If you’re trying to get pregnant and your partner smokes and drinks now might be the best time for him to quit smoking and cut down on his drinking.  Smoking is linked to birth defects such as spina bifida and cleft palate while drinking large amounts of alcohol has been linked to heart defects, among other problems.

While it is well known that a mother-to-be’s health and diet can affect the future health of her unborn child, new research from the University of Idaho suggests that their partners have an equally important role to play.

Toxic chemicals in cigarettes and alcohol are thought to cause changes in the DNA which are passed down via the sperm to future generations. So even if a smoker’s child never starts smoking, they might still carry the associated risks.

The message is simple: Men are as important as women in terms of their impact on the baby and their health in later life and men who smoke and drink could be endangering the health of their future children and grandchildren.

This warning came along with another warning about a widely used pesticide which may cause prostate and kidney problems across many generations. The pesticide research, presented at the annual conference of the American Association for Advancement of Science, centred around vinclozolin, which is used on oilseed rape in the UK and on grapes and fruit and vegetables in other parts of the world. When it was injected into unborn rats in the first days of life it caused prostate and kidney problems in the young animals. The rats’ sons, grandsons and great-grandsons also suffered prostate and kidney defects. Previous work showed that exposure to vinclozolin in the womb can also affect the quality and quantity of sperm for several generations.

Admittedly, concentrations of the pesticide used were much higher than those people would normally be exposed to, but the experiments provide evidence that the effects of toxins can persist for generations.

The study also underlines the importance of suspending our long held assumption that men are less important in healthy human reproduction than women. Fortunately, not all damage to sperm is permanent and any man hoping to start a family should think twice about drinking and smoking. This is because when both mother and father-to-be minimise their exposure to toxic chemicals, the risk of potential reproductive harm is minimised.

The next time your boss takes you to task for napping on the job, tell him or her you are just trying to improve your job performance. It’s official, taking an afternoon nap is good for you and may even make you brainier.

You don’t even need to sleep for long, just a few minutes will work wonders for your memory, focus and concentration. It seems that the mere act of nodding off is what counts rather than the duration of the nap.
A new study by German researchers and published in the medical journal New Scientist will be music to the ears of office workers – who have always sung the praise of power napping anyway.

Also, previous studies have shown that the brain is more active in people who nap than in those who do not sleep during the day. 

But don’t take the news as an excuse to sleep away the entire afternoon; naps are only beneficial when they do not last longer than 20 minutes. A study from Harvard Medical School of nearly 24,000 people found that those who regularly took afternoon naps were nearly 40 percent less likely to die from heart disease than non-nappers. 

It has long been thought that humans need long periods of uninterrupted sleep – refreshing stage four deep sleep to feel truly refreshed – but now it seems that much of sleep’s functional aspects are accomplished at its very beginning. Sleep experts are playing with the idea that memory processing may be triggered at the onset of sleep – while the deeper sleep we slip into at night may be important for core functions. Only then is it crucial that you sleep uninterrupted.

So the next time you feel like nodding off in the office, on a train journey, or after the lunchtime news, just tell yourself and your boss if you have one that you are doing it to improve your afternoon performance. Now you have the evidence to prove it!

If you’re trying to make up your mind about whether or not to take hormone replacement therapy (HRT) or try natural alternatives a major new study by the Women’s Health Initiative gives food for thought. The US study suggests HRT patients face a higher cancer risk long after they have stopped treatment, when compared to those who never had the treatment.

Previous studies have shown a link between HRT and breast cancer – but it was thought that the increased risk disappeared fairly quickly.  This new study, however, shows that the risk of breast cancer can linger for up to three years after stopping HRT.

The results published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggest that the risk of breast cancer remained 27% higher while risks of any type of cancer were 24% higher.  The other health risks associated with HRT e.g. strokes and clots do not persist and return to normal after stopping HRT.