How To Improve Your Heart Rate Variability

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How’s your heart rate variability?

The hallmarks of a good, strong cardiovascular system include a medium-to-low resting heart rate (for adults: under 60 beats per minute is good; under 50 is typical of athletes), and healthy blood pressure (for adults: under 120/80, while still above 90/60, is generally considered good).

Less talked-about is heart rate variability, but it’s important too…

What is heart rate variability?

Heart rate variability is a measure of how quickly and easily your heart responds to changes in demands placed upon it. For example:

  • If you’re at rest and then start running your fastest (be it for leisure or survival or anything in between), your heart rate should be able to jump from its resting rate to about 180% of that as quickly as possible
  • When you stop, your heart rate should be able to shift gears back to your resting rate as quickly as possible

The same goes, to a commensurately lesser extent, to changes in activity between low and moderate, or between moderate and high.

  • When your heart can change gears quickly, that’s called a high heart rate variability
  • When your heart is sluggish to get going and then takes a while to return to normal after exertion, that’s called a low heart rate variability.

The rate of change (i.e., the variability) is measured in microseconds per beat, and the actual numbers will vary depending on a lot of factors, but for everyone, higher is better than lower.

Aside from quick response to crises, why does it matter?

If heart rate variability is low, it means the sympathetic nervous system is dominating the parasympathetic nervous system, which means, in lay terms, your fight-or-flight response is overriding your ability to relax.

See for example: Stress and Heart Rate Variability: A Meta-Analysis and Review of the Literature

This has a lot of knock-on effects for both physical and mental health! Your heart and brain will take the worst of this damage, so it’s good to improve things for them impossible.

This Saturday’s Life Hacks: how to improve your HRV!

Firstly, the Usual Five Things™:

  1. A good diet (that avoids processed foods)
  2. Good exercise (that includes daily physical activity—more often is more important than more intense!)
  3. Good sleep (7–9 hours of good quality sleep per night)
  4. Reduce or eliminate alcohol consumption (this is dose-dependent; any reduction is an improvement)
  5. Don’t smoke (just don’t)

Additional regular habits that help a lot:

  • Breathing exercises, mindfulness, meditation
  • Therapy, especially CBT and DBT
  • Stress-avoidance strategies, for example:
    • Get (and maintain) your finances in good order
    • Get (and maintain) your relationship(s) in good order
    • Get (and maintain) your working* life in good order

*Whatever this means to you. If you’re perhaps retired, or otherwise a home-maker, or even a student, the things you “need to do” on a daily basis are your working life, for these purposes.

In terms of simple, quick-fix, physical tweaks to focus on if you’re already broadly leading a good life, two great ones are:

  • Exercise: get moving! Walk to the store even if you buy nothing but a snack or drink to enjoy while walking back. If you drove, make more trips with the shopping bags rather than fewer. If you like to watch TV, consider an exercise bike or treadmill to use while watching. If you have a partner, double-up and make it a thing you do together! Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Take the scenic route when walking someplace. Go to the bathroom that’s further away. Every little helps!
  • Breathe: even just a couple of times a day, practice mindful breathing. Start with even just a minute a day, to get the habit going. What breathing exercise you do isn’t so important as that you do it. Notice your breathing; count how long each breath takes. Don’t worry about “doing it right”—you’re doing great, just observe, just notice, just slowly count. We promise that regular practice of this will have you feeling amazing

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  • This salt alternative could help reduce blood pressure. So why are so few people using it?

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    One in three Australian adults has high blood pressure (hypertension). Excess salt (sodium) increases the risk of high blood pressure so everyone with hypertension is advised to reduce salt in their diet.

    But despite decades of strong recommendations we have failed to get Australians to cut their intake. It’s hard for people to change the way they cook, season their food differently, pick low-salt foods off the supermarket shelves and accept a less salty taste.

    Now there is a simple and effective solution: potassium-enriched salt. It can be used just like regular salt and most people don’t notice any important difference in taste.

