Women Show More Pronounced Health Benefits From Physical Activity

Many experimental studies have found that physical exercise can improve cholesterol levels and subsequently decrease the risks of cardiovascular disease; however, few of these studies have included enough participant diversity to provide ethnic breakdowns. Now, a long-term study of over 8,700 middle-aged men and women provides race- and gender- specific data on the cholesterol effects of physical activity, with the interesting result that women, particularly African-American women, experience greater benefits as a result of exercise than men.

The analysis of this large Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study, which appears in the August issue of Journal of Lipid Research, was carried out by Keri Monda and colleagues at North Carolina and Baylor. They found that over a 12 year period, all individuals who increased their exercise by about 180 metabolic units per week (equivalent to an additional hour of mild or 30 minutes of moderate activity per week) displayed decreased levels of triglycerides and increased levels of the “good” HDL cholesterol. However, statistically significant decreases in the “bad” LDL cholesterol were only observed in women, with particularly strong effects in menopausal women and African-American women. And total cholesterol levels were only significantly decreased in African-American women. Read more

Sugary Cola Drinks Linked For First Time To Higher Risk Of Gestational Diabetes

Researchers from LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans School of Public Health, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), Harvard School of Public Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School, have found for the first time that drinking more than 5 servings of sugar- sweetened cola a week prior to pregnancy appears to significantly elevate the risk of developing diabetes during pregnancy. Liwei Chen, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans School of Public Health, is the lead author of the paper, A Prospective Study of Pre-Gravid Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption and the Risk of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus, that will be published in the December 2009 issue of Diabetes Care and is available online now at http://diabetes.org/diabetescare.

The research team studied a group of 13,475 women from the Nurses’ Health Study II. During 10 years of follow-up, 860 incident GDM cases were identified. After adjustment for known risk factors for GDM including age, family history of diabetes, parity, physical activity, smoking status, sugar-sweetened beverage intake, alcohol intake, prepregnancy BMI, and Western dietary pattern, intake of sugar-sweetened cola was positively associated with the risk of GDM. No significant association was found for other sugar-sweetened beverages or diet beverages.

“Compared with women who consumed less than 1 serving per month, those who consumed more than 5 servings per week of sugar-sweetened cola had a 22% greater GDM risk,” notes Dr. Chen. Read more