Category Archives: Immortality Medicine

While the debate over the issue has not stopped, scientists have named the improving healthcare facilities and life standards as the prime reason for this positive news

Humans can live up to 150 years

Amid speculations around lowering life expectancy rates in humans, a new study has said that humans have no fixed maximum age limit debunking the belief of existing researches which spoke high on the rising mortality rates in humans. This research, conducted at the McGill University in Canada, came out in response to previously published paper last year which set out to set a maximum age limit if humans. As a study, this has opened multiple scopes for further research in the area.

The Study

This study was based on the lifespan of longest living individuals in UK, France and USA who were born in and around 1968. According to Siegfried Hekimi, the age limit plateau of 115 (calculated by the previous year's research) might rise up a level higher if a similar study is repeated again focusing on the people who were born in and around the year 1980. She further adds that it is also a matter of interpreting the existing statistics and with expanding avenues on good medical treatment and awareness on leading a healthy lifestyle. It is likely that the maximum age limit of humans can rise up to 150 years old in the following years.

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The debate, however has not yet stopped, with many researchers irrevocably backing the previously conducted researches. Some experts have said that insufficient data were used to reach to the conclusion; while some others are claiming that biological evidence provides agreeable support to the recently conducted research.

"I can never rule out that we'll see this ceiling broken. Maybe we can be successful in generating new drugs that work against diseases. Work against the aging process overall deserves way more publicity." says Jan Vijg, researcher at the Albert Einstein College Of Medicine.

While there are many who are opposing the claims made by the recent study conducted at the Canadian University, there is a sizeable section of researchers all around the world which has said that improved healthcare facilities, technological advancements and rising life standards of people have contributed in reducing the mortality rate worldwide.

The debate on the maximum age limit might take multiple turns in the upcoming times but for a while the mankind can rejoice over the fact that immortality is not a distant dream.

life expectacy Canada USA Healthcare facilities Wealth

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You Can Live Forever, No Maximum Age-Limit Found - Doctor NDTV

Frailty in old age is similar to cancer in that it may be terminal, writes intensive care specialist Professor Ken Hillman in his new book, A Good Life to the End.*

Doctors are able to predict the likelihood of survival for elderly individuals and groups of patients with some accuracy. However, this does not seem to influence the use of inappropriate and aggressive medical care, writes Professor Hillman.

He says patient safety includes managing the dying and frail safely, not just preventing potentially preventable adverse events.

He is concerned that fighting old age and frailty with drugs and complex interventions is an expensive and largely ineffective exercise.

The inference is that frailty may be avoidable or even curable. Apart from giving false hope, it reinforces the current complicity between modern medicine and our society, inferring that all things are treatable or even curable.

He raises the prospect of frailty assuming a medical life of its own, with specific diagnostic criteria and an assumption that it can be treated.

We may gradually lose sight of the inevitability of frailty and be blinded by the prospect of immortality, he writes.

However, as the palliative care approach gains traction, he says a new system could look something like this:

*From A Good Life to the End by Ken Hillman. Published by Allen & Unwin. In stores now. RRP: $29.99

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How doctors get sucked into inappropriate care - 6minutes

Imagine a world in which youre 90 years old and nowhere near middle-aged. An app on your phone has hacked your DNA code, so you know exactly when to go to the doctor to receive gene therapy to prevent all the diseases you dont yet have. A microchip in your skin sends out a signal if youre at risk of developing a wrinkle so you step out of the sun and hotfoot it to your dermatologist. Every evening you sync your brain-mapping device with The Cloud, so even if you were caught up in a fatal accident youd still be able to cheat death every detail of your life would simply be downloaded to one of the perfect silicon versions youd had made of yourself, ensuring you last until at least your 1,000th birthday.

This may sound like science fiction but it could be your fate provided you can afford it. If current research develops into medicine, in the London of the future the super-rich wont simply be able to buy the best things in life, theyll be able to buy life itself by transforming themselves into a bio-engineered super-race, capable of living, if not forever, then for vastly longer than the current UK life expectancy of 81 years.

