Viagra helps ailing hearts to recover in a surprising way – by making them less stiff and allowing them to pump more efficiently scientists have learned.The impotency drug causes too-rigid heart chamber walls to become more elastic. The research explains how Viagra might benefit patients with diastolic heart failure.

People with the condition have abnormally inflexible ventricles, the heart’s major pumping chambers, that do not fill sufficiently with blood.

This leads to blood ”backing up” in the lungs and breathing difficulties.

Scientists found that Viagra activates an enzyme that causes a protein in heart muscle cells to relax.

The effect was seen in dogs with diastolic heart failure within minutes of the drug being administered.

Study leader Professor Wolfgang Linke, from the Ruhr Universitat Bochum (RUB) in Germany, said: ”We have developed a therapy in an animal model that, for the first time, also raises hopes for the successful treatment of patients.”

Viagra has a similar effect on blood vessels, which is why it was originally developed as a treatment for high blood pressure and heart disease.

The drug’s active ingredient, sildenafil, inhibits an enzyme involved in the mechanism that regulates blood flow.  However, the enzyme is slightly different in different parts of the body.

The British scientists behind Viagra found to their initial disappointment that it was not a great help to patients with high blood pressure. But it had a miraculous effect on men with erectile dysfunctin.

The drug successfully suppressed the enzyme phosphodiesterase (PDE) in the penis, increasing blood flow to the organ.

Prof Linke’s team found that it worked on the same enzyme in heart cells. This had the effect of causing a cardiac muscle protein called titin to become more elastic.

”The titin molecules are similar to rubber bands,” said the professor. ”They contribute decisively to the stiffness of cardiac walls.”

The research was initially published in the journal Circulation of the American Heart Association.

Almost half of emergency patients admitted to hospital with heart failure have a diastolic condition.

Various medical conditions can cause the ventricles to become ”stiff”. They include high blood pressure, blocked arteries, and cardiomyopathy heart disorders.

Sildenafil is already being tested on heart failure patients taking part in the Relax trial in the US.

Professor Sir Michael Rawlins- head of the government’s medicines’ quango has said patients should sue their health trust if they are not getting the best recommended drugs.The killer quango- National Institute for Curbing Expenditure (NICE) was set up by labour to stop the NHS spending money on it’s drugs bill- so it’s unusual for him to speak out about NHS rationing.

Professor Rawlins, the chairman of NICE said the economic pressure on trusts meant that “completely illegal” decisions were being made to limit the use of expensive drugs.

He told the Financial Times: “I just wish a patient organisation would take a Trust to court for failing to comply.”

Nice has been criticised for ruling against the prescription of expensive new drugs on the grounds that they are not cost-effective.

But Sir Michael told the paper that most of Nice’s recommendations were in favour of prescription and that it was other bodies that blocked the drugs’ use.

Sir Michael criticised the local lists of approved medicines drawn up across the NHS which “second-guess” and sometimes ignore Nice recommendations.

While patient groups for particular diseases – often helped by pharmaceutical companies – have attacked Nice for advising against the use of some expensive new medicines, Sir Michael said they should be directing more criticism instead to the drug companies for charging high prices.

The government’s own innovation review recognised the problem by pledging a Nice “compliance regime” to reduce regional variation – the so-called “postcode lottery” – and to improve adherence to the agency’s guidelines.

It cautioned that local decisions should not act as a barrier to the medicines that Nice had approved.

Alcohol drinkers should have two alcohol free days every week warn MPs- who claim current guidelines give the false impression that daily consumption is healthy.The Science and Technology Committee says current advice on “regular” safe intake is confusing, and wrongly leads people to believe that enjoying a few pints of beer or glasses of wine every day will not harm health.

It wants the Department of Health in England to carry out the first proper review of drinking guidance in more than 15 years, which should follow the example of Scotland in recommending two “dry” days a week.

The MPs also want new rules on what would count as a dangerous night of “binge-drinking”, new lower safe levels for older people and a website where people can work out individual intake based on their age, weight and family history.

They say few people understand what constitutes an alcoholic unit, the basis of the drinking advice, and tell ministers that the guidelines do not seem to change behaviour.

Although the Committee’s report concedes that the drinks industry is needed to help improve labelling on bottles and glasses, it warns of potential conflicts of interest if the Government works too closely with brewers and shops.

Andrew Miller, the Committee’s chairman, said: “Alcohol guidelines are a crucial tool for Government in its effort to combat excessive and problematic drinking. It is vital that they are up-to date and that people know how to use them.

