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AHA: Herbal Tea Ingredient May Modestly Lower Blood Pressure

November 24th, 2008

From printthis.clickability.com
Herbal tea containing hibiscus may modestly lower blood pressure in prehypertensive and mildly hypertensive patients, researchers found.

Hibiscus-based tea reduced systolic blood pressure by 7.2 mm Hg, on average, over six weeks of daily intake, a significant reduction compared with the 1.3-mm Hg decline with placebo (P0.03), Diane L. McKay, Ph.D., of Tufts University in Boston, and colleagues reported here at the American Heart Association meeting.

In the small, randomized trial, patients with blood pressure higher than 129 mm Hg had significantly greater benefits for systolic, diastolic, and mean arterial pressure.
Even relatively small blood pressure changes like those seen in the study would likely have an impact on patient outcomes if maintained over time, Dr. McKay said.
Explain to interested patients that the study was relatively small and would need validation before hibiscus-containing tea could be recommended clinically.

Note that this study was published as an abstract and presented orally at a conference. These data and conclusions should be considered to be preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
To prove her point, she noted that a 3 mm Hg decline in systolic pressure reduced the relative risk of stroke mortality by 8%, coronary artery disease mortality by 5%, and all-cause mortality by 4% in a population-based study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2002.

“Whether this type of behavior can be sustained, whether the blood pressure effect can be sustained ultimately in outcomes studies is open to speculation,” said Robert H. Eckel, M.D., of the University of Colorado Denver, who moderated a press conference at which the findings were presented.

But, he said, the magnitude of the antihypertensive effect was similar to standard blood pressure medications.

The idea of hibiscus tea as a nutraceutical is worthy of validation and further study, Dr. Eckel said.

Hibiscus is one of the most common components of herbal teas, contributing a fruity, tart taste and red color, Dr. McKay said. It contains anthocyanins, flavones, flavonols, and phenolic acids and has been shown in animal studies to reduce atherosclerosis and blood pressure, she said.

So, her group conducted a placebo-controlled randomized trial to see whether these effects were significant in humans.

The study included 65 healthy men and women ages 30 to 70 who were prehypertensive or mildly hypertensive (systolic 120 to 150 mm Hg, diastolic 95 mm Hg or lower) and not taking any blood pressure medications.

Patients were randomized to three 8-oz cups of herbal tea a day, brewed with one tea bag for six minutes or to a placebo containing artificial hibiscus flavor and color. These could be consumed at any time of day, hot or cold, with sweetener or milk according to patient preference.

After six weeks of treatment, systolic blood pressure dropped 7.2 mm Hg with hibiscus tea (P0.01 versus baseline) compared with a 1.3 mm Hg reduction among placebo-treated patients from a mean of 129.4 and 129.8 mm Hg at baseline, respectively (P0.03).

Diastolic pressure also declined in the tea-treated patients, although the difference was significant only for change from baseline (-3.1 mm Hg, P0.01) and not in comparison with the 0.5 mm Hg decline seen in the placebo group.

The fall in mean arterial pressure with hibiscus tea tended toward significance as well (change from baseline -4.5 versus -0.8 mm Hg, P=0.054).

The effect increased over time for systolic but not diastolic pressure, and was greatest for those with higher blood pressures.

Among those with a systolic pressure greater than 129 mm Hg, the reduction was almost double that in the overall cohort and was significant compared with placebo for every measure of hypertension. These findings included:

A 13.2 mm Hg reduction in systolic blood pressure compared with a 1.3 mm Hg reduction with placebo (P0.01 versus baseline, P0.02 versus placebo)
A 6.4 mm Hg reduction in diastolic pressure compared with a 1.3 mm Hg increase with placebo (P0.01 versus baseline, P0.02 versus placebo)
An 8.7 mm Hg drop in mean arterial pressure compared with a 0.4 mm Hg increase with placebo (P0.01 versus baseline, P0.02 versus placebo)

While cautioning that the study was relatively small and would need validation, Dr. McKay suggested that incorporating hibiscus tea into the diet on a regular basis may help control blood pressure in people at risk of developing hypertension.

