Post-menopausal women have significantly greater volumes of fat around their hearts - a risk factor for heart disease - than their pre-menopausal counterparts, new research shows.

"Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in women, and it increases after age 50 - the average age when a woman is going through menopause," said lead author Samar El Khoudary, assistant professor at University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health in the US.

"By showing that menopause appears to be associated with a shift in fat deposits that leads to more fat around the heart, we have uncovered a new potential contributor to increased risk of cardiovascular disease in women," El Khoudary said.

The finding, published online in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, could guide potentially life-saving interventions.

Weight gain in women during and after menopause has long been attributed to ageing, rather than menopause itself.

In the new research, El Khoudary and her team evaluated clinical data, including blood samples and heart CT scans, on 456 women in the US.

The women averaged about 51 years of age and were not on hormone replacement therapy.

As concentrations of the sex hormone estradiol - the most potent estrogen - declined during menopause, greater volumes of cardiovascular fat were found.

The finding held even after the team took into account the effects of age, race, obesity, physical activity, smoking, alcohol consumption, medication use and chronic diseases.

"Developing prevention strategies to reduce cardiovascular fat in women at midlife may reduce their heart disease risk, especially knowing that the menopausal transition puts women at risk for excess fat around their hearts," El Khoudary said.

Chocolate milk has it all whether it comes to proteins, carbs, sugar or the taste and is also trending with athletes, but a big question arises that is this dairy beverage perfect for everyone in replenishing the energy?

According to Slate, during high intensity workouts muscle proteins break down and glycogen levels deplete by 60-75 percent, however for muscle growth after workout, one need to replenish glycogen and protein that can easily be gained from chocolate milk.

Even trainers suggest their students to take 4 grams of carbohydrates to 1 gram of protein within 30 minutes after workout.

However, workout intensity and duration of workouts determines how much energy is used like high intensity workout such as running stairs, boxing, competitive soccer, where the max heart rate is 80-85 percent burn more calories, whereas low intensity workout such as Pilates, walking, hiking that makes the heart rate reaches to 60-65 percent and burns fewer calories.

Though a less intense workout requires less replenishing and less chocolate milk and instead of this one should go for Blueberries (rich in anti-oxidants and accelerates muscle recovery time), Organe juice (high in potassium and carbs and helps in restoring body fuel levels), Coconut Water (high in potassium and low sodium which is better for low intensity workout) and Water (key to post-workout recovery).

Middle aged men should exercise to reverse age related bone loss, cut risk of decrease osteoporosis, finds a new study.

University of Missouri researchers have found that certain types of weight-lifting and jumping exercises, when completed for at least six months, improve bone density in active, healthy, middle-aged men with low bone mass. These exercises may help prevent osteoporosis by facilitating bone growth.

Associate professor Pam Hinton said that their study was the first to show that exercise-based interventions work to increase bone density in middle-aged men with low bone mass who are otherwise healthy.Hinton said the study results did not indicate that all kinds of weight lifting will help improve bone mass; rather, targeted exercises made the training programs effective.

Throughout their training programs, participants rated pain and fatigue after completing their exercises. The participants reported minimal pain and fatigue, and these ratings decreased over the year. Hinton said individuals who want to use similar training programs to improve bone density should consider their current activity levels and exercise preferences as well as time and equipment constraints.

The study is published in Bone.

Post-menopausal women with kidney or bladder stones are not prone to osteoporosis, but they do have about a 15 percent increased risk of another painful stone, shows research.

Studying the data of approximately 150,000 post-menopausal women, the study found that despite the two conditions being clearly associated in men, the same did not hold true for women.

"We found that, unlike what has been reported in men, a woman having a kidney stone is not a risk factor for osteoporosis. However, having one urinary tract stone does put women at increased risk for a second stone," said Laura D. Carbone, chief of rheumatology section at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University.

Carbone said in the study that appeared in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. However, women with a stone likely should work with their physician to reduce their increased risk of a subsequent stone.

Having a stone also was known to put people at risk for subsequent stones, but the new study helps clarify the risk. The incidence of urinary tract stones is on the rise generally, particularly in women, with a 70 percent increase in the last 15 years.

One link between the seemingly disparate conditions of stones and weak bones is an excess of calcium in the urine, which tends to be more common in men.

When sodium levels are high, from eating too much processed or fast food, more calcium is eliminated in the urine. Over activity of the parathyroid glands, which regulate levels of calcium in the blood, is associated with both urinary tract stones and fractures of the vertebra in the spine.

Observing higher prevalence of certain physical illnesses among people suffering from panic disorder, US researchers has proposed the existence of a spectrum syndrome comprising a core anxiety disorder and four related domains.

The study published in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences points to a link between mental and physical health.

When mental and physical illnesses co-occur, patients' accounts of physical illness are sometimes arbitrarily discredited or dismissed by physicians. The naming of the new disorder may help many patients receive proper diagnosis.

"Patients who have certain somatic disorders - illnesses for which there is no detectable medical cause and which physicians may consider to be imagined by the patient - may instead have a genetic propensity to develop a series of real, related illnesses," said one of the researchers Jeremy Coplan, professor of psychiatry at SUNY Downstate Medical Centre in the US.

"Panic disorder itself may be a predictor for a number of physical conditions previously considered unrelated to mental conditions, and for which there may be no or few biological markers," Coplan said.

The researchers found correlation between panic disorder, bipolar disorder, and physical illness, with significantly higher prevalence of certain physical illnesses among patients with panic disorder when compared to the general population.

To describe the new spectrum disorder, the researchers have coined the term ALPIM, where "A" stands for anxiety disorder (mostly panic disorder); "L" for ligamentous laxity (joint hypermobility syndrome, scoliosis, double-jointedness, mitral valve prolapse, easy bruising); "Pa for pain (fibromyalgia, migraine and chronic daily headache, irritable bowel syndrome, prostatitis/cystitis); "I" for immune disorders (hypothyroidism, asthma, nasal allergies, chronic fatigue syndrome); and "M" for mood disorders.

Two thirds of patients in the study with mood disorder had diagnosable bipolar disorder and most of those patients had lost response to antidepressants.

"Our argument is that delineations in medicine can be arbitrary and that some disorders that are viewed as multiple disparate and independent conditions may best be viewed as a single spectrum disorder with a common genetic etiology."