The science of turning back the clock has never been more advanced. In Boston, a drug capable of reversing half a lifetime of ageing in mice is about to be tested on humans in a medical trial monitored by Nasa. NMN is a compound found naturally in broccoli which boosts levels of NAD, a protein involved in energy production that depletes as we get older. Professor David Sinclair, who headed up the initial research at Australias University of New South Wales, doses himself with 500mg daily, and claims that he has already become more youthful. According to blood tests analysing the state of the 48-year-olds cells, prior to taking the pills Sinclair was in the same physical shape as a 57-year-old, but now hes 31.4.

Meanwhile, Hollywood stars looking for the elixir of youth might want to keep a close eye on developments at Newcastle University where last February Professor Mark Birch-Machin identified, for the first time, the mitochondrial complex which depletes over time, causing skin to age. Mitochondria are the battery packs that power our cells so if we want to slow down ageing we need to keep them topped up; doing so would be transformative for our appearance. In the future, Birch-Machin believes, well not only be taking pills and applying cosmetics, well have implants in our skin. Implants will tell us the state of it how well our batteries are doing, how many free radicals, and will inform us how we are doing with our lifestyle, he says. You can store it, log it, have that linked to your healthcare package.

Such medical discoveries are being translated into treatment at an unprecedented rate. The day after the results of Birch-Machins study were published in The New York Times, his department was contacted by nine companies hoping to turn his research into revolutionary pharmaceuticals. In 2009, Elizabeth Blackburn, a professor of biology and physiology at the University of California, won a Nobel Prize for her work on telomeres, the protective tips on our chromosomes that break down as we get older, leaving us prone to age-related diseases. Blackburn discovered an enzyme called telomerase that can stop the shortening of telomeres by adding DNA like a plastic tip fixing the end of a fraying shoelace. Today, rich Californians now use telomeres therapy to prolong the life of their pets.

Last year, in Monterey, California, the start-up Ambrosia (founded by Dr Jesse Karmazin, a DC-based physician) began trialling the effect of blood transfusions, pumping blood from teenagers into older patients, following studies thatfound that blood plasma from young mice can rejuvenate old mice, improving their memory, cognition and physical activity.

Dr Richard Siow, who heads up the Age Research department at Kings College London, believes we may be soon reach a significant point in anti-ageing research because of the massive amounts of money allocated by governments and charities worldwide in the hope of making a breakthrough. Indeed, according to a survey by Transparency Market Research, by 2019 the anti-ageing market will be worth 151 billion worldwide. Life expectancy in many countries has already increased from 65-68 all the way through to 70, 80, 85 because people are now surviving heart disease, strokes and cancer, points out Siow, who has been studying anti-ageing compounds found in Indian spices and tea. We are now redefining what ageing means. How can we extend that period of health so were not a burden?

It is in Silicon Valley, however, that the really radical advances seem likely to be made. Freshly minted internet tycoons appear willing to pay any price to prolong their lives and a critical mass of geeks is working furiously towards understanding our biology at an unprecedented rate. Take Dmitry Itskov, the Russian billionaire founder of the life-extension non-profit 2045 Initiative, who is paying scientists to map the human brain so our minds can be decanted into a computer and either downloaded to a robot body or synced with a hologram. Or Joon Yun, a physician and hedge fund manager who insisted at an anti-ageing symposium of the California elite in March that ageing is simply a programming error encoded in our DNA. If something is encoded, you can crack the code, he told an audience which, according to The New Yorker, included multi-billionaire Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Goldie Hawn. Thermodynamically, there should be no reason we cant defer entropy indefinitely. We can end ageing forever.

And then theres PayPal founder (and Donald Trump supporter) Peter Thiel, who has a net worth of 2.1 billion and has reportedly invested in start-up Unity Biotechnology which aims to develop drugs that make many debilitating consequences of ageing as uncommon as polio. Thiel has also offered funding to individual researchers, such as Aubrey de Grey, the Chelsea-born, Cambridge and California-based gerontologist who ploughed the 11 million he inherited from his artist mother, Cordelia, into founding the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence Research Foundation in Mountain View, which promotes the use of rejuvenation biotechnology in anti-ageing research.

Of course, the best known element of the immortality industry is cryogenic freezing. Despite its reputation as the last resort of wealthy cranks, it remains in business; at the Alcor cryonics facility in Arizona, 149 corpses have already been preserved in liquid nitrogen at a temperature of minus 196C since it was founded in 1972. Worldwide there are thousands of people signed up for cryogenics services, including Alcors 28 clients in the UK. The service doesnt come cheap (full-body freezing costs 165,000, while having your head cut off and frozen is around 60,000) but it has some impressive-sounding clients, including de Grey and Dr Anders Sandberg, research fellow at Oxford Universitys Future of Humanity Institute.