The study was funded by Celestial Seasonings of the Hain Celestial Group, which makes hibiscus-containing teas, and the Department of Agriculture under a cooperative agreement.

Human touch may have some healing properties

September 30th, 2008

From usatoday.com

A new study from researchers in Utah finds that a warm touch — the non-sexual, supportive kind — tempers stress and blood pressure, adding to a growing body of research on how emotions affect health.
The study of 34 young married couples ages 20 to 39 by researchers at Brigham Young University in Provo and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City found that massage and other supportive and caring touch lower stress hormones and blood pressure, particularly among men, while also enhancing oxytocin, a hormone thought to calm and counter stress. The findings will be published in the Oct. 14 issue of the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.

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Brigham Young psychology professor Julianne Holt-Lunstad says the study aimed to learn whether increasing the level of supportive physical contact would improve health-related physical outcomes.

Twenty couples, all married at least six months, participated in a four-week intervention that promoted emotional and physical closeness. They were brought into the lab for training and testing, but the bulk of their actions were at home, including a 30-minute massage (neck, shoulder or forehead) three times a week. Participants wore portable blood pressure monitors for 24 hours to supply a number of readings. They also completed questionnaires about how often they hugged, kissed, held hands or were otherwise affectionate. The 14-couple control group had testing but not the intervention.

Blood-pressure monitoring at home

September 20th, 2008

From latimes.com

Measuring blood pressure at home is easy — if a patient is trained and uses a reliable blood pressure monitor. Dr. William B. White, an expert on home-monitoring, offers tips on how to do it right:

Buy a monitor with a cuff that fits on the upper arm — wrist and finger monitors don’t give reliable readings — and make sure the cuff is the right size. Many hypertension patients require a large-size cuff to get accurate readings.
Check the packaging to make sure the monitor has been tested and validated for accuracy and reliability by the Assn. for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation or the British Hypertension Society. Many monitors on the market are not — and their readings may not be reliable. A list of validated monitors is available on the British Hypertension Society’s website at www.bhsoc.org.
White advises against more expensive monitors that can store readings. “The problem is the dates are not recorded, so it doesn’t really help us figure out when readings fluctuated,” he says. “I’d rather patients keep a flow sheet and have them mark the date, the time, the values and whether they did or did not take medications that day.”
Remember that the target rate for a home blood-pressure reading is lower than the target reading in a medical setting. Most physicians consider a patient with an office reading of less than 140/90 millimeters of mercury (mmHg) to be adequately controlled (or less than 130/80 if the patient has heart disease or diabetes).

“When patients come in and say ‘I thought it looked pretty good — meaning a reading of 138/88 — that sounds good if it was in the doctor’s office,’ ” White says. “It’s not really normal, and it means that there’s a very large chance that their pressure is not well controlled.” For home-monitor readings, the target goal for treatment is under 135/85 and even less (130/80) in high-risk patients.

Take the monitor to the doctor’s office to be trained in its proper use and have a medical professional check to make sure the monitor is giving accurate readings.
Change the batteries according to package instructions — or if readings seem doubtful. “Some of these devices have a low-battery indicator that doesn’t come on unless the batteries are totally depleted,” White says. “If they are getting strange or unusual readings that do not make any sense, put fresh batteries in and see if that corrects the problem.”

Hypertension Linked to Risk of Mild Cognitive Impairment

December 25th, 2007

Study suggests it may cause the effect through cerebrovascular disease

FromHealthScout-Consumer Health News

High blood pressure may be associated with increased risk for mild cognitive impairment, says a study by researchers at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York City.

High may be associated with increased risk for mild cognitive impairment, says a study by researchers at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York City.Mild cognitive impairment, which causes learning and thinking difficulties, has “attracted increasing interest during the past years, particularly as a means of identifying the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease as a target for treatment and prevention,” the study authors wrote.

They followed 918 Medicare recipients aged 65 and older (average age 76.3) who were assessed every 18 months for an average of 4.7 years. None of the participants had mild cognitive impairment at the start of the study, but 334 of them developed the condition during the study period.Of those, 160 developed amnestic mild cognitive impairment (which involves low scores on memory portions of neuropsychological tests), and 174 developed non-amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Hypertension was associated with an increased risk of all types of mild cognitive impairment, especially non-amnestic mild cognitive impairment, the researchers said.

