Power of suggestion affects heart arteries

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By Amy Norton

NEW YORK | Fri Sep 16, 2011 2:18pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Simply suggesting that a treatment will ease chest pain may not only dampen the pain, but directly alter heart arteries, a small study concludes.

Among 30 patients having a procedure to evaluate their chest pain, researchers found that those who were told they were being given an infusion of a pain-relieving drug did, on average, report a decrease in pain.

But the participants also showed a measurable change in their heart arteries: a slight but distinct narrowing of the vessels.

Exactly what the findings mean, and whether they have implications for heart disease patients, is not clear.

None of the chest-pain patients actually had heart disease; they were told about the "drug" (which was actually harmless saline) only after testing had shown no blockages in their heart arteries.

The key point is that the power of suggestion created an objective change in the blood vessels, according to Drs. Karin Meissner and Joram Ronel of Technical University Munich in Germany.

"The major finding was that the coronary vessels reacted so clearly to a mere psychological intervention," they told Reuters Health in an email.

And the reaction was in a direction opposite to the one researchers had expected to see.

The patients were actually told that the "drug" they were receiving would widen their arteries to relieve their chest pain. Instead, there was a small amount of blood vessel constriction in the group overall.

But that constriction does make biological sense, according to Meissner and Ronel.

In a healthy person who is under stress, the nervous system triggers a widening in the blood vessels so that blood circulation increases to meet the body's needs. When stress fades, the vessels can narrow again.

"When the heart works less," Meissner and Ronel explained, "there is less need for blood supply, and the vessels will be less dilated than in a stressful situation. This is how we interpret our data."

They added, though, that this is the process in a healthy person. The situation may be different in a person with heart disease.

The findings, reported in the American Heart Journal, build on a phenomenon seen in clinical trials studying heart disease. That is, some people receiving placebos (inactive "treatments") report improvements in symptoms like chest pain.

How much of that reaction is due to psychological or even biological effects is unclear.

To examine whether there might be placebo effects on the heart arteries, Meissner and Ronel's team looked at 30 patients who underwent coronary angiography to evaluate chest pain symptoms.

During coronary angiography, a thin tube (catheter) is threaded through a blood vessel into the heart, where a special dye is injected. Using X-rays, doctors can then look for blockages in the heart arteries that may be the source of the chest pain.

The 30 patients were included in this study only after the test turned up no blockages. While still on the exam table, they were randomly assigned to either a "verbal suggestion" group or a control group.

In both groups, patients received an injection of saline into the catheter. Those in the verbal-suggestion group were told it was a drug that would widen their heart arteries and boost blood flow to the heart. Patients in the control group were told nothing.

On average, the study found, the verbal-suggestion group reported a dip in their chest pain after the procedure, while showing some blood vessel narrowing. The opposite was true in the control group: slightly more pain and a little more vessel dilation.

The researchers say they suspect the pain reduction was an "indirect effect" of the verbal suggestion, but they cannot know for sure whether or to what degree the blood vessel changes might have contributed to it.

More studies on this question are still needed, according to Meissner and Ronel. If verbal suggestion does have a measurable effect "at the level of the heart" in people with actual heart disease, they said, that would be important to know.

SOURCE: bit.ly/oAJree American Heart Journal, September 2011.

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HEALTH MANAGEMENT. Soy may not prevent clogged arteries