Its a gamble but its still much better than being dead, says Sandberg. He envisages a world in which the brain is paramount, so when his is revived it could be transformed into a sort of computer programme containing all of his memories of life on earth. If you actually exist as software you have a lot of options. I do enjoy having a physical body but why have just one when you could have lots of different ones?

Of course, if such experiments do come to fruition, they could have far reaching implications for our society. Already, a rapidly ageing population is placing enormous stress on healthcare and pension systems worldwide. De Grey sees the problem of over-population being cured by a dwindling birth-rate. Buthe says little about the impact this would have on the young.

Then theres the question of whether we will one day be living in a world defined by gaping differences in life expectancy where the haves live for 10 times longer than the have nots. Mortality has been the great equaliser from beggars to kings to emperors, says Dr Jack Kreindler, medical director at the Centre for Health & Human Performance in Harley Street. If people embark on really sophisticated, targeted therapies to repair damage to their cells... I think were definitely entering into them and us territory. As projected in Homo Deus, the best-selling book of Israeli academic Yuval Noah Harari, Kreindler adds, we could witness a schism in humanity where we have some people so bioengineered that only the very, very rich can sustain the amount of maintenance required to look after their enhancements, while others simply cant afford to do anything but be natural.

Nevertheless, the quest to overcome mortality continues apace. Last year, at a TEDx symposium Kreindler convened at the Science Museum, Daisy Robinton, a post-doctoral scientist at Harvard University, put forward the theory that ageing should be considered a disease in itself. She described the excitement in the medical community at the discovery of CRISPR/Cas9, a protein that seems to allow us to target and delete genetic mutations in our DNA. Gene editing provides an opportunity to not only cure genetic disease but also to prevent diseases from ever coming into being, Robinton claimed. To treat our susceptibilities before they ever transform into symptoms.

If this theory became fact, dying of old age might one day seem as outmoded as being felled by one of the mass killers of the past for which we get vaccinated. If gene editing on this scale is possible, Kreindler says we have to ask: Can your cells become immortal, can they live forever?

At the Centre for Health & Human Performance, treatments may still be firmly rooted in the 21st century, focused as they are on helping athletes optimise their fitness and celebritiessuch as David Walliams complete gruelling challenges for Sport Relief. But Kreindler is clearlyin awe of what the latestmedical advances might mean for the future of the human race.

I dont believe this should be only for the very rich, he says. If youre going to do things, dont just do it for the billionaires, do it for the billions.

Read more here:
Why the super-rich are ploughing billions into the booming 'immortality industry' - Evening Standard

Wed., June 28, 2017, 4 p.m.

If you go

Harry Potters World: Renaissance Science, Magic and Medicine

When: Monday-Aug. 12. Mondays-Thursdays, 10 a.m.-9 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays, 10 a.m.-6 p.m., and Sundays, 1-5 p.m.

Where: Spokane Valley Library, 12004 E. Main Ave., Spokane Valley.

Cost: Free.

And Theres the Humor of It: Shakespeare and the Four Humors

When: Monday-Aug. 12. Mondays-Wednesdays, 10 a.m.-8 p.m., Thursdays-Saturdays, 10 a.m.-6 p.m., and Sunday, 1-5 p.m.

Where: Cheney Library, 610 First St., Cheney.

Cost: Free.

In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, author J.K. Rowling describes a mandrake, a plant with roots that resemble the human figure, as having pale green, mottled skin.

In Historiae Animalium, Swiss naturalist and physician Konrad Gesner described a basilisk, which is mentioned throughout the Harry Potter series, as the King of Serpents It strikes with swell and sight all types of beasts, you must believe, and bears nothing good.

In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Albus Dumbledore, speaking to Potter, said We wizards have mistreated and abused our fellows for too long, and we are now reaping our reward.

In De Religione Perpetua, physician and alchemist Paracelsus wrote All things that we use on earth let us use them for good and not for evil.

