Lifelines

If, as winter approaches, your hands turn white, then blue, then red and then become painful, you may have Raynaud's. Apparently, Raynaud's is a "women's illness" - 90 per cent of the estimated 500,000 sufferers in Ireland are female. The condition, which interrupts the blood supply to the fingers and toes, causing severe pain, can be triggered by stress as well as temperature change. For further information, send a large SAE to the Irish Raynaud's and Scleroderma Society, PO Box 2958, Foxrock, Dublin 18. Tel: 01-2350900.

In the Republic, 90,000 people are classified as divorced or separated - and marriage breakdown can have a serious effect on children's mental health. Males aged 16-26 at the time of their parents' divorce are five times more likely to suffer from psychiatric illness than those from intact families, and women are twice as likely to be affected. The Irish Institute of Couple Counselling is running a four-week course, Understanding Relationships - Maintaining your Marriage (from November 2nd) and a six-week course, Your Life after Separation and Divorce (from November 4th). For details, contact Marriage and Relationship Counselling Services. Tel: 01-6799341.

Dyslexic children grow up differently from other children, and now their problems can be detected before they go to school, according to a UK study from the Institute for Neuro-Physiological Psychology. The study found children with specific learning difficulties, including dyspraxia, dyslexia and attention deficit disorder, are often late learning to walk and talk, have difficulty learning to dress themselves and are hypersensitive to certain sounds. These children may now receive diagnosis and support earlier thanks to a questionnaire which identifies developmental delay which could manifest as a specific learning difficulty. (The British Journal of Occupational Therapy)

More bad news about meat. People who have given up eating steak for health reasons but still eat chicken may have a higher risk of colon cancer, according to research at Loma Linda University in California, reports Reuters. The study found that, in comparison to vegetarians, people who eat red meat once a week have a 38 per cent higher risk of colon cancer while people who sometimes eat white meat have a 55 per cent higher risk. The more meat you eat, the higher the risk - people in the study who ate red or white meat four or more times a week had up to three times the risk of colon cancer. In Ireland, colon cancer is the fifth most common cancer among men, and the sixth among women.