    Switching to potassium-enriched salt is feasible in a way that cutting salt intake is not. Our new research concludes clinical guidelines for hypertension should give patients clear recommendations to switch.

    What is potassium-enriched salt?

    Potassium-enriched salts replace some of the sodium chloride that makes up regular salt with potassium chloride. They’re also called low-sodium salt, potassium salt, heart salt, mineral salt, or sodium-reduced salt.

    Potassium chloride looks the same as sodium chloride and tastes very similar.

    Potassium-enriched salt works to lower blood pressure not only because it reduces sodium intake but also because it increases potassium intake. Insufficient potassium, which mostly comes from fruit and vegetables, is another big cause of high blood pressure.

    What is the evidence?

    We have strong evidence from a randomised trial of 20,995 people that switching to potassium-enriched salt lowers blood pressure and reduces the risks of stroke, heart attacks and early death. The participants had a history of stroke or were 60 years of age or older and had high blood pressure.

    An overview of 21 other studies suggests much of the world’s population could benefit from potassium-enriched salt.

    The World Health Organisation’s 2023 global report on hypertension highlighted potassium-enriched salt as an “affordable strategy” to reduce blood pressure and prevent cardiovascular events such as strokes.

    What should clinical guidelines say?

    We teamed up with researchers from the United States, Australia, Japan, South Africa and India to review 32 clinical guidelines for managing high blood pressure across the world. Our findings are published today in the American Heart Association’s journal, Hypertension.

    We found current guidelines don’t give clear and consistent advice on using potassium-enriched salt.

    While many guidelines recommend increasing dietary potassium intake, and all refer to reducing sodium intake, only two guidelines – the Chinese and European – recommend using potassium-enriched salt.

    To help guidelines reflect the latest evidence, we suggested specific wording which could be adopted in Australia and around the world:

    Recommended wording for guidance about the use of potassium-enriched salt in clinical management guidelines.

    Why do so few people use it?

    Most people are unaware of how much salt they eat or the health issues it can cause. Few people know a simple switch to potassium-enriched salt can help lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of a stroke and heart disease.

    Limited availability is another challenge. Several Australian retailers stock potassium-enriched salt but there is usually only one brand available, and it is often on the bottom shelf or in a special food aisle.

    Potassium-enriched salts also cost more than regular salt, though it’s still low cost compared to most other foods, and not as expensive as many fancy salts now available.

    Woman gets man to try her cooking
    It looks and tastes like normal salt.
    Jimmy Dean/Unsplash

    A 2021 review found potassium-enriched salts were marketed in only 47 countries and those were mostly high-income countries. Prices ranged from the same as regular salt to almost 15 times greater.

    Even though generally more expensive, potassium-enriched salt has the potential to be highly cost effective for disease prevention.

    Preventing harm

    A frequently raised concern about using potassium-enriched salt is the risk of high blood potassium levels (hyperkalemia) in the approximately 2% of the population with serious kidney disease.

    People with serious kidney disease are already advised to avoid regular salt and to avoid foods high in potassium.

    No harm from potassium-enriched salt has been recorded in any trial done to date, but all studies were done in a clinical setting with specific guidance for people with kidney disease.

    Our current priority is to get people being managed for hypertension to use potassium-enriched salt because health-care providers can advise against its use in people at risk of hyperkalemia.

    In some countries, potassium-enriched salt is recommended to the entire community because the potential benefits are so large. A modelling study showed almost half a million strokes and heart attacks would be averted every year in China if the population switched to potassium-enriched salt.

    What will happen next?

    In 2022, the health minister launched the National Hypertension Taskforce, which aims to improve blood pressure control rates from 32% to 70% by 2030 in Australia.

    Potassium-enriched salt can play a key role in achieving this. We are working with the taskforce to update Australian hypertension management guidelines, and to promote the new guidelines to health professionals.

    In parallel, we need potassium-enriched salt to be more accessible. We are engaging stakeholders to increase the availability of these products nationwide.

