This week in health
A new Dutch study suggests that people who take daily aspirin—a common treatment for those at high risk for heart attacks or strokes—should pop that pill at bedtime. The researchers looked at about 300 heart attack survivors who were taking aspirin to ward off a second attack to determine if taking aspirin at night could better thin a person’s blood and potentially lower their heart attack risk. “Since the 1980s, it’s been known that cardiovascular events happen more often in the morning,” said study author Tobias Bonten, M.D., of Leiden University Medical Center. Morning hours are a peak period of activity for blood cells that aid in clotting, which, doctors suspect might play a part in the increased risk of heart attacks and strokes in the morning.
Want to live longer? Go nuts. A large study looking at the relationship between nuts and longevity found that not only are nuts high in unsaturated fats, protein and vitamins, but they are also chock-full of antioxidants thought to be linked to a lower risk of heart disease. Study participants who reported regularly consuming nuts were less likely to die from some cancers, heart disease and respiratory ailments.
You might not be able to see the wrinkles on our faces, but black women are aging faster than white women on the inside. Data from the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation found black women between the ages of 49 and 55 are 7.5 years biologically “older” than white women. The study’s authors say stressfulsituations, including discrimination, financial difficulties and multiple caregiving roles, are likely the culprit.
If you’ve used the Pill as your form of birth control for a lengthy period, you could be at increased risk of developing glaucoma, according to new research. The study, which included more than 3,000 women 40 and older, shows those who had been on birth control pills for more than three years had a doubled risk of glaucoma—a finding that held true even when the researchers took other risk factors for glaucoma into account.
