Common allergies heighten heart risk too--study

If you aren’t immune to common allergies

, you probably run a higher risk of contracting heart troubles, too, findings of a new study warn.

According to the findings of the latest study, common allergies like wheezing, sneezing and watery eyes heighten the risk of heart disease

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However, these allergies, in no way, actually cause heart disease, researchers stressed.

Details of the study
To understand the links between common allergic symptoms and heart disease, researchers at the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, culled data of over 8,600 adults aged 20 and above, all of whom had participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey held between 1988 and 1994.

Overall, 18 percent of the study subjects reported symptoms of wheezing and 46 percent complained of frequently bouts of a stuffy nose or itchy and watery eyes, the combination medically known as rhinoconjunctivitis.

Six percent of participants suffered some sort of heart disease, researchers found.

While 13 percent of wheezing patients suffered heart disease, 5 percent of rhinoconjunctivitis patients and 4 percent of people without any allergic symptoms were diagnosed with heart troubles, researchers said.

Findings of the study
Researchers found that common allergies were frequently paired with heart ailments.

Wheezing patients were 2.6 times more likely to encounter heart troubles. The risk soared to 40 percent for patients with rhinoconjunctivitis, compared to people without any allergic symptoms.

The tie-ups were mainly common in women younger than age of 50, researchers found.

The findings of the current study second the findings of prior studies which establish “an association of chronic inflammatory conditions such as asthma and other allergic conditions with coronary disease in women but not in men."

"Young women may have a stronger inflammatory response due to allergic conditions than men, perhaps due to estrogens," explained Viola Vaccarino, of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, who was also not involved in the current study.

Reasons for the link-up
Study’s principal investigator, Dr. Jongoh Kim of Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, suggests that the sporadic inflammation caused by allergic reactions may also cause hardening of the arterial walls, leading to heart disease.

Secondly, people might be genetically predisposed to the development of both allergies and heart disease, Kim added.

Although the researchers stress that the findings do not establish that allergies actually cause heart disease, more research is required to confirm if there exists a cause and effect relationship.

Even if the cause and effect relationship exists, researchers aren’t sure whether treating allergic disease can reduce the risk.

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Know your touch screens

 Know your touch screens

Touch isn't multitouch. Here's your field guide to gadget touch screens.

 

Ever since the Apple iPhone arrived more than three years ago, gadget makers of all kinds got busy replacing real buttons with virtual ones on touch screens.

A gazillion gadgets conspicuously touting touch have emerged in recent months in an attempt to benefit from warm-and-fuzzy feelings consumers have developed for Apple multitouch devices.

Marketers are preying on consumer naiveté. By emphasizing touch screens, they suggest that their products are part of the new generation of devices represented by Apple's iPhone and iPad. But touch alone isn't what the new generation is all about. Here's what you need to know.

What's so great about MPG?

The ability to touch a screen and have a system respond is not what's great about Apple iOS devices like the iPhone and the iPad. What's great about iOS gadgets is that they have multitouch, physics and gestures (MPG) together as an integrated user interface experience.

This combination of features is what Steve Jobs called "magical" (to the derision of critics). And I certainly wouldn't use that word. But what's happening is something of an illusion. But it's not an optical illusion.

By combining multitouch with physics and gestures, MPG devices create the illusion that the virtual stuff on screen is physical. Your mind accepts the physicality of the nonphysical on-screen objects, which gives you a feeling of power and control that's a little thrilling and maybe even a little addictive. MPG taps into your brain's hardwiring for how the world should work -- something mouse-based PCs don't do, and something old-fashioned kiosk-style touch screens don't do.

What you need to know is that many of the new gadgets advertised as "touch-screen" devices offer nothing more than old, kiosk-style poke-at-the-onscreen-button interfaces.

The difference between a real MPG touch-screen interface and an old school touch screen is like the difference between riding the Nitro roller coaster at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, N.J., and riding the tram to get from the parking lot to the entrance to the park. It's like the difference between surfing and watching a video of somebody else surfing. It's like the difference between flying an airplane and playing Microsoft Flight.

One is just a flat, distant and abstract experience, and the other satisfies your deepest intuition about how the physical world should work.

That's why it's absurd that gadget makers selling ordinary touch screens push basic touch interfaces as somehow in the same class as the interfaces of MPG devices. They're opposites. Touch screens represent the past, while MPG devices represent the future.

Here are the four general categories of touch screen:

1. Touch without multitouch, physics or gestures

Most touch-capable gadgets offer only the ability to push on-screen buttons. This capability has been around for many years on kiosks, ATMs and gadgets of every description. 

Recent examples of kiosk-style touch screen devices include the Sony Reader Pocket Edition, Sony Reader Touch Edition and Sony Reader Daily Edition. 

2. Gestures without physics

HP showed off a demo of what was supposed to be an upcoming product. Called the HP Slate, the device supported gestures and probably multitouch input, but no physics. The demo shows something like Apple's Cover Flow, but covers didn't flow. The swipe gesture advanced to the next album, but not with momentum representing the speed of the swipe, only a kind of prerecorded movement.

Wisely, HP pulled the Slate and will probably ship Palm-based WebOS tablets with full MPG.

3. Physics and gestures without multitouch

Sony is the leader in this category of touch screen. It's probably saving money on hardware and speeding up the software by abandoning multitouch. The newest devices in this category include X Series Walkman MP3 Players and Sony's Bloggie Touch HD pocket video camera.

4. Multitouch, physics and gestures

The newest product with full multitouch physics and gestures is the new Apple iPod Nano, which is Apple's first MPG device that doesn't run the iOS operating system. And, of course, the Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch are also MPG devices.

But Apple isn't the only company offering full MPG devices. Not even close.

The first MPG device on the market (that I'm aware of) was the Microsoft Surface table.

Several Android phones have full MPG interfaces, including the Samsung Epic 4G and the Motorola Droid 2.

The RIM BlackBerry Torch is a full MPG device. So is the Palm Pre.

There are many others.

Frustratingly, product reviewers tend to be as ignorant about touch screen variations as the public. They know they like one screen much better than another, but most of them haven't figured out why. The MPG revolution is here, and it's time that professional product reviewers get more sophisticated about the vast differences in touch-screen types and experiences.

The reason all this is important is that touch without physics and gestures is old, dull and not that interesting, while MPG interfaces are the future of just about everything.

Look for the full MPG experience when buying new gadgets. And don't be taken in by "touch" marketing that's simply packaging old technology as part of the new generation of MPG devices.

Mike Elgan writes about technology and global tech culture. Contact Mike at mike.elgan@elgan.com, follow him on Twitter at @mike_elgan, or read his blog, The Raw Feed.

Read more about Mobile and Wireless in Computerworld's Mobile and Wireless Topic Center.

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Seaweed extract can kill pimples

Seaweed extract can kill pimples

An active ingredient from a brown seaweed, off the coast of Brittany, may help kill pimples and oily skin. Hoisted up from the seabed and converted into an extract for acne treatment, it goes on sale across Britain. Human trials have shown that the seaweed extract cream had a positive impact, said the manufacturer, reports the Daily Mail. It said in a trial of 60 males aged 12 to 24 with mild acne, products containing seaweed extract were significantly more effective than a dummy face wash, scrub or gel. Enzo Berardesca, a director at the Instituto Dermatolgico San Gallicano in Italy who supervised the trial, described the results as 'extremely good'. 'Patients with mild to moderate acne, such as blackheads, whiteheads and skin redness, found their symptoms markedly reduced,' he added. Most importantly, there were no side effects.

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