In Harry Potters World: Renaissance Science, Magic and Medicine, the National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health are examining the similarities between the world of Harry Potter and the work of 15th and 16th century thinkers.

The exhibit runs from Monday-Aug. 12 at Spokane Valley Library.

Its the 20th anniversary of Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone so it seemed quite appropriate to have an exhibit that included Harry Potters world in it at the Spokane Valley Library, Jane Baker, communication officer for the library district, said.

In this self-guided exhibit, library patrons can learn about the real-life French alchemist Nicolas Flamel, who many believed created the Philosophers stone, which turns metals into gold and grants its owner immortality.

Flamel is credited in Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone (called Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone in the U.S.) as the creator of the stone.

On another panel, patrons can read about herbology, a subject Potter studies while at Hogwarts and German publisher Jakob Meydenbach wrote about in Hortus Sanitatis (Garden of Health), an encyclopedia of plants.

More of us have read Harry Potter than a lot of other things and we understand the Harry Potter world, Baker said. When you look at these potions and thoughts and things that these older 15th and 16th century medical and philosophers believed, then you can see where some of the correlation is between Harry Potter and what they believed back then.

To celebrate the Harry Potter exhibit, the Spokane Valley Library is holding Magical Trivia Night for fans 18 and older (Aug. 11).

It is an adults only trivia night mostly because Harry Potter is 20 years old now and so many people have grown up with the Harry Potter stories that we have adults who understand it as much as kids do, Baker said.

For the kids, there will be Happy Birthday, Harry birthday parties at the Spokane Valley (Aug. 1) and North Spokane (July 31) libraries, complete with costume contests, games and crafts.

At the same time this exhibit is running at the Spokane Valley Library, the Cheney Library is hosting an event called And Theres the Humor of It: Shakespeare and the Four Humors, developed and produced by the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health and the Folger Shakespeare Library.

This exhibit examines the four bodily humors blood, bile, melancholy and phlegm - as they appear in Shakespeares work and in contemporary medicine.

There will be an art project through which library patrons can find out which humor applies most to them, and the library is sponsoring a hot pepper Shakespeare recitation, which involves eating a hot pepper and then reciting a passage from Shakespeare, at the Mason Jar in Cheney.

Were having a lot of fun with it, bringing medical information in in an easy and fun way to understand, Baker said. Theyre both great opportunities to see some really cool things that you wouldnt normally see unless you traveled some place like Washington, D.C. or the Smithsonian. We bring these wonderful exhibits to our local libraries.

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Exhibits examine 15th- and 16th-century ideas in Harry Potter ... - The Spokesman-Review

Human-made objects reflect our connection to nature

Thomas Farnetti; Steven Pocock/Wellcome

By Boyd Tonkin

If you fear that urban living has astroturfed over our sensitivity to nature, trek to Euston Road in London. Each of the 56 crowdsourced exhibits in the Wellcome Collections Museum of Modern Nature comes with an audio commentary by the person who submitted it. These are worth a listen.

Take the slice of artificial turf presented by Jenny Bettenson, who works on a city farm. At first glance, its an invitation to contemplate what the word natural might mean in societies increasingly removed from wildness. (The writer Robert Macfarlane once observed that, as childrens knowledge of plant and animal vocabulary shrinks, its goodbye to the blackberry, hello to the BlackBerry.) Hold on, though: that patch of plastic grass not only mimics the concrete-covered real thing. Proper plants kale, nasturtiums, even grass itself have begun to sprout amid its phoney blades.

Curator Honor Beddard and her team of selectors which includes a dairy farmer, a mountaineer, a park manager, a horticultural scientist and a plant medicine shaman have chosen items to tell a story about their contributors relationship with nature. Ideas of nostalgia, loss and threat abound, from Elizabeth Shucks paired photos of the same location in the 1950s and 1980s, in which a farm is replaced by a motorway, to David Cahill Rootss synthetic toy chick. You can draw a line through this show that leads from plenty and intimacy to pollution and alienation. But you will not have covered all the territory.

This gathering of found objects and crafted artefacts, mementos, relics and fetishes, speaks softly yet insistently about resilience and ingenuity. These everyday treasures honour and cherish nature. Some choices are deliberately mundane. Theres a lentil-sorting sieve brought from Bangladesh, and hand-carved spoons from a felled silver birch. Others stress the mimetic capacity of crafted objects, from the fish-shaped paper knife made from brass shell casings in the trenches of the first world war, to the conceptual body art of Kelli Powlings phytoplankton-themed tattoo.