“Unfortunately, public understanding of how to use the guidelines and what an alcohol unit looks like is poor, although improving.

“While we urge the UK Health Departments to re-evaluate the guidelines more thoroughly, the evidence we received suggests that the guidelines should not be increased and that people should be advised to take at least two drink-free days a week.”

The MPs’ report, published on Monday following public hearings and written submissions last year, states that the first Government health advice on sensible drinking was not published until the 1980s.

Originally, the public were told that men could safely have 18 “standard drinks” a week and women half that number, while in 1987 this was revised in favour of weekly “sensible limits” of 21 units for men and 14 for women.

Medical research later suggested that moderate daily alcohol intake could be good for the health, by lowering levels of bad cholesterol in the blood, while giving weekly limits could “mask episodes of heavy drinking”. In 1995, therefore, daily limits were introduced that recommended men should not drink more than three to four units a day, and women two to three.

Some experts, however, raised concerns that this switch from weekly to daily limits appeared to increase the weekly “allowance” of alcohol while also appearing to “endorse daily drinking”.

The MPs say more recent studies have cast doubt on the health benefits of regular drinking, and recommend that England follows Scotland’s lead in urging “at least two alcohol-free days a week”.

They back current specific advice for children and pregnant women, and say “there could be merit” in producing new rules for older people as well as limits for “individual drinking episodes”, but find no evidence for increasing current general safe limits.

The Committee says an expert group, including civil servants as well as scientists, should review current evidence on the health effects of alcohol in order to “increase public confidence”.

They say people should be made aware of the difference between the short-term effects of binge drinking and the long term harm caused by alcoholism, and should be helped to understand how many units are in different drinks.

Death by misadventure was the verdict at the inquest of Amy Winehouse, who died in July.On the afternoon of July 23, the day Amy Winehouse died at the age of 27, a friend rang me with the sad news, saying: “Shows just how deadly heroin is, doesn’t it?” I replied that heroin certainly can be dangerous but that far, far more people kill themselves with booze, with nothing added, than die of taking heroin.

Either they die of a slow disease, like cirrhosis of the liver, or the booze can kill them there and then by poisoning them, depressing their central nervous system until everything stops.

Why did it have to be so called illegal drugs that killed her?

As an example of acute alcohol poisoning, I mentioned (in a blog I wrote that day) the sudden death of Dylan Thomas: his post mortem pointed to “insult to the brain”, caused by alcohol. Supposedly, Thomas had drunk 18 straight whiskies, which is about 36 single measures of whisky in British terms.

Winehouse’s friends had spoken of her having been so drunk, earlier that week in July, that she couldn’t stand. Later her boyfriend, Reg Traviss, and members of her family made it clear she had not taken illicit drugs for some time.

Today the coroner has spoken: the poor singer’s blood contained 416mg of alcohol per decilitre*. “The unintended consequences of such potentially fatal levels,” said the coroner, “was her sudden and unexpected death.”

Professor Suhail Baithun, a Home Office pathologist, said people start losing their faculties at 200mg of alcohol per decilitre, and “when you have levels of 350mg, it is associated with fatalities”.

Why do we always assume illicit drugs are responsible in these sudden deaths? Sometimes they are, obviously. But I also think we blame drugs because they’re strange and frightening, and we don’t like to think of booze like that, we don’t like to think of it as deadly stuff.

Booze is supposed to be our friend, it’s part of our culture, it helps us to relax. Many of us couldn’t cope with life’s daily challenges without it. It is, in the words of those bossy health education campaigns of old, “our favourite drug”.

We prefer not to think about what it can be — a strong poison that kills in overdose.

*This has been expressed in most news reports as five times the drink-drive limit. In Britain the drink-driving limit is normally given in milligrams per 100 millilitres (one deciliter) of blood, or, most commonly, in micrograms per 100 millilitres of breath. The drink-driving limit is 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood. It’s certainly a lot of alcohol.

From: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/amy-winehouse-was-killed-by-alcohol-our-favourite-drug/

Drinkers should have three days a week off alcohol to avoid slipping into a cycle of binge drinking and risking liver disease, leading doctors have warned.The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) claims the Government’s current policy on healthy drinking limits is misleading, as it implies that it is safe for people to have alcohol every day of the week.

Official guidance on sensible drinking suggests that men should have no more than 21 units of alcohol a week, while women are restricted to 14 units.

But experts at the RCP said the policy does not take account of the fact that drinkers should have two to three days a week without any alcohol to let their bodies recover.

Drinking alcohol every day causes a “significant health risk”, doctors warned, increasing the chances of developing liver disease and other life-threatening illnesses.