    The world has already changed its salt supply once: from regular salt to iodised salt. Iodisation efforts began in the 1920s and took the best part of 100 years to achieve traction. Salt iodisation is a key public health achievement of the last century preventing goitre (a condition where your thyroid gland grows larger) and enhancing educational outcomes for millions of the poorest children in the world, as iodine is essential for normal growth and brain development.

    The next switch to iodised and potassium-enriched salt offers at least the same potential for global health gains. But we need to make it happen in a fraction of the time.The Conversation

    Xiaoyue Xu (Luna), Scientia Lecturer, UNSW Sydney; Alta Schutte, SHARP Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine, UNSW Sydney, and Bruce Neal, Executive Director, George Institute Australia, George Institute for Global Health

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • What you need to know about FLiRT, an emerging group of COVID-19 variants

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    What you need to know

    • COVID-19 wastewater levels are currently low, but a recent group of variants called FLiRT is making headlines.
    • KP.2 is one of several FLiRT variants, and early lab tests suggest that it’s more infectious than JN.1.
    • Getting infected with any COVID-19 variant can cause severe illness, heart problems, and death.

    KP.2, a new COVID-19 variant, is now dominant in the United States. Lab tests suggest that it may be more infectious than JN.1, the variant that was dominant earlier this year.

    Fortunately, there’s good news: Current wastewater data shows that COVID-19 infection rates are low. Still, experts are closely watching KP.2 to see if it will lead to an uptick in infections.

    Read on to learn more about KP.2 and how to stay informed about COVID-19 cases in your area.

    Where can I find data on COVID-19 cases in my area?

    Hospitals are no longer required to report COVID-19 hospital admissions or hospital capacity to the Department of Health and Human Services. However, wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) estimates the number of COVID-19 infections in a community based on the amount of COVID-19 viral particles detected in local wastewater.

    View this map of wastewater data from the CDC to visualize COVID-19 infection rates throughout the U.S., or look up COVID-19 wastewater trends in your state.

    What do we know so far about the new variant?

    Early lab tests suggest that KP.2—one of a group of emerging variants called FLiRT—is similar to the previously dominant variant, JN.1, but it may be more infectious. If you had JN.1, you may still get reinfected with KP.2, especially if it’s been several months or longer since your last COVID-19 infection.

    A CDC spokesperson said they have no reason to believe that KP.2 causes more severe illness than other variants. Experts are closely watching KP.2 to see if it will lead to an uptick in COVID-19 cases.

    How can I protect myself from COVID-19 variants?

    Staying up to date on COVID-19 vaccines reduces your risk of severe illness, long COVID, heart problems, and death. The CDC recommends that people 65 and older and immunocompromised people receive an additional dose of the updated COVID-19 vaccine this spring.

    Wearing a high-quality, well-fitting mask reduces your risk of contracting COVID-19 and spreading it to others. At indoor gatherings, improving ventilation by opening doors and windows, using high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters, and building your own Corsi-Rosenthal box can also reduce the spread of COVID-19.

    This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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  • We’re the ‘allergy capital of the world’. But we don’t know why food allergies are so common in Australian children

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    Australia has often been called the “allergy capital of the world”.

    An estimated one in ten Australian children develop a food allergy in their first 12 months of life. Research has previously suggested food allergies are more common in infants in Australia than infants living in Europe, the United States or Asia.

    So why are food allergies so common in Australia? We don’t know exactly – but local researchers are making progress in understanding childhood allergies all the time.

    Miljan Zivkovic/Shutterstock

    What causes food allergies?

    There are many different types of reactions to foods. When we refer to food allergies in this article, we’re talking about something called IgE-mediated food allergy. This type of allergy is caused by an immune response to a particular food.

    Reactions can occur within minutes of eating the food and may include swelling of the face, lips or eyes, “hives” or welts on the skin, and vomiting. Signs of a severe allergic reaction (anaphylaxis) include difficulty breathing, swelling of the tongue, swelling in the throat, wheeze or persistent cough, difficulty talking or a hoarse voice, and persistent dizziness or collapse.

