Your health: Don't take 'worried to death' literally

Worried to death

It's well known that people who are anxious, worried and prone to depression have a higher risk of early death. Purdue University researchers studying 1,788 military veterans say one reason might be that those personality traits often go along with risky behaviors like cigarette or alcohol use.

Smoking alone is believed to account for 25 percent to 40 percent of the link between highly anxious personalities and mortality.

"Having worrying tendencies or being the kind of person who stresses easily is likely to lead to bad behaviors like smoking and, therefore, raise the mortality rate," said Daniel Mroczek, professor of child development and family studies.

Work your brain

Working puzzles, joining book clubs and keeping up friendships help boost cognitive function as you age. But to do all you can to maintain your mental abilities, you need exercise.

That's the conclusion of a review published by the Association for Psychological Science. The authors agreed mentally stimulating tasks preserve brain power, but they saved the most praise for physical activity.

"What is most impressive to us," the authors wrote, "is the evidence demonstrating benefits of aerobic physical exercise on cognitive functioning in older adults."

John Ratey, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School and author of "Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain," says bursts of intense activity increase the benefits. When you exercise more intensely, your brain produces human growth hormone that cuts belly fat, adds muscle, and "pump(s) up" brain volume," Ratey said.

More on hormones

For some menopausal women, taking hormones is the only way to get relief from night sweats and hot flashes. They're warned about the increased risk of breast cancer associated with hormone use - a risk that becomes significant after women have been on hormones for five years.

But a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows an association between hormone use and ovarian cancer, and it kicks in almost immediately after women begin taking hormones. In the study, which examined health records of nearly 1 million Danish women, researchers found a 38 percent greater risk of ovarian cancer among women who were currently taking hormone therapy. The risks didn't appear to be affected by the dose, the duration, or whether they were taking estrogen alone or a combination of estrogen and progesterone.

Women who previously took hormones, however, can rest easy: "Their risk of ovarian cancer is similar to never users after two years cessation," writes study author Lina Morch, an epidemiologist at Copenhagen University.

The actual increased risk is very low - one additional ovarian cancer for every 8,300 women taking hormone therapy each year.

Brush up

A new study strengthens the link between bacteria in your mouth and your risk of heart attack.

Researchers at the University of Buffalo examined 386 people who had suffered nonfatal heart attacks and compared them to 840 healthy people. Those harboring the bacterium Tannerella forsythensis in their mouths were 53 percent more likely to have suffered a heart attack than control subjects. People with the bacterium Prevotella intermedia were 35 percent more likely to have had a heart attack.

Twice-daily brushing, cleaning between teeth and brushing the tongue help keep bacteria at bay.