Getty Images, stock

Pizza is not all bad, but fewer than 1 percent of American teens have ideal diets, plus they don't exercise enough, according to new research.

A stunning 80 percent of U.S. teenagers are eating diets that put them on a clear path to heart disease, researchers reported on Monday.

They’re eating too much fat, salt and sugar and not eating enough fruits and vegetables, the American Heart Association study found. Just 1 percent ate what the Heart Association considers a perfectly healthy diet.

Plus they don’t exercise enough, says Christina Shay of the the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, who led the study.

“The far less-than-optimal physical activity levels and dietary intake of current U.S. teenagers, is translating into obesity and overweight that, in turn, is likely influencing worsening rates of high blood pressure, high cholesterol and blood glucose at these young ages,” Shay said in a statement.

It’s no secret that Americans, and especially teens, eat poor diets. What concerns the Heart Association and doctors is that people may not realize how little slack there is for teenagers to get away with this. The seeds of heart disease are sown in childhood, these experts advise.

“Autopsy findings reported more than a century ago identified fatty streaks in the large arteries of children as young as 6 years of age,” Shay’s team wrote in their report, published in the journal Circulation.

More recent studies have found evidence of early heart disease in children.

The researchers surveyed 4,600 teenagers taking part in a large national study. The teens answered detailed questions about their eating and exercise habits and also underwent medical exams. The team looked for their blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels, as well as weight and diet and exercise.

Fewer than 80 percent scored well on diet. Just 1 percent met the ideal guidelines of 4.5 or more cups a day of fruits and vegetables, two servings of fish a week, 3 ounces a day of whole grains, less than 1,500 mg of salt a day and no more than 450 calories worth of sugar-sweetened drinks a week.

Only 45 percent scored acceptably on five or more of the factors. Only 44 percent of girls and 67 percent of boys reported idea physicial activity levels. Just two-thirds had ideal weights.

A third already had unhealth cholesterol levels or were on the way there, the report found. The good news came on blood pressure – 90 percent of the girls and 78 percent of the boys had healthy blood pressure.  And 66 to 70 percent had never tried smoking.

Heart disease is the No. 1 killer in the United States. The Heart Association says 80 percent of cases can be prevented with healthy habits.

Related:

• Group: 97 percent of restaurant meals for kids flunk nutrition
• Junk food may not be addictive, after all

Kathryn Doyle
Reuters
U.S. researchers found better levels of "good cholesterol" and other markers of heart health in the blood of middle-aged study subjects with a sunny outlook on life. 

At least some of the connection between optimism and blood lipids in the new study appeared to result from the optimists' tendency to have a healthy body weight and a "prudent" diet, according to the researchers.

"It is one additional piece of evidence suggesting that our psychological health and physical health are intertwined, and that viewing the world optimistically may have some tangible benefits for our health," said lead author Julia Boehm, a research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

Previous research by Boehm and her colleagues had shown a link between optimism and lowered heart attack risk. So they decided to look at whether there was an independent connection between optimistic or pessimistic outlooks and cholesterol, which is known to play a role in heart attack risk.

The group analyzed data from the Midlife in the United States study, which included phone interviews and lab tests for 990 people aged 40 to 70.

Based on the interviews, participants' levels of optimism were rated on a scale from 6 to 30 depending on their agreement or disagreement with statements like, "In uncertain times I usually expect the best."

According to results published in The American Journal of Cardiology, people with higher optimism scores also had more high-density lipoproteins (HDL), the desirable form of cholesterol that is believed to protect against heart disease. They also had lower levels of triglycerides, the fatty molecules involved in hardening of the arteries.

There was no connection between optimism and total cholesterol levels, or to low-density lipoproteins (LDL), the "bad cholesterol."

For every increase of 5 points on the optimism scale, however, HDL in the blood increased by 1 milligram per deciliter.

That same HDL increase would translate to a three percent reduction in the risk for heart disease, experts said. For comparison, regular exercise can decrease heart disease risk by six percent.

"Honestly I'm not surprised, this is what I expect," said Dr. Franz Messerli, a cardiologist at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York, who was not involved in the study.

It's still impossible to say whether optimism causes a change in cholesterol, or cholesterol influences outlook, or both are subject to some third variable, according to Messerli.

"In the case we have here, we really don't know what is the chicken and what is the egg," he told Reuters Health.

Boehm's group did try to account for other influences, and when they factored-in lifestyles - including diet and alcohol consumption, and body weight - the link between optimism and blood fats became weaker.

That suggests the optimists' tendency to have healthier lifestyles and weight may explain "in part" the differences in their blood lipids, the researchers conclude. 

"If you're a forward looking, positive individual, that attitude appears to have broad, far reaching consequences in areas of your life," said Dr. Hilary Tindle, who studies mind-body medicine at the University of Pittsburgh but wasn't involved with the new research.

Conversely, risk of heart attack and stroke goes up in depressed people, Messerli points out. "But nobody has shown the opposite, that all of a sudden if you go from a pessimist to an optimist your risk goes down."

Because the current study only found a link to blood lipids, but not to heart disease or cardiovascular "events," more research is needed, the experts agreed.

The time when attitude adjustments could be used in pursuit of physical health is still a long way off, Messerli said. 

A new study suggests that statin drugs, widely used to lower cholesterol, might lower people’s risk of cancer, too.

Many studies suggest that statins affect more than just cholesterol. For a while, it wasn’t clear whether the pills, which include Lipitor, Crestor and Zocor, raised or lowered the risk of cancer. But recent studies have pointed to the possibility that they may actually lower the risk of some cancers.