    Recent results from Australia’s large, long-running food allergy study, HealthNuts, show one in ten one-year-olds have a food allergy, while around six in 100 children have a food allergy at age ten.

    https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/skin-rashes-babies-concept-1228925236
    A food allergy can present with skin reactions. comzeal images/Shutterstock

    In Australia, the most common allergy-causing foods include eggs, peanuts, cow’s milk, shellfish (for example, prawn and lobster), fish, tree nuts (for example, walnuts and cashews), soybeans and wheat.

    Allergies to foods like eggs, peanuts and cow’s milk often present for the first time in infancy, while allergies to fish and shellfish may be more common later in life. While most children will outgrow their allergies to eggs and milk, allergy to peanuts is more likely to be lifelong.

    Findings from HealthNuts showed around three in ten children grew out of their peanut allergy by age six, compared to nine in ten children with an allergy to egg.

    Are food allergies becoming more common?

    Food allergies seem to have become more common in many countries around the world over recent decades. The exact timing of this increase is not clear, because in most countries food allergies were not well measured 40 or 50 years ago.

    We don’t know exactly why food allergies are so common in Australia, or why we’re seeing a rise around the world, despite extensive research.

    But possible reasons for rising allergies around the world include changes in the diets of mothers and infants and increasing sanitisation, leading to fewer infections as well as less exposure to “good” bacteria. In Australia, factors such as increasing vitamin D deficiency among infants and high levels of migration to the country could play a role.

    In several Australian studies, children born in Australia to parents who were born in Asia have higher rates of food allergies compared to non-Asian children. On the other hand, children who were born in Asia and later migrated to Australia appear to have a lower risk of nut allergies.

    Meanwhile, studies have shown that having pet dogs and siblings as a young child may reduce the risk of food allergies. This might be because having pet dogs and siblings increases contact with a range of bacteria and other organisms.

    This evidence suggests that both genetics and environment play a role in the development of food allergies.

    We also know that infants with eczema are more likely to develop a food allergy, and trials are underway to see whether this link can be broken.

    Can I do anything to prevent food allergies in my kids?

    One of the questions we are asked most often by parents is “can we do anything to prevent food allergies?”.

    We now know introducing peanuts and eggs from around six months of age makes it less likely that an infant will develop an allergy to these foods. The Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy introduced guidelines recommending giving common allergy-causing foods including peanut and egg in the first year of life in 2016.

    Our research has shown this advice had excellent uptake and may have slowed the rise in food allergies in Australia. There was no increase in peanut allergies between 2007–11 to 2018–19.

    Introducing other common allergy-causing foods in the first year of life may also be helpful, although the evidence for this is not as strong compared with peanuts and eggs.

    A boy's hand holding some peanuts.
    Giving kids peanuts early can reduce the risk of a peanut allergy. Madame-Moustache/Shutterstock

    What next?

    Unfortunately, some infants will develop food allergies even when the relevant foods are introduced in the first year of life. Managing food allergies can be a significant burden for children and families.

    Several Australian trials are currently underway testing new strategies to prevent food allergies. A large trial, soon to be completed, is testing whether vitamin D supplements in infants reduce the risk of food allergies.

    Another trial is testing whether the amount of eggs and peanuts a mother eats during pregnancy and breastfeeding has an influence on whether or not her baby will develop food allergies.

    For most people with food allergies, avoidance of their known allergens remains the standard of care. Oral immunotherapy, which involves gradually increasing amounts of food allergen given under medical supervision, is beginning to be offered in some facilities around Australia. However, current oral immunotherapy methods have potential side effects (including allergic reactions), can involve high time commitment and cost, and don’t cure food allergies.

    There is hope on the horizon for new food allergy treatments. Multiple clinical trials are underway around Australia aiming to develop safer and more effective treatments for people with food allergies.

    Jennifer Koplin, Group Leader, Childhood Allergy & Epidemiology, The University of Queensland and Desalegn Markos Shifti, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Child Health Research Centre, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Queensland

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • The Burden of Getting Medical Care Can Exhaust Older Patients

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Susanne Gilliam, 67, was walking down her driveway to get the mail in January when she slipped and fell on a patch of black ice.

