THURSDAY, May 15 (HealthDay News) -- Eating less polyunsaturated fat, the kind often found in baked and fried goods, helps prevent prostate cancer in mice, according to researchers.

The finding by University of California, Los Angeles, scientists is believed to be the first of its kind in a mouse model that closely mimics human cancer.

The fat used in the study, published in the April 15 issue of the Cancer Research, came mostly from corn oil, which is made up primarily of omega-6 fatty acids -- the polyunsaturated fat commonly found in Western diets.

Mice that ate a low-fat diet, in which just 12 percent of their calories come from fat, had a 27 percent reduced incidence of prostate cancer compared to mice who ate a more traditional Western-type diet, in which 40 percent of the calories came from fat.

Research also found that precancerous prostate cells, or those that would soon become cancer, grew much more slowly in the mice eating the low-fat diet.

"A low-fat, high-fiber diet combined with weight loss and exercise is well known to be healthy in terms of heart disease and is known to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes, so that would be a healthy choice to make," study senior author William Aronson, a Jonsson Cancer Center researcher, said in a prepared statement. "Whether or not it will prevent prostate cancer in humans remains to be seen."

Previous studies done in Aronson's lab showed that a low-fat diet slowed the growth of aggressive human prostate cancers in mice and helped them live longer.

Aronson found that mice on the low-fat diet had higher levels of a protein in their blood that binds to insulin during the time when the precancerous prostate lesions usually develop. Aronson believes the low-fat diet caused the increase in the binding protein, and the protein helped prevent prostate cancer from thriving.

A short-term study in men assigned either a diet high in polyunsaturated fat or a low-fat diet with fish oil supplements will now take place to further determine whether diets affect malignant and benign human prostate tissue, Aronson said.

"We're looking at specific markers and growth factors in human tissue known to be important for development and progression of prostate cancer," he said. "It's this work we hope will lead to longer term prevention strategies incorporating dietary changes."

More information

The National Cancer Institute has more about prostate cancer.

THURSDAY, May 15 (HealthDay News) -- Weight-loss supplements widely available for purchase online often include ingredients that are potentially hazardous to your heart, and a new study shows the labels often don't include this warning.

One of the hazardous ingredients that was found in the products has been banned on the U.S. market since 2004, according to study author Dr. Alireza Nazeri, an internist and cardiology research fellow at the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, in Houston.

The study was expected to be presented Thursday at the Heart Rhythm Society's annual meeting, in San Francisco.

Nazeri and his colleagues reviewed the ingredients of 12 different brands of weight-loss supplements. They found the brands by entering the common search terms "diet pills" and "weight-loss supplements" into popular Internet search engines, including Google, MSN and Yahoo.

"We were trying to find out if the weight-loss supplements have any ingredients with life-threatening cardiac side effects," Nazeri said.

Next, they made a list of the ingredients on each label. In all, there were 60 different ingredients, for an average of 7.25 ingredients per bottle. Most were herbal extracts, while others were minerals, vitamins and other substances.

Next, the researchers scoured medical databases, including Medline, Pubmed and Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database, to find out if there was any significant association between the ingredients and cardiac problems.

They identified 11 ingredients with at least one report of life-threatening cardiac side effects. Eight of the 12 brands contained a potentially hazardous ingredient.

To their surprise, the researchers found one brand included ma huang, also known as Chinese ephedra, even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned it in 2004.

The other ingredients that may be potentially dangerous to the heart included: bitter orange, Camellia sinensis, green tea, buckwheat, guarana, Korean ginseng, licorice root, Synephrine HCl, caffeine anhydrous and citrus aurantium.

"We are not releasing any names of products," said Nazeri. "That was part of our protocol."

The products chosen may be just the tip of the iceberg, and releasing the names may give people the idea the problem is confined to just those brands, said study senior author Dr. Mehdi Razavi, director of the institute's clinical arrhythmia research lab and a clinical associate professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, in Houston.

The study results make sense to Elisa Odabashian, director of the West Coast office of Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports. "It doesn't surprise me at all," she said.

Especially dangerous, she said, is that people often combine these products with coffee or other caffeine-containing drinks, which affect the heart even more.

Odabashian worked on efforts to get ephedra-containing products banned in California. Her advice for consumers thinking of buying weight-loss products over the Internet? "I think it's a crapshoot. I don't think you should be doing it."

More information

To learn more about how to evaluate a weight-loss product, visit American Dietetic Association  .

THURSDAY, April 10 (HealthDay News) -- A specialized treadmill can help stroke patients learn to walk correctly again, says a Baylor Health Care System study.

More than 700,000 Americans suffer a stroke each year, and many never regain the ability to walk like they did before their stroke. They often develop an abnormal gait pattern, which can be difficult and sometimes impossible to correct.

"Gait impairment is common after stroke with many survivors living with a walking-related disability, despite extensive rehabilitation," Karen McCain, lead investigator of the study at the Baylor Institute for Rehabilitation, said in a prepared statement. "Walking incorrectly not only creates a stigma for these patients, but it also makes them more susceptible to injury and directly affects their quality of life."

This study included seven stroke patients who did what's called locomotor treadmill training with partial body-weight support, which uses a treadmill outfitted with a harness. The patient is secured to the harness to support a portion of their body weight while they walk on the treadmill.

This approach helps patients re-learn how to walk in a safe and controlled way. As the patient gets stronger, more body weight is added, until they can walk on their own without any assistance. After undergoing this specialized treadmill training, all seven patients in the study were able to walk with a basically normal gait, without the use of cane.

"The key to the success of our method is early intervention. All of the patients started on the treadmill as soon as possible during the acute period of recovery after their stroke. We wanted to keep these abnormal gait patterns from developing in the first place," McCain said.

The study was published in the April issue of the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

Currently, there's no consensus about the best method of developing a normal gait pattern in stroke patients. In most cases, rehabilitation involves the use of walkers and other assistive devices.

"Our ultimate goal for this study is to one day change the clinical practice in physical therapy," McCain said.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has more about post-stroke rehabilitation.

(HealthDay News) - Exercise typically will lower blood sugar, since insulin is more effective during exercise. But in people with diabetes, too much of a reduction in blood sugar can be dangerous.

The University of Michigan Health System offers these suggestions for diabetics to maintain healthy blood sugar levels when exercising:

• Check your blood sugar before and after exercise -- and during if you can -- and record your results.
• If you are going to exercise strenuously, make sure you eat a meal first.
• Keep snacks -- especially some with sugar -- on hand when you exercise.
• Talk to your doctor about possibly adjusting your insulin dose for exercise.
• Don't inject insulin into a part of the body that will be strenuously used during exercise, as it will absorb more quickly. For example, if you will run, inject your abdomen instead of your leg.