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Welcome to the e-HealthFlash newsletter, brought to you by Goshen Health System. e-HealthFlash delivers to your mailbox timely medical news and health and wellness information that matter to you and your family. To visit Goshen Health System’s Women's Health Center, click here.
Family meals prevent typical teen vices
Teenage girls who eat meals with their families at least five times a week are much less likely to drink or smoke pot or cigarettes. A University of Minnesota team questioned about 800 middle-school students about their substance use and family mealtime habits. Five years later, investigators questioned the teens again. The findings? Girls who dined with their families regularly—whether at dinner or other meals—also drank and smoked less than girls who didn’t. The same didn’t hold true for boys.
Don’t go nuts during pregnancy
If you don’t want your little one to grow up with asthma, you may want to take a pass on the nuts—though eggs, milk, dairy products, fish and vegetables don’t seem to cause adverse effects. A Dutch study of more than 2,800 children ages 1–8 revealed that the kids whose mothers had their hands in the nut dish every day while pregnant wheezed 50 percent more than the others. Apparently, a mom-to-be with a nutty diet, especially one including peanut butter, can affect airway development, increasing the risk of developing asthma or allergy.
Hubby’s workload influences wife’s choices
We may be decades past the 50s, but a recent Cornell University study suggests that traditional sex roles still prevail when a man puts in long hours at work. Using 1995–2000 census data from married couples, researchers determined that when a man works more than 60 hours a week, his wife is 44 percent more likely to quit her job. Women with children are 90 percent more likely to quit when their husbands work that many hours. Conversely, men were no more likely to leave their jobs when their wives worked more than 60 hours a week. More professional men than women work 50 hours or more—30 percent of men versus just 12 percent of women.
Too many zzz’s may up stroke risk
Apparently
there’s a sweet spot when it comes to postmenopausal women’s
sleep habits: seven hours a night. Any more than that and you
could be at increased risk of stroke, indicates a recent study
at Albert Einstein
College of Medicine in New York that’s
part of the larger Women’s Health Initiative. Scientists
analyzed more than 90,000 postmenopausal women’s sleep
habits and concluded that older women who slept nine or more
hours a night had a 60 percent to 70 percent greater risk of
stroke than those who slept seven hours. The increased stroke
risk dropped to 24 percent at eight hours a night and 14 percent
at six hours or fewer. It was unclear whether the lengthy slumber
caused the stroke or whether other stroke risk factors caused
the women to sleep excessively.
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