NPR ;What's In Your Painkiller? and Study Muddies Water On Health Effects Of Salt

NPR today published an article on Acetaminophen and other painkillers. The article notes that researchers found in a study of six focus groups that out of 45 people only 31 percent knew that in Tylenol acetaminophen is the active ingredient. 

At the same time, three-quarters identified aspirin as the active ingredient in Bayer aspirin. A little less than half — 47 percent — said ibuprofen was in Motrin, 19 percent said Aleve contained naproxen sodium, and 19 percent said that ibuprofen was in Advil.

Michael S. Wolf, a professor of medicine at Northwestern and senior author of the study, says he was most surprised that only 41 percent of study participants said they always look at ingredient information when buying over-the-counter drugs. The results appear in the latest issue of the journal American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Read the full article here

Also on the NPR site ; Study Muddies Water On Health Effects Of Salt

A provocative study in the latest issue of JAMA suggests that moderate salt intake might be no problem and that for many people diets very low in salt could be a recipe for trouble.

European researchers studying nearly 4,000 people as they aged found increases in systolic blood pressure were associated with increases in salt measured in the urine. (Sorry, that's how the researchers could accurately quantify how much salt people had in their systems.)

 

Changes in diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number in blood pressure readings) didn't show a relationship with salt.
And, perhaps most interesting of all, the increases in salt and diastolic pressure were not associated with an increase in deaths from cardiovascular disease, such as heart attacks and strokes. Indeed, people with less salt in their urine were more likely to die from cardiovascular causes.

Surprising, right? Previous research has predicted, for instance, that lowering salt intake just a little — a half-teaspoon a day — would save the lives of at least 44,000 Americans a year.

Read The Full Study Here