Diabetes Doubles the Risk of Heart Disease

Diabetes doubles the risk of developing serious blood vessel diseases and life threatening events such as strokes and heart attacks, a new study show.

The findings emphasize the need to increase efforts to prevent diabetes, researchers report in a study published in The Lancet.

The results of the study are also being presented at the American Diabetes Association's 70th annual scientific sessions in Orlando, Fla.

British scientists analyzed data on nearly 700,000 people, each of whom had been monitored for about 10 years in 102 surveys in 25 countries.

One suprising finding: Only a small part of the effects of diabetes on heart disease and stroke can be explained by blood fats, blood pressure, and obesity.

Other findings include:

Blood glucose levels alone should not be used to help indentify people at increased risk of heart disease or stroke.

Diabetes may cause damage through additional routes than obesity, blood fats, and blood pressure.

Higher than average fasting blood glucose levels are only weakly related to later development of hear attacks or storkes.

"Our findings highlight the need for better prevetion of diabetes coupled with greater investigation of the mechanisms by which diabetes increases the risk of cardiovascular disease," Nadeem Sarwar, PhD, of the University of Cambridge, says in a news release.

"Information on age, sex, smoking habits, blood pressue and blood fats is routinely collected to assess risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Our findings indicate that adding information on fasting blood glucose levels in people without diabetes does not provide significant extra help in assessing cardiovascular risk."

The study also shows that:

Cardiovascular disease is responsible for some 17 million deaths annually, worldwide

Coronary heart disease risks were higher in women than in men 40-49 than at age 70 and older.

The researchers write that the findings were consistent across all groups of people in the 25 countries for which data was analyzed.

Heart Health

As everyone knows the best way to have good heart health is to maintain the proper weight, get plenty of exercise and eat healthy food. Are there any shortcuts to this? In a word, no.

There are some additional things that will help your heart health. From the well known studies on the Eskimos who ate a very high meat diet, we learn that they had little or no heart problems. The reason was the very high level of omega-3 oil in the fish and seals that they ate. You can buy omega-3 fish oil pills at a very low cost. Another low cost supplement that really helps your heart is one of the B vitamins, vitamin B3, also called niacin. Niacin will help clean out the buildup in the arteries.

The key to good heart health is prevention. Most people get lazy, fat and avoid exercise and that increases the risk of getting heart disease. If you want to go that route then read how doctors deal with heart disease for their overweight, non exercising patients with bad eating habits.

Thirty years ago, Eugene Braunwald, MD, Chief of Cardiology at Harvard Medical School, stated in the New England Journal of Medicine, "An industry is being built around this operation (bypass)...(It) is developing a momentum of its own, and as time passses it will be progressively more difficult and costly to curtail it..."

He was right. Between 1979 and 1998, the number of cardiovascular procedures grew by 38%! Yet study after study shows that surgery yields no better benefit than alternative treatments. NONE. But with cardiac procedures making up roughly 45% of the total revenue generated by most hospitals, and bypass surgery starting at $85,000 a pop, it's no wonder doctors and hospitals continue to push patients down this unnecessary, often ineffective, and sometimes very dangerous road.

1998: VEterans Affairs Non-Q-Wave Infarction Strategies in Hostital (VANQWISH) study published. This was designed to determine the best treatment for patients who have had non-Qwave mycardial infarctions (the msot common type of heart attack). It was found that patients who underwent surgery fared more poorly and had increased death rates.

2001: Study related to the VANQWISH study published similar findings, "routine invasive management may be associated with an increased risk of death."

2006: Study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that angioplasty done 3 to 28 days after a heart attack did not reduce the rates of death, heart attack, or heart failure, compared to conservative treatment with medications. Worse, during 4 years of follow-up, these PATIENTS HAD AN INCREASE IN REPEAT HEART ATTACKS!