Blood pressure checks performed by barbers improve hypertension control in African-American men

ScienceDaily (Oct. 26, 2010) — Neighborhood barbers, by conducting a monitoring, education and physician-referral program, can help their African-American customers better control high blood pressure problems that pose special health risks for them, a new study from the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute shows.

The study -- the first to subject increasingly popular barbershop-based health programs to a scientific scrutiny with randomized, controlled testing -- demonstrates the haircutters' heart health efforts work well enough that they could save hundreds of lives annually, according to results to be published online in Archives of Internal Medicine in the peer-reviewed medical journal's Feb. 28, 2011, print issue.

In the research -- led by Ronald G. Victor, MD, a hypertension expert and associate director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute -- barbers for 10 months offered blood pressure checks during men's haircuts and promoted physician follow-up with personalized health education for customers with high blood pressure. This enhanced screening program markedly improved blood pressure levels among the barbershops' patrons. Although blood pressure levels also fell in a comparison group whose members received only educational brochures about high blood pressure, the improvement was greater in the barber-assisted group.

Uncontrolled hypertension is one of the most prevalent causes of premature disability and death among African-Americans. African-American men have the highest death rate from hypertension of any race, ethnic and gender group in the United States -- three times higher than white men.

"What we learned from this trial is that the benefits of intensive blood pressure screening are enhanced when barbers are empowered to become healthcare extenders to help combat this epidemic of the silent killer in their community"," said Victor, the Burns and Allen Chair in Cardiology Research. "Barbers, whose historical predecessors were barber-surgeons, are a unique work force of potential community health advocates because of their loyal clientele."

Since the 1980s, African-American-owned barbershops and hair salons have hosted screening programs for medical conditions that disproportionately affect African-Americans. Victor's study concludes that if hypertension intervention programs were put in place in the estimated 18,000 African-American barbershops in the U.S., it would result in the first year in about 800 fewer heart attacks, 550 fewer strokes and 900 fewer deaths.

Seventeen African-American-owned barbershops in Dallas and approximately 1,300 male patrons with confirmed hypertension participated in this study, which ran from March, 2006, to December, 2008, when Victor was professor of medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

All African-American men patronizing the participating shops were offered baseline blood pressure screenings for hypertension. The shops then were assigned randomly to the intervention or comparison group.

Barbers at the nine shops in the intervention group were trained to measure blood pressure properly and they offered free checks with every cut. If a customer's reading was high, the barber encouraged him to see his doctor, and, if he did not, the barber called the study's nursing staff to arrange a physician visit. The customer, in turn, got a free haircut if he returned to the shop with a doctor-signed referral card.

In the eight shops in the comparison group, customers received a blood pressure check at the study's outset, and then were offered standard educational pamphlets about hypertension.

At the study's conclusion, 20 percent more hypertensive patrons in the intervention group had their blood pressure controlled with medication compared to 10 percent in the control group.

"We need further exploration to make this kind of program scalable and sustainable," said Victor, who is launching a new study with African-American barbershops in Southern California. "If this kind of program could be applied to large numbers of African-American men, that would be an enormous asset in preventing heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure and other serious complications of hypertension,"

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Journal Reference:

Ronald G. Victor; Joseph E. Ravenell; Anne Freeman; David Leonard; Deepa G. Bhat; Moiz Shafiq; Patricia Knowles; Joy S. Storm; Emily Adhikari; Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo; Pamela G. Coxson; Mark J. Pletcher; Peter Hannan; Robert W. Haley. Effectiveness of a Barber-Based Intervention for Improving Hypertension Control in Black Men: The BARBER-1 Study: A Cluster Randomized Trial. Archives of Internal Medicine, 2010; DOI: 10.1001/archinternmed.2010.390

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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Two medicines taken together improve control of blood pressure

ScienceDaily (Jan. 13, 2011) — New British-led research shows that starting treatment of blood pressure with two medicines rather than the one produces better and faster results and fewer side effects -- findings that could change clinical practice world-wide.

The study, published in the Lancet, challenges popular medical practice for the treatment of high blood pressure. The research was led by Cambridge in collaboration with the Universities of Dundee, Glasgow and the British Hypertension Society.

Doctors usually start treatment with one medicine and then add others over a period of months, if needed, to control blood pressure. This study shows that it is best to start treatment with two medicines together at the same time -- resulting in much faster and better control of blood pressure and surprisingly fewer side effects than with one medicine alone.

The two medicines can be incorporated into a single pill, simplifying things for patients who will still only have to take one pill. But by including two medicines in the same pill, they are taking a much more effective medicine with fewer side effects.

Professor Morris Brown, of the University of Cambridge and Addenbrooke's Hospital, said, "The ACCELERATE study breaks the mould for treating hypertension. Most patients can now be prescribed a single combination pill and know that they are optimally protected from strokes and heart attacks."

Prof Bryan Williams, of the British Hypertension Society, said, "This study is important and the findings could change the way we approach the treatment of high blood pressure."