“People should have two to three alcohol-free days every week to reduce the risks of long term damage from binge drinking, including liver disease,” a spokesman for the RCP said.

“After a day of drinking there is a need for a time to recover and that is why we need rest days in between our alcohol consumption.”

Younger drinkers are particularly at risk, the physicians warned, with daily drinking also common among middle-class women who often have a glass of wine after work.

As well as urging people to restrict their drinking to four days a week, the doctors recommend introducing lower limits for elderly people, as their bodies are more likely to suffer lasting effects from alcohol.

Speaking to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, special adviser on alcohol at the RCP, said Britain’s binge drinking culture was creating a “tide of harm” in hospitals across the country.

“Given the burden of harm that we’ve got, it’s vital that levels are not increased at this point,” he added.

“We recommend a safe limit of 0 to 21 units a week for men and 0 to 14 units a week for women, provided the total amount is not drunk in one or two bouts and that there are two or three alcohol-free days a week.  At these levels, most individuals are unlikely to come to harm.”

The RCP’s warning comes after Professor Nick Heather, a lecturer at Northumbria University, urged MPs to increase daily drinking guidelines to include a “binge drinking limit” for maximum consumption in one day.

He argued that the Government should issue separate guidance on upper limits for daily and weekly drinking, without increasing recommended overall alcohol levels.

Guidlines from the Chief Medical Officer say men should not drink more than three to four units of alcohol a day, while women should limit themselves to two or three.

One unit is 8g of alcohol, roughly equivalent to half a standard glass of wine, half a pint of beer or a pub measure of spirits.

From:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Avoid-alcohol-three-days-a-week-doctors-warn

Drinkers should be given separate daily and weekly alcohol limits to prevent them consuming their entire recommended allowance at the weekend, a leading doctor has said.Prof Nick Heather, of Alcohol Research UK, said current guidelines which stipulate people’s average drinking habits fail to tackle the problem of binge drinking.

He told MPs there should be two types of limit, one which dictates how much people can safely drink “on average” and one which should “stipulate an amount that should never be exceeded”.

The Department of Health previously stated that men and women should not exceed 21 and 18 units of alcohol per week respectively.

It now advises men should not “regularly” exceed three to four units of alcohol per day, with women not drinking on average more than two or three units, but people still mistakenly believe they can store up their alcohol allowance by abstaining during the week and consume excessive amounts on Friday and Saturday nights.

Prof Heather told MPs that there is a key distinction between chronic illness caused by regular heavy drinking and the injuries resulting from drunkenness after binge drinking.

As well as advising how much alcohol people can safely drink on a regular basis health authorities ought to specify that no more than eight units should be consumed in a single day, equivalent to about three 175ml glasses of wine or four pints of lager, he suggested.

He said: “The form that guidelines should take should be this, for example. Men should not drink more than X units per week, probably 21, and never more than Y units in a day, which might be eight, and as well there should be at least two days of abstinence.

“We should revert to the old weekly limits for the average guideline and have another daily limit which would never be exceeded on any day.”

Senior medical experts urged the Commons Science and Technology Select Committee, which is examining the evidence on alcohol guidelines, not to raise the current recommended drinking limits.

Prof Sir Ian Gilmore, Royal College of Physicians special adviser on alcohol and chairman of Alcohol Health Alliance UK, said the “tide of harm” in Britain’s hospitals made it imperitave alcohol levels do not rise.

He said: “As someone who still looks after people with liver disease, and with hospital admissions rising, I think that any recommendation to increase limits would add to the tide of harm that we are seeing in our hospitals every day.  Given the burden of harm that we’ve got, it’s vital that levels are not increased at this point.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/doctors-call-for-separate-daily-and-weekly-drinking-limits

The number of heroin and crack cocaine users needing treatment in England has fallen by 10,000 in two years. The National Treatment Agency for Substance Abuse said the number of adults that began treatment for the class A drugs fell from 62,963 in 2008/09 to 52,933 in 2010/11.

The steepest decline was in the under 30 age group.

The number of people accessing treatment for all drugs also fell for the second year running.

The latest figures also show an increase in the number of drug users “recovering” from addiction – people who no longer need treatment.

Some 27,969 users were classed as recovering in 2010/11, a rise of 18% on the previous year and 150% higher than 11,208 in 2005/06.

The figures showed that, of the 255,556 people who entered a drugs treatment programme since April 2005 for the first time, 28% (71,887) had successfully completed the course and did not need further treatment.

