Essentials of healthy eating: a guide.

Enough solid evidence now exists to offer women several fundamental strategies for healthy eating. They include emphasizing healthful unsaturated fats, whole grains, good protein "packages," and fruits and vegetables; limiting consumption of trans and saturated fats, highly refined grains, and sugary beverages; and taking a multivitamin with folic acid and extra vitamin D as a nutritional safety net. A diet based on these principles is healthy through virtually all life stages, from young adulthood through planning for pregnancy, pregnancy, and on into old age.

ALLHAT-LLT: questions, questions, and more questions (and some answers).

The Antihypertensive and Lipid-Lowering Treatment to Prevent Heart Attack Trial--Lipid Lowering Trial (ALLHAT-LLT) compared 40 mg/d of pravastatin with usual care among 10,355 men and women aged 55 years or older with stage 1 or 2 hypertension, at least one additional coronary heart disease risk factor, and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels of 120 to 189 mg/dL. After a mean of 4.8 years of treatment and follow-up, the difference in total cholesterol between the two arms was 9.

The escalating pandemics of obesity and sedentary lifestyle. A call to action for clinicians.

Obesity and sedentary lifestyle are escalating national and global epidemics that warrant increased attention by physicians and other health care professionals. These intricately linked conditions are responsible for an enormous burden of chronic disease, impaired physical function and quality of life, at least 300,000 premature deaths, and at least $90 billion in direct health care costs annually in the United States alone. Clinicians are on the front line of combat, yet these conditions receive minimal attention during a typical office visit.

Obesity, diabetes, and coronary risk in women.

The latter half of the twentieth century has witnessed rapid advances in cardiovascular epidemiology and medicine. Concurrently, secular trends in lifestyle practices and general improvements in standards of living have resulted in several alarming trends for cardiovascular disease prevention and health promotion. The adoption of unhealthy dietary patterns, growing socio-economic and racial disparities in chronic disease prevalence, low levels of physical activity, and other as yet unidentified genetic and environmental determinants have led to burgeoning rates of both pediatric and adult obesity and diabetes mellitus.

Reducing the global burden of cardiovascular disease: the role of risk factors.

During the last century, cardiovascular disease (CVD) has burgeoned from a relatively minor disease worldwide to a leading cause of morbidity and mortality. By 2020 it is projected that CVD will surpass infectious disease as the worlds leading cause of death and disability. Some of this increase in the relative importance of CVD is due to improved public health measures and medical care leading to longer life spans and reduced mortality from other causes.

Migraine and coronary heart disease in women and men.

Objective: We evaluated migraine as an independent risk factor for subsequent coronary heart disease (CHD) events among women in the Women's Health Study (WHS) and men in the Physicians' Health Study (PHS).

Background: Although several studies have suggested that migraine is associated with increased risk of stroke, there are few and conflicting data on whether migraine predicts risk of future CHD events.

Methods: The WHS is an ongoing randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of low-dose aspirin and vitamin E in the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease and cancer in 39876 women health professionals aged > or =45 years in 1993, and the PHS is a completed randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of aspirin and beta-carotene in the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease and cancer in 22071 men physicians aged 40 to 84 years in 1982.