The more obese a woman is when she becomes pregnant, the greater the likelihood that her baby will be born with a heart defect, a U.S. government study finds.
Using a database of births in New York State over a decade, researchers found that obese women were 11 percent more likely than normal-weight women to have a baby with a congenital heart defect.
Meanwhile, women who were morbidly obese — or about 100 pounds over their ideal weight — had a 33 percent higher risk than normal-weight women did.
Congenital heart defects are …

CNN, April 15, 2010
Obese or morbidly obese women are more likely to give birth to a baby who has a congenital heart defect than overweight or healthy women. That’s the conclusion of a new study conducted by researchers at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Using data collected from all the women who gave birth in New York state (excluding New York City) from January 1, 1993, to December 31, 2003, the researchers found that mothers who were obese before becoming pregnant had a 15 …

Reuters
Excess weight increases stroke risk, a new study including nearly 2.3 million people confirms. And the heavier a person is, the greater their risk.
“Being obese (but indeed even just overweight) puts an individual at significantly higher risk of ischemic stroke, with a serious possibility of permanent disability and reduced life expectancy,” Dr. Pasquale Strazzullo of Frederico II University of Naples Medical School in Naples, Italy, one of the study’s authors, told Reuters Health.
Ischemic strokes occur when blood vessels supplying the brain are blocked. Hemorrhagic strokes, caused by bleeding in the …

Walter Willett for Newsweek, February 5, 2010
Until last year, the residents of Albert Lea, Minn., were no healthier than any other Americans. Then the city became the first American town to sign on to the AARP/Blue Zones Vitality Project—the brainchild of writer Dan Buettner, whose 2008 book, The Blue Zones, detailed the health habits of the world’s longest-lived people. His goal was to bring the same benefits to middle America—not by forcing people to diet and exercise, but by changing their everyday environments in ways that encourage a healthier lifestyle.
What …

Background Opinion article on Butter versus Margarine
First butter was bad for you, then margarine. Now a new front has opened in the battle of the spreads, with fresh calls for trans fats to be banned. But will any of this really prevent heart disease?
The butter v margarine wars, so reminiscent of 1970s advertising, were back this week. A flurry of headlines about which type of fat is better for you announced their return, just as the Food Standards Agency (FSA) was trying to launch its carefully calibrated campaign to …

Rob Stein, Washington Post, January 22, 2010

One out of every five U.S. teenagers has a cholesterol level that increases the risk of heart disease, federal health officials reported Thursday, providing striking new evidence that obesity is making more children prone to illnesses once primarily limited to adults.

A nationally representative survey of blood test results in American teenagers found that more than 20 percent of those ages 12 to 19 had at least one abnormal level of fat. The rate jumped to 43 percent among those adolescents who were obese.
Previous studies had …

Editorial J. Michael Gaziano, MD, MPH JAMA. 2010;303(3):(doi:10.1001/jama.2009.2025).
In 1900, Henry Ford unveiled the first car made in Detroit, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union was founded in New York, and San Francisco was placed under a federal quarantine to prevent the spread of bubonic plague. Infectious disease was a major concern, and the most common causes of death in the United States and in many parts of the world at the time were pneumonia and tuberculosis. Today, most individuals die of cardiovascular disease or cancer. This dramatic shift in the illnesses …

Overweight middle-aged men may have a higher risk of heart problems and strokes and die earlier than their thinner peers — even in the absence of some traditional risk factors, a new study suggests.
Reuters, January 4, 2010

Some past research has suggested that when obese and overweight adults do not have the so-called metabolic syndrome, their risks of diabetes, heart disease and stroke are no higher than those of normal-weight people.
Metabolic syndrome refers to a collection of risk factors for diabetes and heart problems — including abdominal obesity, high blood …

By Nicole Ostrow
Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) — Two decades of improved treatments haven’t made a dent in the threat of heart disease in the U.S. because too many adults are obese, according to researchers from the University of Texas.
As the nation’s average body mass index, a measure of excess weight, surged between 1988 and 2006, the number of people with healthy blood pressure and blood sugar levels — important measures of cardiovascular risks — declined, according to a study presented today at the American Heart Association conference in Orlando, Florida.
The number …

A new study by researchers at the University of Colorado Denver and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) shows vitamin D plays a vital role in reducing the risk of death associated with older age. The research, just published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, evaluated the association between vitamin D levels in the blood and the death rates of those 65 and older. The study found that older adults with insufficient levels of vitamin D die from heart disease at greater rates that those with adequate levels of the …