Smokers get heart attacks earlier

Smokers tend to suffer heart attacks years earlier than non-smokers, suggests a new study from Michigan.

"Individuals who smoke are much more likely to have a heart attack and will present with a heart attack a decade or more earlier," says Dr Gregg Fonarow, a cardiologist at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, who wasn't involved in the new study.

The findings, he says, also show that "you could have a heart attack in the absence of other risk factors if you smoke".

Researchers led by Dr Michael Howe from the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor studied about 3,600 people who were hospitalized with a heart attack or unstable angina - pain caused by low blood flow to the heart that is often a precursor to a heart attack.

Fonarow says the findings are just one more example of the heart dangers posed by smoking, and emphasizes that kicking the habit can erase those extra risks.

"It's never too late to quit, and the benefits are very early," he says.

Sweet news to warm your heart

A sweet tooth isn't necessarily bad for your health - at least not when it comes to chocolate, hints a new study.

Researchers studying more than 33,000 Swedish women found that the more chocolate women said they ate, the lower their risk of stroke.

The results add to a growing body of evidence linking cocoa consumption to heart health, but they aren't a free pass to gorge on chocolate.

"Given the observational design of the study, findings from this study cannot prove that it's chocolate that lowers the risk of stroke," Susanna Larsson from Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm says.

While she believes chocolate has health benefits, she also warns that eating too much of it could be counterproductive.

"Chocolate should be consumed in moderation as it is high in calories, fat, and sugar," she says. "As dark chocolate contains more cocoa and less sugar than milk chocolate, consumption of dark chocolate would be more beneficial."

Pollutants up asthma risk in kids

A mother's exposure to airborne pollutants at work during her pregnancy may increase the likelihood that her unborn child will later develop asthma, a Danish study says.

The review of registry data on 45,658 children, aged 7, and their mothers found that 18.6 percent of children of mothers who were exposed to low-molecular-weight particles at work during pregnancy developed asthma, compared to 16.1 percent of the general population.

"This is the first large-scale study which has shown an association between maternal exposures during work and asthma in children," says study leader Berit Christensen, at the School of Public Health in Denmark, in a statement.

For the study, Christensen and colleagues used mothers' job titles to estimate their exposure to workplace pollutants, with categories for either low- or high-molecular-weight particles, mixed, farmers, "unclassifiable" and students, as well as a reference group of office workers for comparison.

After adjusting for age, body mass index, allergy and hypersensitivities, smoking, medication and pets, there was a slightly higher risk - about 11 percent - for asthma in children when their pregnant mothers were exposed to particles of both low molecular weight and high molecular weight.

Exercise helps prevent migraines

Regular aerobic exercise worked just as well as relaxation therapy or the antiepileptic drug topiramate in preventing migraine headaches, a Swedish trial shows.

"This non-pharmacological approach may therefore be an option for the prophylactic treatment of migraine in patients who do not benefit from or do not want daily medication," write Dr Emma Varkey and her colleagues from the Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, University of Gothenburg, in the journal Cephalalgia.

Varkey's team randomly assigned their subjects to one of three regimens for three months: aerobic exercise on a stationary bike (40 minutes three times per week), a standard form of relaxation therapy or daily topiramate.

Finding that exercise is not inferior to topiramate as a prophylactic measure is "of great value", the researchers note in their report, because patients often seek non-pharmacological options for migraine.

Reuters-AP