Paul Hayes, the NTA’s chief executive, said the figures showed that “recovery is now becoming a reality for more individuals each year.  More drug users are recovering from addiction, fewer need treatment, and more are getting over their addiction quickly.”

Mr Hayes went on to say he thought the figures showed England had “probably passed the high watermark of the impact of epidemic of the late ’80s and early ’90s and that younger groups of people were reluctant to begin patterns of behaviour… that they’ve seen cause damage to their older siblings, people in their community, sometimes, sadly their mums and dads.”

“They realise the consequences of heroin and crack use and they’re turning their backs on that,” he said.

He said officials were also seeing “significant declines in purity” which “suggests that attempts to restrict supply are having an impact”.

“It’s extremely likely, from where we sit, that the different aspects of the government’s drugs strategy are coming together to have a positive effect,” he added.

But he warned that addiction remained a “serious problem” for many communities, particularly the poorest ones.

“We need to remain vigilant, particularly in a tough economic climate. There’s absolutely no inevitability that rising unemployment among young people will see a rise to ’80s levels of heroin use, but we need to watch that situation very carefully,” he said.

The research can be found at: http://www.nta.nhs.uk/news-2011-annual-report.aspx

The advice on alcohol limits is too confusing according to Debbie Bannigan the head of the charity Swanswell. She says that ‘units’ mean nothing to many people – and the guidance should be clearer and easier to remember.

In this week’s Scrubbing Up, she says that to have a daily “safe” amount is misleading and that some people – including pregnant women and drivers – should be told “no alcohol is best”.

Most people think they have a rough idea of “how much is too much?”, but ask them for specifics and they’re not sure. Who can blame them, when the measure that is used to define safe limits – ‘units’ – is so hard to understand?

While 82% of adults claim to know what a unit of alcohol is, 77% don’t know how many units are in a typical large glass of wine.

Ironically, ‘units’ become even harder to compute when we’ve had a drink, because the part of our brain that works that sort of thing out switches off.

And the concept of a daily safe amount may even encourage the idea that we should drink alcohol every day.

To add to the confusion, we’re bombarded with new “scientific” findings about alcohol.

In the last couple of months alone, we’ve been told that alcohol damages the DNA of unborn children beyond repair, but that it’s OK for pregnant women to have a couple of glasses of wine a week, which is pretty conflicting advice.

Reported health benefits from alcohol are rarely balanced with information about the risks, or the observation that the benefits can be achieved in other ways that don’t carry any significant risks at all.

It’s little surprise that people are confused about the impact alcohol can have on their lives.

But walk into any supermarket and you’ll be encouraged to buy alcohol.

My local supermarket’s “seasonal aisle” – one of the first things you see when you enter the store – has become a wine festival.

And the end of each aisle – the “impulse buy” space – is also stacked with cans of lager and cider, so selecting and purchasing alcohol is just part of the weekly shop rather than something that we have to think about doing.

The people who come to us for help are just like you and me, but they’ve found that their choice to drink alcohol has been riskier than they expected.

What can be done about it? Official guidelines could be clearer. Other public health messages are short and snappy, like ‘clunk-click every trip’ or ‘catch it bin it kill it’. We shouldn’t be afraid of setting clear guidelines and sticking to them”

They are designed to be simple and memorable, so we learn and apply them without trying.

Units don’t work this way, but a simple phrase like ‘one or two, once or twice’ gives us a simple yardstick that drinking one or two alcoholic drinks, once or twice a week, is a good limit.

Sometimes a clear, easy to understand and safe message is that no alcohol is best – for example, for children, in pregnancy or when driving.

Scientific evidence shows that even one drink can impair judgement when driving and that alcohol affects children disproportionately, especially before they are born.

A zero limit for drivers, pregnant women and children avoids confusion and helps us all to take responsibility.  We shouldn’t be afraid of setting clear guidelines and sticking to them.

With co-operation between drinks manufacturers, supermarkets and the government we can judge the risk of alcohol use for ourselves.

Not only can we reach the point where hospital admissions are going down instead of up, we can create a society that is free from problem alcohol use altogether.

Middle aged women who indulge in an alcoholic drink or two a day are boosting their chance of good health in their seventies, a new study claims.Enjoying a small tipple regularly and in moderation improves women’s chances of avoiding heart disease, diabetes and other mental and physical disorders in later life, researchers found.

A study of 14,000 female nurses found that those who frequently drank one to two drinks a night, but no more, had a 30 per cent better chance of overall good health in their seventies than those who avoided alcohol altogether.

Drinking moderate amounts of alcohol on a nightly basis was shown to be healthier than indulging just once or twice a week.