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Taking extra soy supplements did not help stave off artery hardening in a new study of postmenopausal women.
But, researchers said, soy showed a possible benefit in young women just a few years after menopause -- warranting more research in that age group.
The findings add to conflicting data about the role of soy in lowering blood pressure and cholesterol and reducing the risk of heart disease.
"I was not surprised" about the lack of a clear benefit, said William Wong, who studies nutrition and chronic disease at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and wasn't involved in the new study. "So far the research (on soy) has been contradictory."
Researchers have theorized that since rates of cardiovascular disease are lower in Asia -- where soy is an important component of the diet -- there could be something protective about the nutrient-rich plant.
For the current study, Dr. Howard Hodis from the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and colleagues randomly assigned 350 healthy postmenopausal women to get either 25 grams of soy protein (including about 90 milligrams of isoflavones) or soy-free milk protein each day. Both types of protein were delivered in drink powder and food bars.
Women -- and the doctors treating them -- didn't know what kind of protein they were getting.
Every six months for up to three years, researchers brought the women in for an ultrasound to measure the build-up in their carotid arteries -- those responsible for supplying blood to the brain.
More than 700,000 Americans suffer a stroke each year, and most of those occur when blood clots form on plaque in those arteries and cut off blood flow to part of the brain.
In general, there was not a clear difference in artery hardening among women taking soy or non-soy protein supplements. In the soy group, researchers measured artery thickening of nearly five micrometers per year, compared to about six micrometers in the "placebo" group, on average -- but that differences may have been due to chance.
It seemed more likely, the researchers write in the journal Stroke, that women less than five years out of menopause got some artery-protecting benefit from soy protein, based on their build-up measurements. Again, they couldn't confirm that wasn't also a chance finding, but Hodis said it would make sense.
Soy contains estrogen-like chemicals called isoflavones, he said, and women's bodies seem to stop responding to estrogen as they get farther away from menopause.
Women getting high doses of soy protein reported more breast pain and vaginal bleeding or spotting during the study.
"If a woman goes on this stuff, especially at this dosage... she still needs to see her gynecologist," Hodis told Reuters Health. "Those things need to be monitored," he said, in case they hint at future disease.
Soy isoflavone tablets can be bought over the counter and cost about 25 to 50 cents per day. The amount given to women in this study, Hodis said, is much more than Americans usually get -- but is similar to what would be found in a typical Asian diet.
For women who would rather get extra soy from food, Wong recommended soy beans, bean curd and soy milk, which "nowadays is pretty tasty," he said in an interview.
The possibility of a benefit in young women "is encouraging, but we need to do more study to confirm it," Wong said. For now, he said he doesn't see much harm if women want to add more soy-based food to their diets. "A little bit of soy isn't going to hurt you."

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HEALTH MANAGEMENT. Delete old cholesterol way could be used to Unfur of arteries

Called "Self digestion", the cumulative dysfunctional molecules from cells, clears cholesterol an old phone way Autophagy also mobilized and exports and provide for a totally new goal under the direction of the University of Ottawa Heart for drugs "unfur arteries" or reverse atherosclerosis, the main cause of heart attack and stroke, according to the Research Institute (UOHI) in Canada.
Run Director of HDL biology laboratory, UOHI and colleagues from UOHI and Columbia University in New York, United States, found, remained, during the evolution researcher Dr. Yves Marcel, Autophagy, a process that developed and is in single-cell organisms, devours and digested cholesterol which in artery walls has accumulated.
In a statement published yesterday Marcel said 8 September, the press:
"The finding that Autophagy regulated offers also functions to digest and free cholesterol from cells, and the fact that we know that this option will hope for the development of new drugs, enable the export of cholesterol could arteries."
Cholesterol is an important and necessary molecule in mammals, where it produced, hormones and cell membranes and is carried out by the body in the blood. However, it collects in the arteries, that they "fur up" and turn in the atherosclerosis, where narrower and narrower, finally caused blockages and circulation of the heart, which frequently causes heart attacks and strokes reduces arteries,.
Rockefeller Mireille Ouimet, an essential factor in the work, said:
"It is urgently necessary to understand how the accumulation can be reversed by cholesterol in the arteries."
Researchers have discovered that cholesterol accumulation itself raises cholesterol Autophagy, caused, published and broken by the liver, where it is removed from the body be and.
Marcel suggests that perhaps some people with coronary heart disease (CHD) unable to cholesterol in your arteries Autophagy option to delete. A route for new drugs could reactivate this option.
Cell metabolism researchers published details of their work this year in the journal.

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