Thomas Farnetti; Steven Pocock/Wellcome

In the shape of actual or depicted flowers, leaves, branches and creatures, fragments of autobiography find expression. If the exhibition needed a signature quotation, it might come from William Wordsworths ode Intimations of Immortality: To me the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Not too deep for laughter, though. Whatever can Stephen Halls nerdily arranged rows of toy cars, colour-coded to form a spectrum, have to do with modern nature? Hall, who as a kid collected beetles in Australia, began to buy model motors for his son, then for himself. So these plastic automobiles evoke not only the fondly remembered Coleoptera of childhood, but the principle of collecting and classifying itself.

Semioticians would enjoy, as it were, a field day at the Wellcome. These objects run the gamut of every imaginable index, icon and symbol for the natural world from a barometer and a juice carton to a thermos flask and primatologist Shenaz Khimjis paper stack of statistical data about black-headed night monkeys.

Some of the choices seem charmingly naive, though Julie Carrs garden gnome has a touching family backstory. Some John Cockrams oxygen cylinder, for instance feel clever to the point of Tate Modern sophistication.

Ben Gilbert/Wellcome

Just as thought-provoking, in their gnarled and knobbly way, are the scary weapons constructed out of wood, string and concrete by Felix, Vito and Gulliver Wayman-Thwaites (aged, respectively, 7, 7, and 2 and three-quarters). Very Lord of the Flies. One of the Wayman-Thwaiteses explains that, in its pre-militarised state, his stick had a bug living in it but its dead now.

Whole tomes of eco-philosophy have arisen from such insights.

A Museum of Modern Nature runs at the Wellcome Collection, London, until 8 October

More on these topics:

Read more:
Nature and human nature intersect in a crowdsourced exhibition - New Scientist

By Will Boggs MD/Reuters Health

Meeting some or all of the American Heart Associations seven ideal cardiovascular health goals is associated with longer life and fewer heart attacks and strokes, no matter your age. In fact, in a recent group of elderly patients, the benefit of an ideal cardiovascular health in reducing mortality and vascular events was comparable to what is observed in younger populations, Dr Bamba Gaye from University Paris Descartes in France told Reuters Health by e-mail. This is a very good news, which suggests that it is never too late to prevent the development of risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD). Gaye and colleagues analysed whether achieving some or all of the American Heart Association (AHA) seven ideal goals Lifes Simple 7 would affect peoples risk of dying or having a stroke or heart attack during a specific study period. The seven goals include: -Keep body mass index (BMI) a ratio of weight to height lower than the overweight cutoff; -Never start smoking, or have stopped at least 12 months ago; -For at least 75 minutes a week, perform vigorous activity, or perform moderate physical activity at least 150 minutes a week; -Follow a healthy diet that includes vegetables and fresh fruit daily, fish twice or more a week, and less than 450 calories a week from sugar; -Keep blood pressure below 120/80 without medication; -Maintain a normal cholesterol level without medication; -Maintain a normal blood sugar without medication. Out of the 7,371 study participants, whose average age was 74, only one individual had met all seven goals. Only 5% of participants met at least five goals, researchers reported in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. For all goals except physical activity and total cholesterol, women were more likely than men to be at ideal levels. The research team tracked the study subjects to monitor their health; half of the participants were tracked more than nine years. Compared to people who meet no more than two of the goals, in those who met three or four the risk of death during the study was reduced by 16%, and meeting five to seven goals cut the risk by 29%. In fact, the risk of death fell by 10% for each additional goal at the ideal level. Similarly, the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke fell by 22% for each additional goal at the ideal level. The ideal goal would be to have no risk factors for cardiovascular disease at all, Gaye said. However, our study also shows a graded benefit on outcome according to the number of risk factors at the optimal level. Hence, a perhaps more realistic approach would be to advise older subjects to have at least one risk factor at an optimal level, and to progressively gain more risk factors at optimal level. We would like emphasise that (good) health in general and cardiovascular health in particular is the cornerstone of (good) life and we all need to take care of it over the life course, Gaye concluded. The good news is that it is never too late to optimise our own health in elderhood. The goal of successful ageing is not immortality, but limiting time spent with illness and disability, writes Dr Karen P Alexander from Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina in an editorial published with the study.