    Pain shot through her left knee and ankle. After summoning her husband on her phone, with difficulty she made it back to the house.

    And then began the run-around that so many people face when they interact with America’s uncoordinated health care system.

    Gilliam’s orthopedic surgeon, who managed previous difficulties with her left knee, saw her that afternoon but told her “I don’t do ankles.”

    He referred her to an ankle specialist who ordered a new set of X-rays and an MRI. For convenience’s sake, Gilliam asked to get the scans at a hospital near her home in Sudbury, Massachusetts. But the hospital didn’t have the doctor’s order when she called for an appointment. It came through only after several more calls.

    Coordinating the care she needs to recover, including physical therapy, became a part-time job for Gilliam. (Therapists work on only one body part per session, so she has needed separate visits for her knee and for her ankle several times a week.)

    “The burden of arranging everything I need — it’s huge,” Gilliam told me. “It leaves you with such a sense of mental and physical exhaustion.”

    The toll the American health care system extracts is, in some respects, the price of extraordinary progress in medicine. But it’s also evidence of the poor fit between older adults’ capacities and the health care system’s demands.

    “The good news is we know so much more and can do so much more for people with various conditions,” said Thomas H. Lee, chief medical officer at Press Ganey, a consulting firm that tracks patients’ experiences with health care. “The bad news is the system has gotten overwhelmingly complex.”

    That complexity is compounded by the proliferation of guidelines for separate medical conditions, financial incentives that reward more medical care, and specialization among clinicians, said Ishani Ganguli, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

    “It’s not uncommon for older patients to have three or more heart specialists who schedule regular appointments and tests,” she said. If someone has multiple medical problems — say, heart disease, diabetes, and glaucoma — interactions with the health care system multiply.

    Ganguli is the author of a new study showing that Medicare patients spend about three weeks a year having medical tests, visiting doctors, undergoing treatments or medical procedures, seeking care in emergency rooms, or spending time in the hospital or rehabilitation facilities. (The data is from 2019, before the covid pandemic disrupted care patterns. If any services were received, that counted as a day of health care contact.)

    That study found that slightly more than 1 in 10 seniors, including those recovering from or managing serious illnesses, spent a much larger portion of their lives getting care — at least 50 days a year.

    “Some of this may be very beneficial and valuable for people, and some of it may be less essential,” Ganguli said. “We don’t talk enough about what we’re asking older adults to do and whether that’s realistic.”

    Victor Montori, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, has for many years raised an alarm about the “treatment burden” that patients experience. In addition to time spent receiving health care, this burden includes arranging appointments, finding transportation to medical visits, getting and taking medications, communicating with insurance companies, paying medical bills, monitoring health at home, and following recommendations such as dietary changes.

    Four years ago — in a paper titled “Is My Patient Overwhelmed?” — Montori and several colleagues found that 40% of patients with chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes, and neurological disorders “considered their treatment burden unsustainable.”

    When this happens, people stop following medical advice and report having a poorer quality of life, the researchers found. Especially vulnerable are older adults with multiple medical conditions and low levels of education who are economically insecure and socially isolated.

    Older patients’ difficulties are compounded by medical practices’ increased use of digital phone systems and electronic patient portals — both frustrating for many seniors to navigate — and the time pressures afflicting physicians. “It’s harder and harder for patients to gain access to clinicians who can problem-solve with them and answer questions,” Montori said.

    Meanwhile, clinicians rarely ask patients about their capacity to perform the work they’re being asked to do. “We often have little sense of the complexity of our patients’ lives and even less insight into how the treatments we provide (to reach goal-directed guidelines) fit within the web of our patients’ daily experiences,” several physicians wrote in a 2022 paper on reducing treatment burden.

    Consider what Jean Hartnett, 53, of Omaha, Nebraska, and her eight siblings went through after their 88-year-old mother had a stroke in February 2021 while shopping at Walmart.

