For healthy life and aging, healthy lifestyles are as important as chronic diseases. Smoking, drinking and overwork have a similar impact on one's life as diabetes, and sedentary lifestyle and stress are more serious than hypertension and obesity. Contrary to the public knowledge, the types of food intake have a relatively small impact, and functional foods are effective only with a given optimal nutrition. Traditionally Koreans think certain types of foods (so-called 'health foods') have great effects on their health, and this idea resulted in confusion of terms health foods with functional foods. The effectiveness of functional foods should be evaluated based on human experiments. The in vitro and animal studies provide only preliminary evidence. Functional foods are between optimum nutrition and drug therapy in its effectiveness. Physicians should have appropriate knowledge on nutrition and functional foods and recommend them to their patients as they do for drug therapy.
Aging ; Animals ; Chronic Disease ; Drinking ; Drug Therapy ; Eating ; Functional Food* ; Food, Organic ; Health Promotion ; Humans ; Hypertension ; Life Style ; Obesity ; Sedentary Lifestyle ; Smoke ; Smoking

OBJECTIVE: Arterial compliance (AC) reflects the buffering function of the vessel. Low AC caused by arterial stiffness increases pulse pressure amplitude. Therefore, Low AC must be correlated with high cardiovascular mobidity and mortality in HD patients. Dialysate calcium concentration is potentially a main determinant of serum ionized calcium level and the vasoconstriction is associated with high calcium concentration. Therefore, We conducted a study for evaluation of the interdialytic effects of treatment with a low dialysate calcium (LdCa) concentration and high dialysate calcium (HdCa) concentration on the changes of AC, BP, biochemical parameters. METHODS: Eight HD patient (mean age 45.5, sex ratio 1 : 1) were studied. The mean HD period was 3 years. Arterial Compliance, stroke Volume, SBP, DBP, PP, MAP, Ionized Ca, T-CO2, P and CaxP product were compared after treatment with a LdCa and HdCa concentration for each 10 sessions. RESULTS: AC were 0.143+/-0.076 mm2/kPa in baseline, 0.166+/-0.097 mm2/kPa in LdCa (1.25 mmol/L) dialysate, 0.142+/-0.082 mm2/kPa in HdCa (1.75 mmol/L) dialysate. SBP, DBP, MAP and PP were 157.75+/-15.97, 94.25+/-9.48, 114.12+/-10.56, 63.50+/-10.87 mmHg in baseline and 135.25+/-13.00, 78.75+/-11.24, 98.37+/-15.14, 56.50+/-5.95 mmHg in LdCa dialysate and 160.50+/-15.36, 94.05+/-10.34, 115.75+/-9.64, 62.00+/-15.71 mmHg in HdCa dialysate. Ionized Ca were 4.66+/-0.40 mg/dL in baseline, 4.45+/-0.28 mg/dL in LdCa dialysate and 4.65+/-0.43 mg/dL in HdCa dialysate. However, there were no changes of other biochemical parameters. CONCLUSION: Treatment with LdCa dialysis, by minimizing the risk for LdCa-induced hypocalcemia, may have a beneficial role in the prevention of the ongoing reduction of arterial compliance in HD patients and thus improve cardiovascular prognosis.
Blood Pressure ; Calcium* ; Compliance ; Dialysis ; Humans ; Hypocalcemia ; Mortality ; Prognosis ; Renal Dialysis* ; Sex Ratio ; Stroke Volume ; Vascular Stiffness ; Vasoconstriction

Purpose: Advances in chemotherapeutic and targeted agents have increased pathologic complete response (pCR) rates after neoadjuvant systemic therapy (NST). Vacuum-assisted biopsy (VAB) has been suggested to accurately evaluate pCR. This study aims to confirm the non-inferiority of the 5-year disease-free survival of patients who omitted breast surgery when predicted to have a pCR based on breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and VAB after NST, compared with patients with a pCR who had undergone breast surgery in previous studies. Methods The Omission of breast surgery for PredicTed pCR patients wIth MRI and vacuumassisted bIopsy in breaST cancer after neoadjuvant systemic therapy (OPTIMIST) trial is a prospective, multicenter, single-arm, non-inferiority study enrolling in 17 tertiary care hospitals in the Republic of Korea. Eligible patients must have a clip marker placed in the tumor and meet the MRI criteria suggesting complete clinical response (post-NST MRI size ≤ 1 cm and lesion-to-background signal enhancement ratio ≤ 1.6) after NST. Patients will undergo VAB, and breast surgery will be omitted for those with no residual tumor. Axillary surgery can also be omitted if the patient was clinically node-negative before and after NST and met the stringent criteria of MRI size ≤ 0.5 cm. Survival and efficacy outcomes are evaluated over five years.Discussion: This study seeks to establish evidence for the safe omission of breast surgery in exceptional responders to NST while minimizing patient burden. The trial will address concerns about potential undertreatment due to false-negative results and recurrence as well as improved patient-reported quality of life issues from the omission of surgery. Successful completion of this trial may reshape clinical practice for certain breast cancer subtypes and lead to a safe and less invasive approach for selected patients.