Pregnancy can be bad news for your heart health, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. In fact, pregnancy can triple a woman's risk of heart attack.
Some 250 pregnant women have heart attacks during their pregnancy in the U.S. each year. Though that number may seem low, mortality rates can be high for this population because heart problems can be found long after they have developed, if at all.
Even though nuts are seen as a healthy snack, researchers say some pregnant women should think twice about eating them. If allergic asthma or food allergies run in the family, pregnant women should be especially leery of eating nuts on a regular basis during gestation.
A study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine found that women who ate nuts regularly during pregnancy had an almost 50 percent increased risk of having a child with asthma symptoms. The study evaluated more than 4,000 pregnant women and followed them and their children until the latter reached the age of eight. Daily consumption of nuts increased the odds of children experiencing wheezing by 42 percent, shortness of breath by 58 percent and steroid use to treat asthma symptoms by a whopping 62 percent.
As 17 year-old Jamie Lynn Spears and her newborn baby Maddie grace the cover of OK! Magazine, the National Institute of Health releases some startling information about the state of affairs when it comes to teen pregnancy in the U.S. For the first time in 15 years, teen pregnancy rates are on the up tick.
According to the report, America's Children in Brief: Key National Indications of Well-Being, 2008, the number of teen pregnancies for girls aged 15 to 17 increased by more than 5,000 between 2005 and 2006. Overall, about one-third of girls aged 20 or younger got pregnant in 2006, with 435,000 babies being born to teens aged 15 to 19.
If you're pregnant, you may want to curb the use of cell phones, according to a recent study by scientists at the University of California at Los Angeles.
More than 13,000 mothers in Demark took part in the study, which found that pregnant women who used cell phones two to three times a day during their pregnancy increased the chance of their child having hyperactivity and behavioral problems. The problems start early on and can affect the child's emotions, behavior and relationships by the time they reach school age. The chances of behavioral problems increased if the child used a cell phone himself before the age of seven. Researchers were especially surprised at the findings because in a separate study done just three years earlier the lead researcher determined that cell phone use had no negative affects on humans.
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