    At the time, the older woman was looking after Hartnett’s father, who had kidney disease and needed help with daily activities such as showering and going to the bathroom.

    During the year after the stroke, both of Hartnett’s parents — fiercely independent farmers who lived in Hubbard, Nebraska — suffered setbacks, and medical crises became common. When a physician changed her mom’s or dad’s plan of care, new medications, supplies, and medical equipment had to be procured, and new rounds of occupational, physical, and speech therapy arranged.

    Neither parent could be left alone if the other needed medical attention.

    “It wasn’t unusual for me to be bringing one parent home from the hospital or doctor’s visit and passing the ambulance or a family member on the highway taking the other one in,” Hartnett explained. “An incredible amount of coordination needed to happen.”

    Hartnett moved in with her parents during the last six weeks of her father’s life, after doctors decided he was too weak to undertake dialysis. He passed away in March 2022. Her mother died months later in July.

    So, what can older adults and family caregivers do to ease the burdens of health care?

    To start, be candid with your doctor if you think a treatment plan isn’t feasible and explain why you feel that way, said Elizabeth Rogers, an assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School. 

    “Be sure to discuss your health priorities and trade-offs: what you might gain and what you might lose by forgoing certain tests or treatments,” she said. Ask which interventions are most important in terms of keeping you healthy, and which might be expendable.

    Doctors can adjust your treatment plan, discontinue medications that aren’t yielding significant benefits, and arrange virtual visits if you can manage the technological requirements. (Many older adults can’t.)

    Ask if a social worker or a patient navigator can help you arrange multiple appointments and tests on the same day to minimize the burden of going to and from medical centers. These professionals can also help you connect with community resources, such as transportation services, that might be of help. (Most medical centers have staff of this kind, but physician practices do not.)

    If you don’t understand how to do what your doctor wants you to do, ask questions: What will this involve on my part? How much time will this take? What kind of resources will I need to do this? And ask for written materials, such as self-management plans for asthma or diabetes, that can help you understand what’s expected.

    “I would ask a clinician, ‘If I chose this treatment option, what does that mean not only for my cancer or heart disease, but also for the time I’ll spend getting care?’” said Ganguli of Harvard. “If they don’t have an answer, ask if they can come up with an estimate.”

    We’re eager to hear from readers about questions you’d like answered, problems you’ve been having with your care, and advice you need in dealing with the health care system. Visit http://kffhealthnews.org/columnists to submit your requests or tips.

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

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  • 100 No-Equipment Workouts – by Neila Rey

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    For those of us who for whatever reason prefer to exercise at home rather than at the gym, we must make do with what exercise equipment we can reasonably install in our homes. This book deals with that from the ground upwards—literally!

    If you have a few square meters of floorspace (and a ceiling that’s not too low, for exercises that involve any kind of jumping), then all 100 of these zero-equipment exercises are at-home options.

    As to what kinds of exercises they are, they each marked as being one or both of “cardio” and “strength”.

    They’re also marked as being of “difficulty level” 1, 2, or 3, so that someone who hasn’t exercised in a while (or hasn’t exercised like this at all), can know where best to start, and how best to progress.

    The exercises come with clear explanations in the text, and clear line-drawing illustrations of how to do each exercise. Really, they could not be clearer; this is top quality pragmatism, and reads like a military manual.

    Bottom line: whatever your strength and fitness goals, this book can see you well on your way to them (if not outright get you there already in many cases). It’s also an excellent “all-rounder” for full-body workouts.

    Click here to check out 100 No-Equipment Workouts, and find the joy and freedom in not needing anything at all for full-body training!

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  • Why are tall people more likely to get cancer? What we know, don’t know and suspect

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    People who are taller are at greater risk of developing cancer. The World Cancer Research Fund reports there is strong evidence taller people have a higher chance of of developing cancer of the:

    • pancreas
    • large bowel
    • uterus (endometrium)
    • ovary
    • prostate
    • kidney
    • skin (melanoma) and
    • breast (pre- and post-menopausal).

