Public Health Clinic

---

• Less than five hours sleep promotes obesity
• Stress-free babies have fewer allergies
• Yawns are contagious among family

Less than five hours sleep promotes obesity Posted: 02 Jan 2012 07:09 AM PST . “In the last decade has revealed the existence of a close correlation between a few hours sleep and an increased risk of being obese,” said the president of SEEN, Dr. Javier Salvador. “That is why to prevent the development of obesity in our society and to try to make obese people lose weight, along with the required lifestyle changes (diet and exercise), you must sleep at least seven or eight hours day, “he added. In this sense, the president of SEED, Professor Felipe Casanueva, pointed to scientific evidence that obese children sleep less than children who have “normal weight”. This expert has warned of “big problem” posed by childhood obesity, “since a high percentage of obese children remains the disorder as adults.” Sleep deprivation leads to an increase of all the hormones that encourage the appetite “and specifically intake of foods rich in fat and sugars,” said Casanueva. For this reason, the expert has opted to sleep at least eight hours a day to maintain a healthy weight. The 23 percent of the Spanish population over 18 is obese, a condition that increases the risk of other serious diseases such as diabetes mellitus type 2, hypertension, sleep apnea-hypopnea sleep, and various types of neoplasms such as colon cancer.

Stress-free babies have fewer allergies Posted: 01 Jan 2012 11:08 PM PST In recent decades, the incidence of allergies in children has increased, especially in the West. In Sweden, between 30 and 40 percent of children suffer some type of allergy. A combination of environmental factors and lifestyle during pregnancy and early childhood may be responsible for the sharp increase in allergic diseases. According to Fredrik Stenius, Department of Clinical Research and Education, Stockholm South General Hospital, “psychosocial factors and stress hormone cortisol are associated with allergies.” “Our study found that children with low levels of cortisol in saliva have a lower prevalence of allergies in the first two months of life compared with other children,” he says. These scientists had previously described a link between a lower prevalence of allergies in school and healthy lifestyle. According to Stenius, “now have the same link in children of families with healthy lifestyle and those with relatively low cortisol levels.” The researchers believe that factors related to stress regulation may also influence the development of allergies in children, so now will the children from the neonatal period and into childhood.

Yawns are contagious among family Posted: 01 Jan 2012 05:07 PM PST The act of yawning has always been seen as “contagious” and that when someone yawns in a group, there are people around who do the same by accident. Moreover, this reaction, common in nearly half of the population is not unique to humans and has also been found in many animals such as chimpanzees. Although this infection has never been fully explained, there are theories that suggest that may be linked to empathy between people, something that was reinforced with a previous study with children with autism, who tend to be less able to empathize with others, that showed they were less likely to do them. From this finding, researchers at the University of Pisa looked at 109 men and women in a variety of nationalities in their daily activities and took a record of the times in which they were yawning contagious. The study found that it was more likely to occur between members of the same family, a little less with friends and even less between acquaintances and strangers. Moreover, the time between the yawn and the response was greater among acquaintances and strangers, which “demonstrates that the contagion of yawns is primarily generated by the emotional closeness between individuals and not by other variables such as gender and nationality,” said the researchers. Dr Catriona Morrison, an experimental psychologist at the University of Leeds (United Kingdom), acknowledged in an interview to the BBC, gathered by Europa Press, subconscious primitive response that may shed light on human brain evolution. Morrison has said that “some suggested that developed in the stone age when people had to be watching all the time because, as the yawn increases the flow of blood to the brain and increases alertness.”

You are subscribed to email updates from Public Health Clinic To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

You Should Also CheckOut This Post