in mood, which remained significant at 24 months, researchers said.
ACL Reconstruction: Autograft vs Allograft.
A study of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstructions found that more than 80 percent of all grafts were stable and intact after 10 years, but among patients who had allograft tissue—harvested from a donor—reconstruction failed at a rate three times higher than those who used autograft tissue—harvested from the patient. However, the study focused on only one type of allograft. Annually, more than 200,000 ACL reconstructions are performed. The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the American Orthopaedic Society of Sports Medicine in July 2014.
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