Women who drank on five to seven nights a week enjoyed a 50 per cent better chance of good health in later life than teetotallers.

Writing in the Public Library of Science journal, the researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston said their work showed that “regular, moderate consumption of alcohol” in their fifties could boost overall health among women who survive into their seventies.

Experts cautioned that the study did not prove that alcohol is good for the body and claimed the results could have been down to other lifestyle factors.

Associate Prof Jayne Lucke of the University of Queensland, Australia, said: “Drinking a small amount of alcohol may not cause women to age healthily.

“Rather women who regularly drink a small amount may also have a number of other characteristics, such as good health, an active social life and a healthy appetite, that all work together to promote successful ageing.”

NHS guidelines state that women should not regularly drink more than two or three units of alcohol a day, equal to one and a half standard 175ml glasses of wine or one pint of lager.

A study published last year by researchers in Paris indicated that moderate drinkers had lower rates of heart disease, obesity and depression than people who were teetotal.

The new findings showed that even drinking small amounts of alcohol can have a significant impact on health in later life.

The American researchers measured alcohol intake in grams rather than units, with a glass of wine equal to about 10g and a bottle of beer including 13g.

The results showed that women with an average age of 58 who drank between 5 and 15g per night had a 20 per cent better chance of good health than non-drinkers, while those who drank 15g to 30g were 30 per cent more likely to be healthy in old age.

Dr Qi Sun, who led the study, said: “Low to moderate consumption of alcohol will slightly improve health for women in old age. We would still only recommend regular consumption of one drink per day because that is what the US health guidelines are.”

But European guidelines are slightly higher and previous British studies have that as many as two drinks a night can have a positive health effect, he said.

Dr Sun added: “Even at moderate drinking levels it is highly recommended that you consume alcohol on a regular basis rather than binge drinking at the weekend.

“But for lifetime non-drinkers we would not recommend drinking alcohol just to improve health, because studies have shown that regular exercise and healthy body weight are much more associated with better health at old age than alcohol.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Daily-tipple-boosts-health-in-old-age

Drinking just a glass of wine a day may actually help weight loss researchers now believe. In a study that will raise the spirits of anyone driven to stick to soft drinks for the sake of their waistline, academics say previous assumptions about a link between alcohol and obesity have been inaccurate.

Their analysis of previous research shows that although heavy drinkers are likely to put on weight, those who just enjoy an occasional tipple are unlikely to pile on the pounds.

In fact, connoisseurs of less fattening drinks such as wine may even lose weight as well as being at lower risk of developing diabetes.

“Light-to-moderate alcohol intake, especially wine intake, may be more likely to protect against weight gain, whereas consumption of spirits has been positively associated with weight gain,” says the paper by researchers at Navarro University in Spain, which has been reviewed by the International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research.

The paper, published in the journal Nutrition Reviews, states that “alcohol consumption can lead to weight gain” as 1 gram of alcohol has an energy content of 7.1 calories.

But analysis of 31 studies published between 1984 and 2010 found they were “contradictory” and did not “conclusively confirm” a link between drinking and weight gain.

The papers that did find a link tended to involve studies of heavy drinking, so the Spanish researchers suggest: “It is possible that heavy drinkers may experience such an effect more commonly than light drinkers.”

They say more research should be carried out into the role of “different types of alcoholic beverages”. A pint of lager contains about 200 calories, twice as many as in a glass of wine.

“The type of alcoholic beverage might play an important role in modifying the effect of alcohol consumption on weight gain.”

Members of the forum, commenting on the new paper, agree: “While it is common for individuals, especially women, to state that they avoid all alcohol consumption because they ‘do not want to gain weight,’ data are very limited on this subject.”

They cite studies that show heavy drinking is linked to weight gain but regular drinking is not: “These results suggest that the frequent consumption of small amounts of alcohol is the optimal drinking pattern associated with a lower risk of obesity.”

Other research has suggested that moderate drinkers are at 30 per cent lower risk of developing diabetes, and that even obese people should not abstain from alcohol for this reason.

Moderate drinkers have also been found to be at between 16 per cent and 25 per cent lower risk of developing metabolic syndrome, which in turn makes them more likely to have a stroke or coronary artery disease.

Research on the effects of alcohol on weight has also been complicated by the fact that heavy drinkers have traditionally also smoked cigarettes, which lower the risk of obesity.

Few studies have looked at diet, previous weight gain or loss or “binge drinking” among subjects.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Moderate-wine-drinking-may-help-promote-weight-loss