Gabriel Chodick and colleagues at Maccabi Healthcare Services, a big health maintenance organization in Israel, looked at the health records of everyone prescribed a statin between 1998 and 2006 – more than 200,000 people. They looked at their medical records from then until 2007.

People who took statins the most consistently and for the longest time had a considerably lower risk of cancer over the seven years studied, they reported. The risk was reduced by 31 percent for lymphomas, they report in Preventing Chronic Disease, a journal published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Our study demonstrated that persistent use of statins is associated with a lower overall cancer risk,” they wrote.  “In light of widespread statin consumption and increases in cancer incidence, the association between statins and cancer incidence may be relevant for cancer prevention.”

Over the time studied, 8,662 people were diagnosed with cancer. Those who took their prescribed statins 86 percent of the time or more were the least likely to be diagnosed with cancer over an average of five years.

It’s not the first study to show a lower cancer risk but it may be one of the largest. In December 2011 researchers found that men who died of prostate cancer were half as likely to have taken a statin than men who didn’t have prostate cancer. But to truly prove that statins reduced cancer risk, researchers would have to do what is known as a randomized study, randomly assigning people to take statins or not and then seeing which group developed more cancers over time.

Statins cut the risk of heart attack and stroke by reducing artery-clogging cholesterol. They also affect the lining of the arteries and lower inflammation. They’ve been shown to reduce the risk of death from influenza and pneumonia, as well, and may protect smokers.

Cholesterol-lowering drugs are the most commonly prescribed medication in the U.S. according to the  IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, with 255.4 million prescriptions written in 2010. Antidepressants came in No. 2, with 253.6 million prescriptions.

About a quarter of adults 45 and older take statins and some cardiologists have long joked about putting them in the U.S. water supply. But there are good reasons not to. They can cause muscle pain and, in about one in 10,000 patients, can cause a dangerous muscle-damaging condition called rhabdomyolysis. They can also affect the liver.

In February, the Food and Drug Administration warned that statins can cause memory loss and diabetes.

But on Thursday,a team at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston reported in the Lancet medical journal that the benefits of statin therapy exceed the small diabetes risk.

“Our data indicate that the risk of developing diabetes while on statin therapy was limited almost entirely to people who had at least one major risk factor for diabetes prior to initiating statin therapy,” said Dr. Paul Ridker, who led the study.

Related links:

Benefits of statins outweigh diabetes risks

More Americans have chronic conditions

FDA beefs up statin warnings

By Robert Bazell
Chief science and health correspondent
NBC News

Not long ago, statins were jokingly promoted by some doctors with a “put them in the drinking water” argument. Physicians and drug company experts suggested that the ubiquitous cholesterol-lowering drugs -- including Lipitor, Mevacor, Crestor and Zocor -- should be sold over the counter like cold medications, or offered to everyone above a certain age. The medications appeared so beneficial to health and seemed so free of side effects.

But on Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration issued a new health alert requiring the drugs carry labels warning about confusion and memory loss, elevated blood sugar leading to Type 2 diabetes, and muscle weakness.

“These warnings should put an end to the all the silliness about giving the drugs to everyone,” says Dr. Garret FitzGerald, chairman of pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Warnings for diabetes, memory loss added to statins

There is no question that statins -- the most profitable and among the most prescribed drugs ever -- have saved or prolonged millions of lives and will continue to do so. Most people at elevated risk for heart disease should be taking statins. The big issue now will center on determining whose risk is low to moderate and may not need medication.

The not-so-well-kept secret is that a daily dose of statin allows millions to eat whatever fatty food they like without worrying how it affects their cholesterol levels. That’s a tempting proposition. At the same time, drug companies find nothing more appealing than a pill that healthy people take daily for the rest of their lives. These two motivations combine to get million on statins who may not need them -- not much of a problem if there are no risks. But now we have evidence there is.

The FDA approved the first statin, Merck’s lovastatin, in 1987. Other companies produced their own versions over the last two decades as evidence of the drugs’ effectiveness continued to accumulate, adding to their popularity.  But, early on, plenty of side effects warnings popped up. 

Every time NBC News reported on statins I would receive many communications from viewers who had suffered the muscle-weakening condition, known as rhabdomyolysis, after taking the medication. When they stopped the drug, their muscles usually returned to normal. Doctors who frequently prescribe statins report that a certain percentage -- the best guess is about ½ to 1 percent -- suffer the muscle problems. That’s a rare occurrence as side effects go, but when many millions are taking the drugs, the numbers add up.

As for elevated blood sugar and memory problems, both conditions have been reported for years, but it is harder to guess how widespread the complications are. In fact, last month, a survey of 150,000 participants in the Women’s Health Initiative -- the government’s gigantic study that ended most hormone replacement -- found that older women taking statins were 48 percent more likely to develop diabetes. (The researchers tried to control for obesity and other risk factors.)

Because most people who take statins tend to be older, they’re already more likely to develop diabetes or memory problems. The only test to accurately measure the risk from statins would be a long, controlled trial of thousands of people at low risk for heart disease where half get the drug and half get a placebo. No drug company will pay for it.   

Astra Zeneca’s Crestor remains the only statin still under patent protection, and it would be foolish for that company to go looking for harmful side effects. The government’s resources for big expensive studies grow ever more scarce. We may never know the true danger, but at least now the drugs have labels telling patients and doctors to be aware of them

Why did the FDA chose to label the drugs now when the danger signs have been around for years? There is no official answer, but the officials in charge of the FDA now have shown far more willingness to be honest about public health risks than many of their recent predecessors.

As for whether you or a loved one should be taking a statin drug: This is certainly not an automatic decision, but definitely a subject for a discussion with your physician. Because of the FDA’s labeling actions that decision should now be far better informed.