A round-up of today's other stories in brief
One-third of young UK girls want to slim
MORE THAN a third of girls in Britain aged between 10 and 11 would like to lose weight, a report found. A study by the UK Schools Health Education Unit said 38 per cent of the year-six girls surveyed were not happy with their weight. The figure increased as the girls developed, with almost two-thirds of the year 10s, aged 14-15, questioned wanting to lose weight.
The report was based on data collected from more than 83,000 pupils in years six, eight and 10 across the UK.
Growing old happily adds longevity, study finds
GROWING OLD happily can lead to a longer life, new research has shown.
A five-year study of almost 4,000 middle-aged and elderly people found those who felt the most positive during the course of a single day tended to live longest.
Overall, the happiest and most content older people had a 35 per cent reduced risk of dying compared with the least cheerful. The scientists took account of factors such as age, gender, depression, health and lifestyle that might have influenced the results.
A total of 3,853 individuals aged 52-79 were recruited for the research, part of a long-running investigation called the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.
Each was asked to rate his or her feelings of happiness, contentedness and excitement at four timed “moments” over the course of one day. These would then be scored. Researchers then monitored participants for five years, noting how many died during this time. Results have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Higher scores were seen to coincide with a gradual increase in lifespan. People in the bottom third of the ratings had a death rate of 7.3 per cent compared with 4.6 per cent for those in the middle bracket and 3.6 per cent at the top. Initially, the most positive people seemed 50 per cent less likely to die. This figure was later reduced to 35 per cent.
The authors, led by Prof Andrew Steptoe from University College London, were unable to say whether happiness actually extended lifespan or was a marker for other factors that helped people live longer.
Women avoid Halloween births - because they can
PREGNANT WOMEN are capable of influencing the timing of their babies’ births, according to a study that shows fewer children are born on Halloween.
The results of an analysis of almost 2.5 million births in the US over 11 years contradicts the current medical orthodoxy that expectant mothers have no control over the timing of the delivery of their babies.
Dr Rebecca Levy of Yale School of Public Health, who led the study, said Halloween’s associations with death, evil and skeletons might subconsciously put women off giving birth. “The study raises the possibility that the assumption underlying the term ‘spontaneous birth’, namely, that births are outside the control of pregnant women, is erroneous,” Dr Levy told New Scientist magazine.
She added that a connection between the state of mind of pregnant women and hormone levels could explain the link.
“We know that hormones control birth timing, and mothers do often express a desire to give birth on a certain day,” she said. “But the process that allows those thoughts to potentially impact the timing, we don’t know.”
Dr Levy and colleagues analysed data from birth certificates for all births in the US that took place within one week on either side of Valentine’s Day and Halloween between 1996 and 2006.
They found the likelihood of women giving birth on Halloween was on average 11.3 per cent lower than during the days in the week before and after. This broke down to 5.3 per cent lower for natural, non-induced births, and 16.9 per cent lower for Caesareans. The results are published in the journal Social Science Medicine. – (Guardian News Media)