8 Ways to Sunday

ABC News reports that the American College of Physicians is recommending that diabetics take cholesterol-lowering medications called statins. Recent studies have indicated their ability to prevent some common complications of the illness such as heart attack, stroke, and even dementia.

“Statins do have an effect on cholesterol and cholesterol is in the brain,” said Dr. Ronald Petersen, director of Alzheimer’s research at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. “They [the drugs] may also have an effect on the protein called ‘amyloid,’ which is thought to be a major culprit in the development of Alzheimer’s disease.”

My mother’s husband has diabetes, so I’ll have to be sure and pass this along.

(citations: ABC News)

McDonald’s chairman and CEO Jim Cantalupo died of a heart attack yesterday. No doubt stand-up comedians are already preparing jokes about this. A bit unfair, perhaps, since Cantalupo is the man who axed the word “Supersize” from the McDonald’s vocabulary in response to increasingly outspoken criticism of the company’s menu by health advocates.

(citations: Associated Press and ABC News)