The painkillers that contain too much salt: Soluble versions of paracetamol, aspirin and ibuprofen put patients at 22% more risk of strokes

• Millions of Britons could be at risk of early death due to painkillers
• Soluble forms found to have 50 per cent more salt than the safe daily limit
• Researchers behind the study now urging people to avoid the medication

BySophie Borland
PUBLISHED: 23:50 GMT, 26 November 2013 | UPDATED: 23:56 GMT, 26 November 2013

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Painkillers taken by millions of Britons may be causing heart attacks, strokes and early death because they contain so much salt, a major study shows.

Patients who regularly take soluble forms of aspirin, paracetamol, ibuprofen and other common drugs are 22 per cent more at risk of stroke and seven times more prone to high blood pressure, the researchers found.

They were also found to be 28 per cent more likely to die early.
Recommended doses of some of the painkillers were found to contain 50 per cent more salt than the safe daily limits for adults.

Soluble painkillers taken by million of Britons could be causing early death due to the amount of salt they contain, research shows

The researchers behind the study, carried out by University College London and the University of Dundee, are now warning patients to avoid regularly taking soluble painkillers.

And they are urging drugs firms to print labels similar to those on food packaging on the tablets – most of which are sold over the counter – warning patients about high levels of salt.

Millions of adults, particularly the elderly, rely on painkillers for long-term conditions such as arthritis, while supplements such as calcium are commonly taken by pregnant women and those going through the menopause.

Many prefer taking the soluble varieties as they are easier to swallow and are thought to get to work more quickly as they have already been broken down. But the medicines contain very high levels of salt as it helps them dissolve in water and produce a fizzing effect.

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During the study, academics monitored patients who had been prescribed soluble forms of paracetamol, aspirin and ibuprofen as well as supplements such as vitamin D, zinc and calcium for an average of seven years.

They trawled 1.29million patient records obtained from GP surgeries across the UK.

Those taking the soluble pills for any length of time were 16 per cent more likely to suffer a heart attack, stroke or die early.

They also found that patients were 22 per cent more likely to suffer a stroke, 28 per cent more likely to die from any cause and seven times more likely to suffer high blood pressure.

On average, patients succumbed to these problems only four years after first being prescribed the drugs.

Certain painkillers were found to contain 50 per cent more salt than the safe daily limit

 

Government guidelines state that adults should eat no more than six grams of salt a day. Patients taking eight soluble paracetamol pills a day – the full daily dose – exceed this amount by 50 per cent.

The average adult eats about eight grams of salt a day, but experts calculate that if we all reduced that by three grams there would be 30,000 fewer heart attacks and strokes a year.

By comparison a packet of ready salted crisps contains half a gram of salt, while a packet of salt and vinegar has one gram. A bowl of cornflakes – the saltiest cereal – contains around 0.4 grams, while two slices of bread have about 0.8 grams.


The worst culprits are ready meals, which can contain seven grams per portion, and some ready-made sandwiches, which contain between three and four grams.
Professor Thomas Macdonald, of the University of Dundee, said: ‘We were surprised at how much salt there was in some tablets.




 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Researchers behind the study are now urging people not to take soluble painkillers on a regular basis (library image)

‘All the foods we buy we can find out in intricate detail how much sodium (salt) there is but we can’t do that with medicines.’

He added: ‘It’s an avoidable risk and it’s a cardiovascular risk which is the commonest cause of death in Britain. If you take these drugs every day it would be better for your health to take the normal versions, not the soluble ones.’

The researchers only looked at patients prescribed the pills by their GP but they said millions of adults who buy them over the counter were also at risk.

Dr Jacob George, also from the University of Dundee, said: ‘These drugs are also available over the counter, they can be picked up in the supermarket.

‘We have no control over how many millions of people are buying these drugs.
Heart disease, which includes heart attacks and strokes, is by far the biggest killer in Britain. It claims 180,000 lives a year.

Experts pointed out that patients taking the pills occasionally were probably not damaging their health.

Dr Mike Knapton, Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation, said: ‘We know that too much salt is linked to a higher risk of heart attack and stroke.

‘It’s important to remember that this research applies to people who are taking these medicines every day – this does not mean that occasional use could damage your heart health.

‘To give us an idea of whether these risks translate for medicines bought over the counter, we would need to see further research focusing on non-prescription medication.’

‘This is an important reminder for doctors and patients to carefully consider the risks and benefits of soluble or effervescent (fizzing) medicines at the time of prescription.’

Dr Li Wei, an expert in statistics who specialises in drugs safety at University College London’s School of Pharmacy, was also highly involved in the study.



