Take care of sugary soft drinks!

A new study claims that drinking sugary soft drinks 2 times and more a week don't only lead to dental problems but can even lead to pancreas cancer!

The risk of regular soda drinkers is 87 % higher than persons who drinks instead fruit juices.
The theory behind this new finding is that sugar may give the fuel for the growth of cancerous cells in the usually insulin producing pancreas.

Autism risk: Age of mother & father could make a difference

I guess everyone knows about the risks of a late-in-life pregnancy. Now with a new study published it gets more and more into a direction that

1. the age of mother and father and
   
2. even a certain age difference between mother and father

can lead to risk not only the Down-Syndrome in a newborn child but also an autistic child in the future.

The older a mother gives birth to a baby, the more likely it will develop autistic characters. A 40 year old mother has a 50% greater chance of having an autistic child than a mother in the age of 25 - 29 years.

The risk of fathers which are older than 40 years is only significant higher if the mother is younger than 30 years. The risk is twice as likely that the kid will develop autism signs than if the father would be 25 - 29 years young.

Read more about it on: Reuters - Age of mother affects child's autism risk: study

MM: I'm a little Tea Pot - Nursery Rhyme

The next Nursery Song for this Music Monday is I'm a little Tea Pot.

Bed sharing reduces men's brain power :)

A Austrian study found that if men sharing a bed with a bed mate it affects their mental ability the next day.

Although the men reported they had slept better with a partner, they fared worse in the tests, with their results suggesting they actually had more disturbed sleep.

Both sexes had a more disturbed night's sleep when they shared their bed.

But women apparently managed to sleep more deeply when they did eventually drop off, since they claimed to be more refreshed than their sleep time suggested.

Their stress hormone levels and mental scores did not suffer to the same extent as the men.

But the women still reported that they had the best sleep when they were alone in bed.

Bed sharing also affected dream recall. Women remembered more after sleeping alone and men recalled best after sex.

"Historically, we have never been meant to sleep in the same bed as each other. It is a bizarre thing to do.

"Sleep is the most selfish thing you can do and it's vital for good physical and mental health.

"Sharing the bed space with someone who is making noises and who you have to fight with for the duvet is not sensible.

More on BBC News: Bed sharing "drains men's brains"

Babies - A Cool Documentary!

I came across this trailer while scanning through one of my twitter lists last week.

This visually stunning new movie simultaneously follows four babies around the world - from first breath to first steps. From Mongolia to Namibia to San Francisco to Tokyo, Babies joyfully captures on film the earliest stages of the journey of humanity that are at once unique and universal to us all.

See the world of the babies and their development from another ankle as we never could experience how babies around the desert are raised up.

The documentary shall be released in April 2010, hopefully some cinemas will show this movie and not only Hollywood blockbusters...

What are your impressions of the "Babies" trailer?

Dirt can be good for children!

Researchers from the School of Medicine at University of California, San Diego, found a common bacterial species, known as Staphylococci, blocked a vital step in a cascade of events that led to inflammation which can be found in mud :)

Normal bacteria living on the skin trigger a pathway that helps prevent inflammation when we get hurt, the US team discovered.

A spokeswoman for Allergy UK said there was a growing body of evidence that exposure to germs was a good thing.

"Rates of allergy have tripled in the UK in the last decade. One in three people now has some kind of allergy.

"Some of this might be that people are better informed. But a lot of it is genetic as well as down to our environment," she said.

More can be found on BBC News - Dirt can be good for children, says scientists
Picture from Flickr