Currently there are almost 10 million people in the UK with high blood pressure and effective treatment is known to substantially reduce the risk of stroke and heart disease.

The investigators believe these important findings could change clinical practice and affect the future treatment of blood pressure for millions of people in the UK.

Professor Tom MacDonald, of the University of Dundee, said: "The research is a great result for patients with high blood pressure. Starting with two medicines is clearly better than starting with one and amazingly there were fewer side effects and not more."

Gordon McInnes, Professor of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Glasgow, said: "The results of this trial are of huge importance to doctors and people treated for high blood pressure. Future treatment will be more effective and, since fewer side effects will lead to better acceptance of therapy, many fewer heart attacks and strokes are likely."

The 'ACCELERATE' study of 1250 patients with hypertension shows that a new accelerated treatment programme lowers blood pressure faster, more effectively, and with fewer side effects than conventional treatment.

ACCELERATE shows that patients who start treatment with a single tablet containing a combination of drugs will have a 25% better response during the first six months of treatment than patients receiving conventional treatment, and -- remarkably -- are less likely to stop treatment because of side effects. Still more remarkably, the blood pressure in the conventional treatment arm never caught up with the new treatment arm, even when all the patients in the study were being treated with the same combination of drugs.

The authors suspected that conventional treatment allows the body to partially neutralise each drug, and ACCELERATE was designed to show that the new treatment programme prevents this neutralisation from happening.

ACCELERATE was designed by The British Hypertension Society, who entered a unique partnership with Novartis in order for the treatment programme to be simultaneously tested in ten countries on four continents.

Currently, patients with hypertension take many months to have their blood pressure lowered, following guidance to start with a low-dose of one tablet, and gradually increase the dose and number of drugs. This traditional 'start low, go-slow' policy is encouraged in order to avoid side effects, but has been shown to delay the protection from strokes which is the main reason for treating hypertension. In the longer-term, patients are also less likely to take their medication if multiple tablets are required.

Funded by the British Heart Foundation, the British Hypertension Society Research Network is now doing a similar study with different medicines to be sure these results are generalisable.

Reference: "Aliskiren and the calcium channel blocker amlodipine combination as an initial treatment strategy for hypertension control (ACCELERATE): a randomised, parallel-group trial" will be published in the Lancet on 13 January.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by University of Cambridge, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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How To Improve Circulation - 5 Main Factors To Know For Increasing Poor Blood Circulation

Do you have poor blood circulation? There are many factors that affect the circulation and there are a lot of ways that can help to improve circulation. However, these 5 factors should be a starting point because a lot of people fail to increase poor blood circulation at this point.

As you age, you need to pay more attention to your health, especially on how to improve circulation or prevent the poor blood circulation happens. Blood carries nutrients required by all the organs in the body to function optimally. Many of the health concerns directly or indirectly depend on this circulatory system. Let us examine the 5 main reasons that contribute to this concern.

1. One of the most important factors is your nutrition. It is often seen that with progress and success in life, your food habits begin to suffer. Junk foods and processed readymade eatables replace nutritious foods that supply all the ingredients required by your body to keep all its systems in good shape.

2. Another reason is inadequate intake of water. 8 glasses of water must be consumed daily to keep the system hydrated. Water is a very important medium for transportation of nutrients in the blood. Increasing water consumption can improve circulation.

3. Sedentary lifestyle reduces flexibility of your organs to function at their best. Activity is known to boost their performance which will result in adequate repairs and replacement throughout the body. This also boosts circulatory systems; blood circulation is no exception. Your daily work schedules should include good amount of physical activity. At least, go to the gym regularly for workouts or swim if your job demands more of inactivity.

4. Habits like smoking and excessive alcohol intake interfere with functioning of various organs in the body, especially the lungs and the liver which indirectly affects circulation. Carbon monoxide from smoking damages cells which make up the inner lining of blood vessels. Similarly, reduce intake of tea, coffee, soda and processed drinks.

5. Last, but not the least, keep a constant watch on your body weight. Obesity puts extra pressure on your heart as it has to work harder to pump blood to the body mass. They also have hardened arteries thus impairing circulation.

Everyone should be conscious of above factors and should make it a habit in such a way that we subconsciously keep on working to improve circulation. Even if you are under certain bad blood circulation medication or treatment, making major changes on those factors is needed to make the medication or treatment become more effective.

One way that you can do it faster, but in natural way is by supplementing yourself with enzymes formula. The enzymes formula has been known and proven to help people who want to increase blood circulation faster. Generally, you can pick any brand that is suitable with your condition. But, allow me to introduce to one of the top brands of systemic enzymes, which is called Vitalzym.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=D_Suharsono

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Gene test may improve heart disease detection

Researchers say new findings could reduce expensive, risky angiograms Below: x Jump to discussion comments below discussion x Next story in Heart health Study links cholesterol and nonstick coating chemical related Advertise

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