Your Health: Sep. 13, 1999

GOOD NEWS

PROTEIN POWER Researchers have long thought that what you eat may help you prevent breast cancer. Now they're finding that diet may help you survive after the disease has been diagnosed. Data on 120,000 nurses suggest that protein from poultry and dairy foods--but not from red meat--may reduce by one-third the risk of dying of cancer. Cutting down on fat, however, doesn't seem to make a bit of difference.

DEJA VU DRUG A largely abandoned 30-year-old drug may soon be back in pharmacies. A major study shows that Aldactone, used together with newer drugs like ACE inhibitors, can cut death rates from severe congestive heart failure by a third, possibly saving tens of thousands of lives a year. And it's easy on the wallet, costing just pennies a day.

BAD NEWS

HELMETS ON! Talk about headaches. Researchers have yet to prove it in humans, but a blow to the head of a pig may result in an injury that triggers brain lesions in the porcine brain that are remarkably similar to what's seen in human Alzheimer's patients. Though the findings are preliminary, they send a clear message: Watch out for speeding balls, swinging racquets and flying hockey pucks--and always wear a helmet when you ride a bike.

LESS IS MORE Aspirin, the oldest of wonder drugs, has been recommended for years as a way of preventing a recurrence of stroke. But what about aspirin for folks who've never had a stroke? It's O.K. to take it within limits: up to one tablet a day seems enough to protect against common thrombolytic stroke, but two tablets a day doubles the risk of hemorrhagic stroke, an event far more likely to be fatal.

--By Janice M. Horowitz

Sources--Good News: Cancer (9/1/99), New England Journal of Medicine (9/2/99); Bad News: Stroke (9/99), Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology (9/99)