Moderate Alcohol Intake Linked To Lower Female Diabetes Risk

Females in middle age who drink alcohol moderately and consume large amounts of refined carbohydrates have a 30% lower chance of developing diabetes type 2, compared to women with similar dietary habits who don't drink, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health wrote in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Examples of refined carbohydrate foods include sugary drinks, white bread, some pastas, and (polished) white rice.

The authors explained, as background information to their report, that very little prior research has focused on whether there might be an association between glycemic index load, glycemic index, alcohol consumption and diabetes type 2 risk.

Dr. Frank Hu and team set out to determine what impact alcohol intake (or lack of it) might have on diabetes risk in middle aged women whose refined carbohydrate (carb) intake was high. They tracked 81,827 women for 26 years. The women had participated in the Nurses' Health Study and were all free of diabetes type 2 when the study began.
Their cumulative averages of glycemic index, glycemic load, total carb intake and total alcohol intake were calculated every two to four years using questionnaires.
During the follow-up period 6,950 participants developed diabetes type 2.
They found that the women with a high refined-carb intake who consumed moderate amounts of alcohol had a 30% lower chance of developing diabetes type 2 compared to women whose refined-carb intake was also high but consumed no alcohol.
In an interview with Reuters news agency, Dr. Hu said:

"If you eat a high carb diet without drinking alcohol, your risk of developing diabetes is increased by 30 percent.
However, if you eat a high carb diet, but (drink) a moderate amount of alcohol, the increased risk is reduced."

The authors concluded in an Abstract in the journal:

"Our findings suggest that a higher alcohol intake (≥15 g/d) attenuates the positive association between GL and T2D incidence."

The moderate drinkers in this study consumed an average of 0.8 once (24 grams) of alcohol each day, the equivalent of approximately two drinks each week. A very small percentage were classed as heavy drinkers - consuming at least two ounces of alcohol each day - they did not have a lower diabetes type 2 risk.
The authors stressed that their study should not encourage people to start drinking if they do not do so now. Rather, they encourage a diet low in refined carbs and high in whole grains. If you are a drinker, they added, you should do so with moderation.

Refined and unrefined grains

Refined grains have been milled so that their outer bran coating has gone, leaving just the endosperm. Examples include white rice, white pasta and white bread. When referring to rice, the term polished is often used with the meaning 'milled'.
Unpolished long-grain rice with bran
Polished Indian sona masuri rice grains
In whole grain products, the germ and endosperm are still there. Bran is a good source of fiber, while the germ has protein, minerals and vitamins - the endosperm has carbohydrates (mainly in the form of starch).
Whole grains, also known as unrefined grains (unrefined carbs) are rich in antioxidants and phytochemicals - these help protect us against diabetes, some cancers and coronary heart disease. Some studies have demonstrated that individuals who consume at least three portions of whole grains each day have a lower risk of developing heart disease compared to people who don't.

Here you can see the bran, germ and endosperm
Written by Christian Nordqvist

Read more »

Women, Younger Men Under-Treated Before Heart Attack: Study

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 16 (HealthDay News) -- Women and younger men account for a large number of heart attacks in the United States but are less likely than older men to receive preventive medications that lower heart attack risk, a new study indicates.

Researchers evaluated more than 3,000 heart attack patients treated at the Minneapolis Heart Institute between March 2003 and January 2010, and found that 70.3% of them had not been diagnosed with coronary heart disease (CHD) and 60% of those undiagnosed patients were men 55 and younger and women 65 and younger with premature CHD.
Even though rates of high cholesterol among the women and younger men were similar to the rate in older men, those two groups of patients were nearly half as likely (10% vs. 19%) to be taking cholesterol-lowering statins prior to their heart attack and were much less likely to be on aspirin and combination therapy.

The study was scheduled for presentation Wednesday at an American Heart Association annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.

"For those patients with known coronary disease, the evidence and guidelines are fairly clear about the benefit of aggressive medical therapy, including an aspirin and statin, regardless of your age or gender," said Dr. Michael Miedema, a cardiology fellow at the University of Minnesota working with researchers at the Minneapolis Heart Institute at Abbott Northwestern Hospital.

"However, for patients without known coronary disease, the optimal approach is much less clear," he added in an institute news release. "We currently only treat high-risk patients, but our data show that women and young males, who rarely qualify as high-risk, make up a substantial portion of the current heart attack population."

The most widely used cardiac event risk calculator is the Framingham Risk Score, which uses the patient's age, gender and factors such as cholesterol and blood pressure. But this approach is heavily weighted toward age and gender, according to Miedema.
"If you're an older male, you're much more likely to qualify for preventive therapy while females and younger males often do not meet criteria despite similar risk factors," he said.
"While older males are still the most likely group to have heart attacks, we have shown that women and patients with premature disease make up a substantial portion of the heart attacks we are seeing and very few of these patients are on the medications which research has shown to prevent heart attacks. Better methods of risk assessment could potentially allow us to target more people truly at high risk for an event and avoid excessive treatment of those who are low risk," Miedema concluded.
Research presented at meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.
-- Robert Preidt

Related articles

• Traffic, Pollution and Heart Attacks | heart attack (whatontoday.com)

Read more »