The findings are published in the December issue of the Archives of Neurology.

“The mechanism by which blood pressure affects the risk of cognitive impairment or dementia remains unclear. Hypertension may cause cognitive impairment through cerebrovascular disease. Hypertension is a risk factor for subcortical white matter lesions found commonly in Alzheimer’s disease. Hypertension may also contribute to a blood-brain barrier dysfunction, which has been suggested to be involved in the cause of Alzheimer’s disease. Other possible explanations for the association are shared risk factors,” including the formation of cell-damaging compounds known as free radicals, the study authors wrote.

“Our findings support the hypothesis that hypertension increases the risk of incident mild cognitive impairment, especially non-amnestic mild cognitive impairment,” the researchers concluded. “Preventing and treating hypertension may have an important impact in lowering the risk of cognitive impairment.”

Blood Pressure Drug May Curb Brain Damage From Alzheimer’s, Depression And Schizophrenia

December 20th, 2007

From Sciencedaily.com

A drug used to treat high blood pressure and enlargement of the prostate may protect the brain from damage caused by post-traumatic stress disorder, Alzheimer’s disease, depression and schizophrenia.

Prazosin, also prescribed as an antipsychotic medication, appears to block the increase of steroid hormones known as glucocorticoids, Oregon Health & Science University and Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center researchers have found. Elevated levels of glucocorticoids are associated with atrophy in nerve branches where impulses are transmitted, and even nerve cell death, in the hippocampus.

The hippocampus is the elongated ridge located in the cerebral cortex of the brain where emotions and memory are processed.

“It’s known, from human studies, that corticosteroids are not good for you cognitively,” said study co-author S. Paul Berger, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience, OHSU School of Medicine and the PVAMC. “We think prazosin protects the brain from being damaged by excessive levels of corticosteroid stress hormones.”

The study, titled “Prazosin attenuates dexamethasone-induced HSP70 expression in the cortex,” is being presented during a poster session today at Neuroscience 2007, the annual Society for Neuroscience conference in San Diego.

Scientists believe stress activates a neurochemical response in the brain that triggers the release of glucocorticoids in the brain, and that high levels of glucocorticoids in blood serum are associated with such psychiatric conditions as schizophrenia, depression, PTSD and Alzheimer’s disease. This mechanism has been linked to decreases in cognitive performance in older people who are not suffering from clinical dementia.

“Our hypothesis is that just being afraid of being blown up all the time means you have high levels of steroids all the time,” Berger said, referring to PTSD among military personnel.

Low levels of glucocorticoids have anti-inflammatory effects in the brain, but high levels can trigger inflammatory mechanisms that damage nerve cells by activating an enzyme that causes oxidative stress. Even a single exposure to a high dose of glucocorticoids can be sufficient to damage nerve cells: A previous study showed synthetic glucocorticoid therapy to treat autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis can induce mood disorders, including psychosis, and cognitive impairment known as “steroid dementia” in severe forms.

To determine the effects of prazosin, OHSU and PVAMC researchers, led by Altaf Darvesh, Ph.D., formerly of the OHSU Department of Psychiatry, administered a glucocorticoid called dexamethasone to rats, then measured the expression of a protein known as heat shock protein 70, or HSP70, that serves as a marker for neurotoxicity. Pretreatment with prazosin, an alpha-1 receptor antagonist, resulted in “significant” slowing of dexamethasone-induced expression in the cerebral cortex.

“The one thing we don’t know for sure is, would you have to get it before you’re traumatized,” Berger said. “Lots of people have high levels of corticosteroids when they’re under stress, so could we give them prazosin ahead of time to protect them from brain damage?”

Berger said future research will continue to look at where and how steroids cause brain damage, and just when prazosin would have to be administered to most effectively protect the brain against damage.

“We just looked at brain damage,” he said. “Steroids are known to cause cognitive impairment in both rats and people, so the next step is to see if we can correlate brain damage with cognitive effects and determine if we can protect against brain damage to protect cognition.”