Here is the original post:
Seven 'ideal' goals to maintain healthy heart - Gulf Times - Gulf Times

(Reuters Health) - Meeting some or all of the American Heart Associations seven ideal cardiovascular health goals is associated with longer life and fewer heart attacks and strokes, no matter your age.

In fact, in a recent group of elderly patients, the benefit of an ideal cardiovascular health in reducing mortality and vascular events was comparable to what is observed in younger populations, Dr. Bamba Gaye from University Paris Descartes in France told Reuters Health by email. This is a very good news, which suggests that it is never too late to prevent the development of risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD).

Gaye and colleagues analyzed whether achieving some or all of the American Heart Association (AHA) seven ideal goals Lifes Simple 7 - would affect peoples risk of dying or having a stroke or heart attack during a specific study period.

The seven goals include:

-Keep body mass index (BMI) - a ratio of weight to height - lower than the overweight cutoff;

-Never start smoking, or have stopped at least 12 months ago;

-For at least 75 minutes a week, perform vigorous activity, or perform moderate physical activity at least 150 minutes a week;

-Follow a healthy diet that includes vegetables and fresh fruit daily, fish twice or more a week, and less than 450 calories a week from sugar;

-Keep blood pressure below 120/80 without medication;

-Maintain a normal cholesterol level without medication;

-Maintain a normal blood sugar without medication.

Out of the 7371 study participants, whose average age was 74, only one individual had met all seven goals. Only 5% of participants met at least five goals, researchers reported in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

For all goals except physical activity and total cholesterol, women were more likely than men to be at ideal levels.

The research team tracked the study subjects to monitor their health; half of the participants were tracked more than nine years.

Compared to people who meet no more than two of the goals, in those who met three or four the risk of death during the study was reduced by 16 percent, and meeting five to seven goals cut the risk by 29 percent.

In fact, the risk of death fell by 10 percent for each additional goal at the ideal level.

Similarly, the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke fell by 22 percent for each additional goal at the ideal level.

The ideal goal would be to have no risk factors for cardiovascular disease at all, Gaye said. However, our study also shows a graded benefit on outcome according to the number of risk factors at the optimal level. Hence, a perhaps more realistic approach would be to advise older subjects to have at least one risk factor at an optimal level, and to progressively gain more risk factors at optimal level.

We would like emphasize that (good) health in general and cardiovascular health in particular is the cornerstone of (good) life and we all need to take care of it over the life course, Gaye concluded. The good news is that it is never too late to optimize our own health in elderhood.

The goal of successful aging is not immortality, but limiting time spent with illness and disability, writes Dr. Karen P. Alexander from Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina in an editorial published with the study.

This study, she continued, reminds us that risk factor and lifestyle modifications have no expiration date and continue to yield benefits for a healthy old age, well beyond age 70.

Older adults should focus not so much on the perfect attainment of Lifes Simple 7, but on the process of working to achieve these goals, she concludes.

Dr. Dana E. King from West Virginia University Medicine, Morgantown, West Virginia, who has studied elderly health extensively, told Reuters Health by email, "It is never too late to start or improve your healthy lifestyle habits. Elderly people who adopt healthier diets, get active, and quit smoking, actually benefit sooner and to a greater degree than young people.

SOURCE: bit.ly/2sOWXS0 and bit.ly/2s51MCd Journal of the American College of Cardiology, online June 19, 2017.

(This version of the story was refiled to correct typo in paragraph four, bullet point 2)

Merck & Co said on Tuesday its experimental cholesterol drug from a class with a history of consistent failure lowered deaths and heart attacks in a large trial, but the company has yet to decide whether to seek approval despite the surprise success.

CHICAGO A group of retailers Tuesday sued Cook County, Illinois, to try to block the sweetened beverage tax scheduled to go into effect in the Chicago area on Saturday, arguing it is unconstitutional and too vague for stores to implement.

See the article here:
Hitting cardiovascular health targets can help elderly live longer - Reuters

Meeting some or all of the American Heart Associations seven ideal cardiovascular health goals is associated with longer life and fewer heart attacks and strokes, no matter your age.