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How sushi might not be so good for you after all: Mercury in fish could increase the risk of heart disease

• The mercury in fish can cause problems with nervous system development
• It can also counteract the positive effects of omega-3 fatty acids
• Omega-3 fatty acids reduce cholesterol levels and lower the risk of some cancers, heart disease, blood pressure, stroke and premature birth
• The highest levels of mercury are in tuna, shark, marlin and swordfish
• There are lower levels in salmon, crab, eel and kelp

ByEmma Innes
PUBLISHED: 16:19 GMT, 25 November 2013 | UPDATED: 16:28 GMT, 25 November 2013

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Most people believe sushi is a nutritious, low calorie meal, but new research suggests it could actually be bad for you.
A study has revealed that people who regularly eat sushi could be at an increased risk of heart disease.
The researchers, from Rutgers University, near New York, found that eating a lot of sushi can put people in danger of exposure to dangerous levels of mercury.

A study has revealed that people who regularly eat sushi could be at an increased risk of heart disease

They say the fish contains methylmercury which can cause heart disease, problems with brain and nervous system development and decreased cognitive performance.
The researchers, who published their findings in the Journal of Risk Research, also noted that methylmercury can counteract the positive effects of omega-3 fatty acids.

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Omega-3 fatty acids reduce cholesterol levels and lower the risk of some cancers, heart disease, blood pressure, stroke and premature birth.

The scientists interviewed more than 1,200 people about their consumption of sushi and other fish products.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fish contains methylmercury which can cause heart disease, problems with brain and nervous system development and decreased cognitive performance

They also measured the mercury levels in sushi samples from across the U.S.
They found that 92 per cent of people ate an average of five fish meals per month.
The top 10 per cent of fish eaters exceeded the World Health Organisation’s recommended safe level of methylmercury consumption.

Large tuna, such as the Atlantic Bluefin, were found to contain the highest levels of mercury.

Eel, crab, salmon and kelp all have lower levels of methylmercury.
Methylmercury can pass from a pregnant woman to her unborn child meaning the NHS recommends that mothers-to-be limit their intake of fish that are high in mercury.
The NHS recommends that pregnant woman do not eat any shark, marlin or swordfish.

It also says that they should limit the amount of tuna they have to two steaks, or four medium-sized cans, a week.
The reason for this is that tuna contains high levels of mercury which can damage a baby's developing nervous system.



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Did Hitler flee bunker with Eva to Argentina, have two daughters and live to 73? The bizarre theory that's landed two British authors in a bitter war

By Guy Walters
PUBLISHED:00:46 GMT, 28 October 2013| UPDATED:15:33 GMT, 28 October 2013

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Though it was approaching midnight in Berlin, the streets were far from dark. On every street, fires raged out of control as the intense and savage Russian artillery bombardment crept closer to the centre of the Third Reich.


By that late hour on the night of April 27, 1945, there was not one person in Germany who thought that the Nazis could still win.


Deep in his bunker, even the man who had brought such destruction to his country - indeed, to the world - knew that the war was over. As Adolf Hitler gazed at a portrait of his hero, Frederick the Great, King of Prussia and a brilliant military mind, he was certain there would be no eleventh-hour reversal of fortune.
 
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According to Grey Wolf: The Escape Of Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun (right) accompanied the Adolf Hitler when he escaped through a secret tunnel from his bunker in Berlin

 

The so-called ‘miracle weapons’ had never arrived, and his once mighty armies existed more in memory than in flesh and steel.


The Führer had three options.


He could allow himself to be captured by the Russians; but the humiliation was unthinkable. He could kill himself, but who could possibly replace him? A Fourth Reich would surely rise, and he would be needed to lead it. That left one option: escape.


Everything had been prepared to the last detail by the shady head of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller, right down to the clothes worn by the body doubles that would pass for the corpses of Hitler and his intended bride, Eva Braun.


As his office clock struck midnight, Hitler turned to his orderly and nodded. Twenty minutes later, three figures emerged from a secret tunnel connecting the bunker to the surface.

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Had any German citizen spotted them, he or she would have been astonished to see the Führer scuttling away like the cowards he so despised. Accompanying him were Eva Braun and her brother-in-law, Hermann Fegelein.


Dodging fires and explosions, the small party made its way to the vast Hohenzollerndamm that ran through the centre of Berlin. 
Once a fashionable boulevard, it was now a makeshift runway, and on it sat a Junkers-52 transport aircraft, its engines being gunned by Captain Peter Baumgart, an experienced Luftwaffe pilot.


Hitler and his companions climbed aboard the aircraft, and before they could even sit down, Baumgart pushed the throttle forward. Within a minute, the plane soared into the air, heading north.

The Führer refused to look out of the window, unwilling to face the hell he had left behind. He was heading to a new life — and a new world. That life, as it would be for so many other Nazis, would be in Argentina.

There are some who regard Hitler's escape story as the absolute truth

 

Hitler’s route there was tortuous, but necessarily so for the most wanted man in the world. After landing in Denmark, he flew to Spain, where General Franco supplied him with an aircraft to take him to the Canary Islands.


From there, the Führer took a submarine to the Argentine coast, where he disembarked near the small port of Necochea, some 300 miles south of Buenos Aires.


Hitler would never again set foot outside Argentina. And though his dreams of a new Reich would never be fulfilled, he did at least find some form of domestic happiness by marrying Eva Braun, with whom he had two daughters.


