Introduction High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, develops when blood flows through your arteries at higher-than-normal pressures. Systolic and Diastolic Pressure Blood pressures (BP) are written as two numbers separated by a slash like this: 120/80 mm Hg, usually expressed as ‘120 over 80’. The first number is your systolic pressure: That is the… Read More
Your blood pressure reading consists of two numbers, measured in millimetres of mercury (mmHg): The first indicating systolic pressure (higher number): This is the force at which your heart pumps blood around your body. The second diastolic pressure (lower number). This is the resistance to the blood flow in the blood vessels. Generally, anything between… Read More
Research Paper Title Prevalence of and Risk Factors for Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in Vietnam: A Systematic Review. Background This systematic review examined trends in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and identified its risk factors among adults in Vietnam. Methods PubMed, Web of Science, Wiley Online Library, and Scopus databases were searched to… Read More
If the five commonest modifiable risk factors for cardiovascular disease – high cholesterol concentrations, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and smoking – were eliminated in the United States, deaths from cardiovascular disease would be halved, a new study in the Annals of Internal Medicine has found (Patel et al., 2015). Cardiovascular diseases such as coronary heart disease… Read More
Research Paper Title Traditional Risk Factors Versus Biomarkers for Prediction of Secondary Events in Patients With Stable Coronary Heart Disease: From the Heart and Soul Study. Background Patients with stable coronary heart disease (CHD) have widely varying prognoses and treatment options. Validated models for risk stratification of patients with CHD are needed. The researchers sought… Read More
A study of BMI-defined obesity among children and adolescents in the general English population did its best to measure activity levels by questionnaire and, where it could, by acceleromtery (Coombs & Stamatakis, 2015). The study found that television viewing, and not other forms of objectively measured or questionnaire-based sedentary time, was associated with obesity in… Read More
Raised blood sugar, blood pressure (BP) and blood cholesterol are risk factors often clustered together. However, two new studies from Asia try to disentangle their interactions. In the Chinese population, blood glucose level within prediabetic range is significantly associated with elevated risks for diabetes mellitus after multi-variable adjustment, but only when it is concurrent with… Read More
