HEALTH TRENDS

Home walking programme may help clogged leg arteries

According to a new United States study, people with poor circulation in the legs can benefit greatly from a home walking regime, and will be more likely to keep it up in the long run.

"I was somewhat surprised that we achieved our results of a continued difference between the intervention and control groups because it is very difficult to get patients to adhere to an exercise programme long term even when it is supervised, and our programme was unsupervised, " noted Dr Mary McDermott, who led the research.

According to the National Institutes of Health, eight to 12 million people or one in every 20 Americans over the age of 50 has peripheral artery disease, or PAD, a condition caused by plaque build-up in arteries, especially in the legs.

Having PAD significantly raises the chances of heart attack or stroke.

McDermott, a physician and professor at Northwestern University in Chicago, said, "Symptoms of peripheral artery disease are often not classic. A patient might just experience weakness in their legs or tiredness and both the doctor and the patient might think that it's just a part of ageing."

The researchers recruited 194 participants with clogged arteries in their legs and randomly assigned them to two groups for the year-long experiment. One group took part in a structured home-based exercise programme, and the comparison group did not exercise.

At the end of the study, people in the exercise programme walked faster and farther than those in the comparison group, whose members ended up performing worse than when they started, McDermott's team reports in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

The exercise group improved their six-minute walking distance by 87 feet, from 1,166.0ft. at the beginning of the study period to 1,253ft. at the end. Those in the comparison group, on average, walked a distance 25ft less than they had a year earlier.

McDermott thinks that even more than the monthly motivational phone calls, developing the habit of walking for a set amount of time every day probably had the strongest effect in the exercise group. She believes that continuing the on-site training for a bit longer or instituting ways for the participants to benefit from group support might have resulted in even greater improvement.

"Some of the participants truly bonded with each other and became very engaged in the exercise," McDermott said.

Study finds significant link between diabetes, brain health in children

Type 1 Diabetes is diagnosed in approximately 30,000 United States adults and children annually, reports the former Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). This medical condition has seen a dramatic increase in recent years.

Type 1 Diabetes affects the body's ability to convert carbohydrates from food into fuel. Over time without treatment, the body begins to burn fat for fuel instead, releasing an acidic byproduct known as ketones. This can cause ketoacidosis, a poisoning of the body resulting from high levels of ketones, according to the American Diabetes Association (ADA).

According to Dr Fergus Cameron, head of diabetes services at the Royal Children's Hospital in Victoria, Australia, diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) occurs in 20-30 per cent of newly diagnosed Type 1 Diabetes patients. It has also been seen to recur in patients with diabetes management issues later on in life.

DKA that can arise as a complication in Type 1 Diabetes has been implicated in temporary brain changes in newly diagnosed children, changes including decrease in memory and attention for at least six months after diagnosis, according to a new study released online on May 22 in Diabetes Care.

The new study included studying children and teens between ages six and 18, who had been newly diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. 36 presented with DKA and 59 without. Participants had brain MRIs, memory and attention tests done at around two days, five days, 28 days and six months after diagnosis.

Results of the MRIs showed decreased grey matter volume and swelling in the white matter of children with DKA. Grey matter holds the majority of the brain's cell bodies responsible for the preparation of brain signalling for functions including vision, hearing, emotions, speech, conscious thought and decision-making, and memory.

Although these effects dissolved quickly, however, the children who had DKA had increased delays in memory recall and divided attention scores lasting six months or more.

Even if DKA memory and attention effects are subtle, they still harbour the risk of affecting higher-level learning tasks, according to Dr Fergus Cameron. "... any decrement in attention or memory in children is a concern as children are acquiring new knowledge and learning new skills all the time." he said.

Further research is required to confirm the long-term effect of DKA on Type 1 Diabetes patients.

Exercise is medicine for people with diabetes or kidney disease

Two new studies are revealing that exercise is the best medicine for diabetes and kidney disease.

In the first study, researchers found that vigorous activity, but not moderate exercise, helped reduce blood sugar levels in people with Type 2 Diabetes or insulin resistance, a condition in which the body has trouble regulating blood sugar. Those who participated in brief interval workouts—meaning they alternated between bursts of intense activity and slower recovery periods—before breakfast, lunch and dinner reduced post-meal blood sugar levels by 12 per cent. The effect persisted through the next day. Walking at a moderate pace for 30 minutes before dinner, on the other hand, didn't lower blood sugar.

Researchers speculate that high-intensity exercise may be better at improving insulin sensitivity, helping to stabilise blood-sugar levels, according to the study, which was published in the journal Diabetologia. That's important, because controlling post-meal blood sugar spikes may help ward off Type 2 Diabetes as well as related complications, including heart disease. In fact, brief, intense workouts may be easier to incorporate into your daily routine than longer ones.

In a second study, which was published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, researchers found that chronic kidney disease patients who walked regularly were 33 per cent less likely to die and 21 per cent less likely to need dialysis or a kidney transplant. This was true regardless of whether they had other medical conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes. The more the patients walked, the more they benefited: Those who did so seven or more times per week were 59 per cent less likely to die during the study and 44 per cent less likely to need dialysis or a transplant.