    But why? Here’s what we know, don’t know and suspect.

    Pexels/Andrea Piacquadio
    A tall woman and her partner are silhoutted against the sunset.
    Height does increase your cancer risk – but only by a very small amount. Christian Vinces/Shutterstock

    A well established pattern

    The UK Million Women Study found that for 15 of the 17 cancers they investigated, the taller you are the more likely you are to have them.

    It found that overall, each ten-centimetre increase in height increased the risk of developing a cancer by about 16%. A similar increase has been found in men.

    Let’s put that in perspective. If about 45 in every 10,000 women of average height (about 165 centimetres) develop cancer each year, then about 52 in each 10,000 women who are 175 centimetres tall would get cancer. That’s only an extra seven cancers.

    So, it’s actually a pretty small increase in risk.

    Another study found 22 of 23 cancers occurred more commonly in taller than in shorter people.

    Why?

    The relationship between height and cancer risk occurs across ethnicities and income levels, as well as in studies that have looked at genes that predict height.

    These results suggest there is a biological reason for the link between cancer and height.

    While it is not completely clear why, there are a couple of strong theories.

    The first is linked to the fact a taller person will have more cells. For example, a tall person probably has a longer large bowel with more cells and thus more entries in the large bowel cancer lottery than a shorter person.

    Scientists think cancer develops through an accumulation of damage to genes that can occur in a cell when it divides to create new cells.

    The more times a cell divides, the more likely it is that genetic damage will occur and be passed onto the new cells.

    The more damage that accumulates, the more likely it is that a cancer will develop.

    A person with more cells in their body will have more cell divisions and thus potentially more chance that a cancer will develop in one of them.

    Some research supports the idea having more cells is the reason tall people develop cancer more and may explain to some extent why men are more likely to get cancer than women (because they are, on average, taller than women).

    However, it’s not clear height is related to the size of all organs (for example, do taller women have bigger breasts or bigger ovaries?).

    One study tried to assess this. It found that while organ mass explained the height-cancer relationship in eight of 15 cancers assessed, there were seven others where organ mass did not explain the relationship with height.

    It is worth noting this study was quite limited by the amount of data they had on organ mass.

    A tall older man leans against a wall while his bicycle is parked nearby.
    Is it because tall people have more cells? Halfpoint/Shutterstock

    Another theory is that there is a common factor that makes people taller as well as increasing their cancer risk.

    One possibility is a hormone called insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). This hormone helps children grow and then continues to have an important role in driving cell growth and cell division in adults.

    This is an important function. Our bodies need to produce new cells when old ones are damaged or get old. Think of all the skin cells that come off when you use a good body scrub. Those cells need to be replaced so our skin doesn’t wear out.

    However, we can get too much of a good thing. Some studies have found people who have higher IGF-1 levels than average have a higher risk of developing breast or prostate cancer.

    But again, this has not been a consistent finding for all cancer types.

    It is likely that both explanations (more cells and more IGF-1) play a role.

    But more research is needed to really understand why taller people get cancer and whether this information could be used to prevent or even treat cancers.

    I’m tall. What should I do?

    If you are more LeBron James than Lionel Messi when it comes to height, what can you do?

    Firstly, remember height only increases cancer risk by a very small amount.

    Secondly, there are many things all of us can do to reduce our cancer risk, and those things have a much, much greater effect on cancer risk than height.

    We can take a look at our lifestyle. Try to:

    • eat a healthy diet
    • exercise regularly
    • maintain a healthy weight
    • be careful in the sun
    • limit alcohol consumption.

    And, most importantly, don’t smoke!

    If we all did these things we could vastly reduce the amount of cancer.

    You can also take part in cancer screening programs that help pick up cancers of the breast, cervix and bowel early so they can be treated successfully.

    Finally, take heart! Research also tells us that being taller might just reduce your chance of having a heart attack or stroke.

    Susan Jordan, Associate Professor of Epidemiology, The University of Queensland and Karen Tuesley, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Public Health, The University of Queensland

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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