Family Mealtime
Weight: A new national study suggests that preschool-aged children may have a lower risk for obesity if they regularly engage in one or more of three specific activities. These include eating dinner as a family, getting adequate sleep and limiting their weekday television viewing time. The study showed that 4-year-olds living in homes with all three habits had an almost 40% lower prevalence of obesity than did children living in homes that practiced none of these routines. Each routine on its own was associated with lower obesity, and more routines translated to lower obesity, according to the analysis. The study appears online in the journal Pediatrics. While it may be difficult for some families to adhere to these routines regularly, the researchers stated that families with young children may want to consider what it would take for them to have these routines for their child, given the consequences. more …
“Laughing Zebra” by August Jennewein
Emotions: Laughter is a universal language, according to new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study, conducted with people from Britain and Namibia, suggests that basic emotions like fear, anger, sadness and amusement are shared by all human beings. Conventional wisdom dictates that, while we all communicate, people from different cultures may not understand the same words, phrases or body language. In spite of this, the researchers discovered that emotions like laughter and anger are easily recognizable despite cultural differences, suggesting that these emotions and their vocalizations are similar across all cultures. Laughter was probably the best recognized among the positive emotions, which should not come as a surprise, as researchers have seen this with other primates such as chimpanzees, and other mammals, too. While previous studies have indicated that smiling is also universal, laughter is special because it symbolizes playfulness, probably one of the first steps in communication between children and their mothers. more …
Exercise: Regularly practicing yoga may help with inflammation. According to a study published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, women who routinely practiced yoga had lower amounts of interleukin-6 (IL-6) in their blood. IL-6 is an important component of the body’s inflammatory response, and reducing inflammation may provide benefits for diseases like stroke, type-2 diabetes, arthritis and other debilitating conditions. The yoga practitioners also showed smaller increases in IL-6 after stressful experiences than did women who were the same age and weight but who did not practice yoga. “Hopefully, this means that people can eventually learn to respond less strongly to stressors in their everyday lives by using yoga and other stress-reducing modalities,” said Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, lead author of the study. “Muscles shorten and tighten over time, mainly because of inactivity. The stretching and exercise that comes with yoga actually increases a person’s flexibility and that, in turn, allows relaxation, which can lower stress,” said Ron Glaser, co-author of the research. more …