Finally, after 17 years in hiding, one of the most evil men in history died on February 13, 1962, aged 73. It was to his bitter disappointment that his old foe, Winston Churchill, had outlived him.


To most of us, such a story sounds like utter fantasy. But there are some who regard it as the absolute truth.

The notion that Hitler escaped from his Berlin bunker has held conspiracy theorists in thrall since the war ended. It has now reared its improbable head once more.


This weekend, it emerged that the story of Hitler’s supposed escape to Argentina has become the subject of a bitter plagiarism row.

In their book, Grey Wolf: The Escape Of Adolf Hitler, British authors Gerrard Williams and Simon Dunstan argued that the Führer escaped exactly in the manner described above, and did indeed see out his days in South America.


However, an Argentine journalist, Abel Basti, who comes from the Patagonian town of Bariloche, where so many Nazis ‘retired’, claims that Williams and Dunstan appropriated his research, and he is seeking compensation.

Williams and Dunstan strenuously deny Basti’s accusation.
‘Basti did in no way invent the idea of Hitler being alive in Argentina,’ says Williams. ‘Books on the subject existed as far back as 1953 and 1987. I have never plagiarised anyone’s work.’


To outsiders, the row looks like three bald men fighting over a comb. The idea that Hitler could have escaped - and kept that escape hidden - seems farcical.


And yet many continue to believe it. Tens of thousands of Nazis escaped after the war, including the notorious Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele. Is it not possible that Hitler escaped with them?

As Gerrard Williams says, there have been many versions of the Hitler escape story, and they have been spun ever since May 1945.


In the years immediately after the war, there was no hard proof that Hitler had, in fact, died. One of the problems that investigators encountered was the lack of any physical evidence for his death.


The existence of skull fragments, found by the Russians near the Fuhrer’s bunker and believed to be his, was not known to the West until 1968. Then, in 2009, DNA testing of the bones revealed that in fact they belonged to a woman.

Grey Wolf: Hitler's Escape to Argentina trailer

Distributed by Galloping Films

There have been many versions of the Hitler escape story from his bunker (pictured) in May 1945

This has given the fantasists added ammunition to claim that Hitler didn’t die in the bunker.


In the immediate aftermath of the war, British and U.S. intelligence services received countless reports suggesting the former Nazi leader had been spotted alive and at large.

In September 1945, it was claimed that Hitler and his private secretary, Martin Bormann, had boarded a luxury yacht in Hamburg and had sailed to a secret island off the coast of Schleswig-Holstein.


The next month, staff at the British Legation in Copenhagen informed the Foreign Office that a Danish woman had told them that a friend had dreamed that Hitler was disguised as a monk and living in Spain.


In December, the Americans were ‘reliably informed’ that Hitler had boarded a submarine off the island of Majorca, where he had been living in a hotel with a group of nuclear scientists. Then there were claims that he was living as a hermit in a cave in Italy, or working as a shepherd in the Swiss Alps.


There were those who stated that he’d hidden himself in Antarctica, or even further away still — the Moon! All these reports, no matter how ridiculous, had to be taken seriously and investigated. One after the other, they were found to be groundless.



Some were undoubtedly the products of a Soviet disinformation campaign. For a long time, the Russians believed that the Allies were sheltering Hitler, and they put about these fake stories in an attempt to flush out what they thought to be the truth.


In July 1945, the Russian commander Marshall Georgi Zhukov claimed that since Hitler’s body had still not been found, he ‘could have flown away at the very last moment’. Even General Eisenhower, the former Allied supreme commander, appeared to be taken in.

Today, the vast majority accept that Hitler shot himself in the bunker (pictured) in Berlin on April 30, 1945

In 1952, he said: ‘We have been unable to unearth one bit of tangible evidence of Hitler’s death. Many people believe that he escaped from Berlin.’


Today, the vast majority accept that Hitler shot himself in the bunker in Berlin on April 30, 1945.

After the war, the historian and MI6 officer Hugh Trevor-Roper was commissioned to investigate Hitler’s death. He spoke to many of those who were present in the bunker during those last fateful days.


They all said the same thing: Hitler had killed himself, and his body and that of Eva Braun were cremated with petrol.


If Hitler had hotfooted it to the Southern Hemisphere, then all these people would have had to have been lying - and to have kept it secret until their dying days.


It is simply impossible to believe that so many people could keep such a grand scale deception so quiet.


But there are still some who cling to their conspiracy theories.


Williams and Dunstan maintain that the ‘Hitler’ and ‘Braun’ who shot themselves in Berlin in 1945 were, in fact, lookalikes.

But would those who had known Hitler intimately for years and who were in the bunker that night really have been fooled by two doubles?

In truth, the supposed escape of Hitler should be seen as nothing more than a parlour game.


There’s not a serious historian who would give the story any more credence than they would to Elvis Presley being alive and well and still hip-swinging in Tennessee.


Guy Walters is author of Hunting Evil: The Nazi War Criminals Who Escaped And The Quest To Bring Them To Justice.


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