Levitra Vs Sildenafil

Eating fruits and vegetables, and drinking tea and red wine may offer overweight men and normal weight women some protection from colon and rectal cancers, hint study findings from the Netherlands.

Plant-based foods contain flavonoids, compounds thought to interfere with cancer-causing processes, the study team notes in the International Journal of Cancer.

Colinda C.J.M. Simons, a PhD student at Maastricht University, and her co-investigators estimated the intake of specific flavonoids in 120,852 men and women, 55 to 69 years old, who filled out dietary surveys as part of a large designed to assess ties between diet and cancer.

Over about 13 years, 1,444 men and 1,041 women developed colon or rectal cancer.

Specific flavonoid intake did not seem to influence the risk for colorectal cancer when the investigators allowed for multiple factors potentially tied to the development of colorectal cancer, including age, family history, smoking, drinking alcohol, physical activity, and eating habits overall, plus estrogen use among women.

But when they allowed for weight, it seems “there may be protective effects of some of these compounds in subgroups of overweight men and normal weight women,” Simons noted in an email to Reuters Health.

Compared with the least intake, the greatest intake of catechins — common in berries, grapes, black chocolate, tea, red wine, and some beans — seemed to be associated with lower colorectal cancer risk among both overweight men and normal weight women.

The researchers observed a similar trend for flavonols — found in onions, kale, apples, pears, tea, wine, and fruit juices — in normal weight women.

“The fact that the inverse trend was observed for most of the specific catechins and flavonols argues against the associations being spurious,” Simons said.

She and colleagues, therefore, call for further investigations to shed more light on the how these compounds alter colon and rectal cancer risk and how weight modifies this impact.

Most smokers around the world support workplace smoking bans, according to a new study.

Researchers surveyed more than 3,500 employees who smoke and more than 1,400 employers (smokers and nonsmokers) in the United States and 13 other countries. They found that 74 percent of employees who smoke and 87 percent of employers said the workplace should be smoke-free.

“Although there was widespread variation among countries, overall the results demonstrate global support for workplace smoking bans,” lead author Michael Halpern, a senior fellow at RTI International, said in a news release. “This study shows support for additional programs and policies to increase those bans and assist employees with smoking cessation.”

Support for workplace smoking bans was greatest in India (85 percent) and Japan (75 percent), and much lower in Germany (33 percent) and Poland (37 percent).

Even though they smoked an average of one hour a day at work, nearly 70 percent of workers didn’t think their smoking had a negative financial impact on their employer, compared with about half of employers.

“Several previous studies indicate that despite the beliefs of smoking employees and some employers in our study, smoking does have a substantial negative impact on a business’ finances,” Halpern said. “More research needs to be done to quantify the economic impacts of workplace smoking and educate both employers and employees on those effects.”

Regular exercise may help keep teenagers’

blood pressure in check, regardless of their body weight, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that among nearly 1,300 Canadian teenagers they followed for five years, declining exercise levels over time were linked to small increases in blood pressure.

Gains in body fat were also linked to blood pressure increases, but excess weight did not fully account for the relationship between exercise and blood pressure changes –especially in girls.

The implication, the researchers report in the American Journal of Epidemiology, is that both weight and exercise habits independently affect teenagers’ blood pressure.

And that means that getting teens off the couch might help keep their blood pressure under better control, write Katerina Maximova and colleagues of McGill University in Montreal.

The findings are based on 1,293 boys and girls who were 12 to 13 years old at the start of the study. The teens reported on their typical physical activity levels and had their body fat and blood pressure measured at the outset, and then periodically over five years.

For each exercise assessment, the teenagers reported the number of times in the past week they had engaged in moderate to vigorous activities — like biking, walking or jogging — for at least 5 minutes.

Overall, the researchers found, the teens’ blood pressure inched upward for each session of exercise they lost over time. The increase amounted to less than one point in systolic blood pressure — the top number in a blood pressure reading — but the findings do suggest that sedentary lifestyles directly affect teenagers’ blood pressure, according to Maximova’s team.

And that, they write, could have “important public health implications.”

High blood pressure and other heart disease risk factors like type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol were once uncommon, or unheard of, in children and teenagers. But rates of these conditions in teenagers have risen since the 1990s, in tandem with escalating obesity rates.

A study of Canadian teenagers published last month found that between 2002 and 2008, the percentage with at least one heart disease risk factor — such as high blood pressure or high cholesterol — rose from 17 percent to 21 percent.

Those researchers also noted that more than half of Canadian children between the ages of 5 and 17 are not getting enough exercise.

And while young people may not see immediate health effects, studies show that teens who are overweight, inactive and carrying heart disease risk factors tend to become adults with those same problems.

The American Heart Association recommends that all children ages 3 and older have their blood pressure checked yearly. Diet changes and exercise are usually the first-line treatment for high blood pressure in teenagers, though some may also need medication.

When it comes to exercise, experts generally recommend that kids strive for 30 minutes of moderate activity, like brisk walking, on most days of the week, as well as 20 minutes of vigorous exercise, like running or bicycling, at least three days per week.

Morticians who use formaldehyde to embalm bodies have a higher risk of leukemia, researchers reported on Friday.

They found deaths from one particular kind of leukemia, myeloid leukemia, increased the longer the workers were involved with embalming.

Their study of more than 400 funeral workers is the first to look carefully at the association, they reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

“Previous studies have shown excess mortality from lymphohematopoietic malignancies and brain cancer in anatomists, pathologists, and funeral industry workers, all of whom may have worked with formaldehyde,” Laura Freeman of the U.S. National Cancer Institute and colleagues wrote.

They studied 168 professionals who died of various forms of leukemia, 48 who died of brain tumors and compared them to 265 funeral workers who died of something else.

The people who spent more years embalming bodies or were otherwise exposed to embalming fluid were more likely to have died from a myeloid leukemia, the researchers found.

“In recent decades, more than 2 million U.S. workers are exposed to formaldehyde, including anatomists, pathologists, and professionals who are employed in the funeral industry and who handle bodies or biological specimens preserved with formaldehyde,” they wrote.

Their study could help explain a known higher risk of death among these professionals, they said.