Energy Drinks Linked to Adverse Health Effects

The research, which analyzed seven previously published studies and was presented at an American Heart Association meeting, found an increase of 3.5 points in systolic blood pressure for those consuming energy drinks.

"The correlation between energy drinks and increased systolic blood pressure is convincing and concerning, and more studies are needed to assess the impact on heart rhythm," said Sachin Shah, the lead author of the report and an assistant professor at the University of the Pacific in California.

Monster was not immediately available for comment.

Earlier this month, the company said its medical investigators found no evidence that the drink caused the death of a teenage girl in Maryland.

The girl's family sued Monster last year, blaming her cardiac arrest on "caffeine toxicity" brought on by consuming two Monster Energy drinks in a 24-hour period.

The authors of the new research also found that the QT interval was 10 milliseconds longer among those who had just consumed one to three cans of energy drinks.

A prolonged QT interval, which describes a segment of the heart's rhythm on an electrocardiogram, can cause serious irregular heartbeats or sudden cardiac death.

"Patients with high blood pressures or long QT syndrome should use caution and judgment before consuming an energy drink," Shah said.

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Over-Consumption Of Salt Linked To One In 10 American Deaths

Just days after a study linked sugary drink consumption to 180,000 worldwide deaths per year, a study by the same team of Harvard researchers has found salt to be even more deadly.

The preliminary study found a diet high in sodium contributed to 2.3 million cardiovascular deaths worldwide in 2010, and was responsible for one in 10 U.S. deaths. The researchers, who presented the study Thursday at the annual American Heart Association meeting in New Orleans, said 40 percent of those deaths are premature — affecting people 69 years old or younger.

Dariush Mozaffarian, one of the study’s researchers and associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Harvard Medical School, told ABC News that salt is more dangerous than sugar largely because of its pervasiveness in the American diet — it’s everywhere, especially in processed, packaged foods:

MOZAFFARIAN: Sugar-sweetened beverages are just one type of food that people can avoid, whereas sodium is in everything. [...] It’s really amazing how pervasive it is. For the average person, it’s very hard to avoid salt — you have to be incredibly motivated, incredibly educated, have access to a range of foods and do all the cooking yourself.

It may take motivation and education, but cutting salt may be exactly what Americans need to do to curb the country’s rising obesity epidemic. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Pervention, the human body needs only 180 – 500 milligrams of salt per day to function, and the Institute of Medicne recommends 1,500 milligrams as an adequate salt intake level. But 75 percent of people worldwide consume twice that much, with Americans averaging 3,600 milligrams per day. One study found that cutting “hidden” salt — the kinds in packaged and restaurant foods — could result in 11.1 million fewer cases of high blood pressure each year.

And the threat of salt starts at a young age. A recent study found that 75 percent of pre-packaged meals and snacks for toddlers are high in sodium, and some contain as much as 630 milligrams of sodium — more than half of the U.S. Institute of Medicine’s reccommended 1,000 milligrams daily intake for children aged 1 through 3. In a statement, the study’s researchers explained that high salt intake as a toddler could not only lead to childhood obesity or early cases of high blood pressure; it could also hardwire children to crave saltier foods throughout their lives. “The less sodium in an infant’s or toddler’s diet, the less he or she may want it when older,” said Joyce Maalouf, the study’s lead author and fellow at the CDC.

In 2010, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) spearheaded an initiative to encourage food companies such as Kraft, Heinz, Subway and Starbucks to lower the sodium content in their packaged and restaurant food, and it’s starting to work. But so far, the U.S. government hasn’t taken any similar steps to regulate sodium in packaged or restaurant foods — in 2010, it appeared as though the FDA was going to limit the amount of salt in food products, but that rumor was quickly squashed by the agency.

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How Racial Segregation Could Be Linked To Lung Cancer

African-Americans living in highly segregated counties are at significantly elevated risk of dying from lung cancer, according to the results from a new study.

African-Americans already suffer from the highest incidence of lung cancer in the United States. But as the New York Times reports, the study finds that black Americans in highly segregated areas are 20 percent more likely to die from the disease compared to those who live in the least segregated regions:

The study drew on federal mortality data from that period, and segregation data from about a third of United States counties that had African-American populations large enough to measure. About 28 percent of Americans live in counties with low segregation, 40 percent in counties with moderate segregation and 32 percent in counties with high segregation.

The gap in outcomes persisted even after accounting for differences in smoking rates and socio-economic status, Dr. Hayanga said.

Dr. David Chang, director of outcomes research at the University of California San Diego Department of Surgery, who wrote an accompanying editorial, said he hoped that the study would focus attention on the environmental factors involved in the stark disparities in health outcomes in the United States because they lend themselves to change through policy. Medical researchers tend to focus on factors that are harder to change, like the genetics and the behaviors of individuals.

This trend held true even when controlling for smoking rates and socioeconomic status, implying that other regional factors played into the discrepancy. While the JAMA report doesn’t delve into the causes behind the mortality rate disparity, other studies on American segregation have found that, in highly segregated locales, a larger minority population corresponded with significantly less access to surgical and emergency medical care. That data alone is not conclusive, but it does suggest that stratified access to health care remains an enormous hindrance to public health — particularly for people of color.

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