In fact, in a group of elderly patients, the benefit of an ideal cardiovascular health in reducing mortality and vascular events was comparable to what is observed in younger populations, Dr Bamba Gaye from University Paris Descartes in France told Reuters Health. This is a very good news, which suggests that it is never too late to prevent the development of risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD).

Gaye and colleagues analysed whether achieving some or all of the American Heart Association (AHA) seven ideal goals Lifes Simple 7 - would affect peoples risk of dying or having a stroke or heart attack during a specific study period.

The seven goals include:

Out of the 7371 study participants, whose average age was 74, only one individual had met all seven goals. Only 5% of participants met at least five goals, researchers reported online June 19 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

For all goals except physical activity and total cholesterol, women were more likely than men to be at ideal levels.

The research team tracked the study subjects to monitor their health; half of the participants were tracked more than nine years.

Compared to people who meet no more than two of the goals, in those who met three or four the risk of death during the study was reduced by 16 percent, and meeting five to seven goals cut the risk by 29 percent.

In fact, the risk of death fell by 10 per cent for each additional goal at the ideal level.

Similarly, the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke fell by 22 percent for each additional goal at the ideal level.

The ideal goal would be to have no risk factors for cardiovascular disease at all, Gaye said.

However, our study also shows a graded benefit on outcome according to the number of risk factors at the optimal level. Hence, a perhaps more realistic approach would be to advise older subjects to have at least one risk factor at an optimal level, and to progressively gain more risk factors at optimal level.

We would like emphasize that (good) health in general and cardiovascular health in particular is the cornerstone of (good) life and we all need to take care of it over the life course, Gaye concluded. The good news is that it is never too late to optimize our own health in elderhood.

The goal of successful aging is not immortality, but limiting time spent with illness and disability, writes Dr Karen Alexander from Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina in an editorial published with the study.

This study, she continued, reminds us that risk factor and lifestyle modifications have no expiration date and continue to yield benefits for a healthy old age, well beyond age 70.

Older adults should focus not so much on the perfect attainment of Lifes Simple 7, but on the process of working to achieve these goals, she concludes.

Dr. Dana E. King from West Virginia University Medicine, Morgantown, West Virginia, who has studied elderly health extensively, told Reuters Health, "It is never too late to start or improve your healthy lifestyle habits. Elderly people who adopt healthier diets, get active, and quit smoking, actually benefit sooner and to a greater degree than young people.

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Times of Malta The seven ideal cardiovascular health goals ... - Times of Malta

Gwendolyn Fields Black, 90, passed away on Friday, June 23, 2017. She was born to Lester Fields and Frankie Davis Fields on November 15, 1926. Gwen was married to her beloved husband Raymond M. Black, who preceded her in death. Gwen was born in Bryant, Va., but was raised in Beech Grove, Va., in the heart of the lovely Blue Ridge Mountains. She was also preceded in death by one sister, Marion Brown. She is survived by four devoted siblings, LaVerne Napier, James Fields, Sylvia Witt, and Carolyn Mattox; and by her brother-in-law, Carlton Mattox. Gwen did not have children herself, but was a loving, generous aunt to her nieces and nephews, Donnie Brown, Dale Brown, Frankie Ann Kirtland, Debbie Garcia, Denise McClanahan, Vivian Brown, Keith Mattox, Diane Crickenberger, and Scott Mattox. Numerous great-nieces and nephews also remember Aunt Gwen with great fondness. The pall-bearers, Dale Brown, Keith Mattox, Scott Mattox, Jacob Anderson, Nathan Anderson, and Rachel Hysong, are all her nephews and nieces, and feel so honored to help lay her to rest. Gwen retired after a long career at General Electric. She and her husband Raymond enjoyed camping and square dancing. Gwen loved to raise flowers and feed the birds. Her Christian faith was extremely important to her. She was a charter member of Westwood Baptist Church, and a current member of Wayne Hills Baptist Church. One of Gwen's strongest characteristics was her generosity. She was very giving of her time and money to family and church. As one niece put it, she had a "heart of gold." She will be sorely missed, but her family is assured that she is now in Heaven, with her Lord. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory." "Where, O death, is your victory? "Where, O death, is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 15:53-57 A funeral service will be held at 1 p.m. on Monday, June 26, 2017, at McDow Funeral Home in Waynesboro, Va. Interment will follow at Augusta Memorial Park. The family will receive friends from 5 until 7 p.m. on Sunday, June 25, 2017, at McDow Funeral Home. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to the Hospice of the Shenandoah, 64 Sports Medicine Drive, Fishersville, VA 22939, or to Cystic Fibrosis, 4550 Montgomery Ave., Suite 1100, North Bethesda, MD 20814. The family would also like to thank Waynesboro Manor for their devoted and kind long-term care of Gwen. A special thanks and recognition go to her faithful sisters, LaVerne and Sylvia, who cared for her constantly and with enormous devotion in her waning years. With their lives they fulfilled Galatians 6:2: "Bear one another's burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ."

