UC Survey Finds Women Unaware of Heart Risks
While heart disease is the leading cause of death among American women, recent surveys conducted by the UC Davis Women’s Cardiovascular Medicine Program suggest that women are largely unaware of heart disease risk factors.
Though 98 percent of women reported that they know that high blood pressure is a risk factor, and 95 percent know that high cholesterol is a risk factor, only 84 percent know that diabetes is also a contributing factor, and a growing epidemic.
Furthermore, surveys revealed knowledge gaps in women’s ability to discern the meaning of personal numbers associated with risk factors. Only 60, 31 and 24 percent of the women surveyed knew numbers associated with their personal levels of blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar, respectively. Even fewer — 9, 19 and 3 percent — knew whether these numbers were normal.
The UC Davis cardiovascular program, one of seven national women’s health programs, conducted surveys with a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
UC Irvine Team Develops Hearing Damage Treatment
Researchers at UC Irvine have recently developed a new treatment for hearing damage caused by loud music.
The condition, known as tinnitus, affects over 60 million Americans and is characterized by a constant high-pitched ringing.
Fan-Gang Zeng, director of the Speech and Hearing Lab at UC Irvine, has discovered that a low-pitched sound, played through a simple MP3 player, can temporarily alleviate symptoms of the widespread affliction.
Zeng and his team first considered a more common treatment of tinnitus called “”masking,”” which uses a high-pitched frequency to mask internal ringing of the ears. However, when an opposite approach was taken due to the severity of the patients’ condition, it provided surprisingly effective results.
Zeng presented the results of his research on Feb. 13 at the Middle Winter Research Conference for Otolaryngology in Denver.
“”Tinnitus is one of the most common hearing disorders in the world, but very little is understood about why it occurs or how to treat it,”” Zeng, a professor of otolaryngology, biomedical engineering, cognitive sciences and anatomy and neurobiology, stated in a press release.
Zeng’s team is currently studying how to apply the treatment for people without hearing-aid devices. Hamid Djalilian, a UC Irvine physician specializing in hearing disorders, said that a custom sound could be developed for patients, who could then download it onto personal MP3 players for relief.
While the treatment is not a cure, it “”suggests that balanced stimulation, rather than masking, is the brain mechanism underlying this surprising finding,”” Zeng stated.