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Black, Gwendolyn - The Daily Progress

Friday, June 23, 2017 4:23 p.m. CDT

By Will Boggs MD

(Reuters Health) - Meeting some or all of the American Heart Associations seven ideal cardiovascular health goals is associated with longer life and fewer heart attacks and strokes, no matter your age.

In fact, in a recent group of elderly patients, the benefit of an ideal cardiovascular health in reducing mortality and vascular events was comparable to what is observed in younger populations, Dr. Bamba Gaye from University Paris Descartes in France told Reuters Health by email. This is a very good news, which suggests that it is never too late to prevent the development of risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD).

Gaye and colleagues analyzed whether achieving some or all of the American Heart Association (AHA) seven ideal goals Lifes Simple 7 - would affect peoples risk of dying or having a stroke or heart attack during a specific study period.

The seven goals include:

-Keep body mass index (BMI) - a ratio of weight to height - lower than the overweight cutoff;

-Never start smoking, or have stopped at least 12 months ago;

-For at least 75 minutes a week, perform vigorous activity, or perform moderate physical activity at least 150 minutes a week;

-Follow a healthy diet that includes vegetables and fresh fruit daily, fish twice or more a week, and less than 450 calories a week from sugar;

-Keep blood pressure below 120/80 without medication;

-Maintain a normal cholesterol level without medication;

-Maintain a normal blood sugar without medication.

Out of the 7371 study participants, whose average age was 74, only one individual had met all seven goals. Only 5% of participants met at least five goals, researchers reported in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

For all goals except physical activity and total cholesterol, women were more likely than men to be at ideal levels.

The research team tracked the study subjects to monitor their health; half of the participants were tracked more than nine years.

Compared to people who meet no more than two of the goals, in those who met three or four the risk of death during the study was reduced by 16 percent, and meeting five to seven goals cut the risk by 29 percent.

In fact, the risk of death fell by 10 percent for each additional goal at the ideal level.

Similarly, the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke fell by 22 percent for each additional goal at the ideal level.

The ideal goal would be to have no risk factors for cardiovascular disease at all, Gaye said. However, our study also shows a graded benefit on outcome according to the number of risk factors at the optimal level. Hence, a perhaps more realistic approach would be to advise older subjects to have at least one risk factor at an optimal level, and to progressively gain more risk factors at optimal level.

We would like emphasize that (good) health in general and cardiovascular health in particular is the cornerstone of (good) life and we all need to take care of it over the life course, Gaye concluded. The good news is that it is never too late to optimize our own health in elderhood.

The goal of successful aging is not immortality, but limiting time spent with illness and disability, writes Dr. Karen P. Alexander from Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina in an editorial published with the study.

This study, she continued, reminds us that risk factor and lifestyle modifications have no expiration date and continue to yield benefits for a healthy old age, well beyond age 70.

Older adults should focus not so much on the perfect attainment of Lifes Simple 7, but on the process of working to achieve these goals, she concludes.

Dr. Dana E. King from West Virginia University Medicine, Morgantown, West Virginia, who has studied elderly health extensively, told Reuters Health by email, "It is never too late to start or improve your healthy lifestyle habits. Elderly people who adopt healthier diets, get active, and quit smoking, actually benefit sooner and to a greater degree than young people.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2sOWXS0 and http://bit.ly/2s51MCd Journal of the American College of Cardiology, online June 19, 2017.

(This version of the story was refiled to correct typo in paragraph four, bullet point 2)

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Hitting cardiovascular health targets can help elderly live longer ... - KFGO