Below Zero

Zero to 20

Keep tabs on teens to prevent college drinking

Parents can indirectly reduce their children’s risk of problem drinking in college by keeping an eye on them in high school. Students surveyed who reported higher levels of parental monitoring during high school drank less as high school seniors, reported researchers from the University of Maryland. And the level of high school alcohol consumption was directly tied to how much they drank as college freshmen. While parents typically keep looser tabs on children once they reach college, some continued monitoring may be effective in protecting them from risky alcohol use.

20 to 40

Are fat moms to blame for fat kids?

British researchers who tried to show why overweight mothers tend to have overweight children said they had filled in one small piece of the puzzle. Their reassuring finding: women who are too fat when pregnant are probably not driving the obesity epidemic by programming their children to be fat. There is a strong link between overweight mothers and overweight children that still needs to be explained, reported the researchers from Britain’s University of Bristol. But they did find that if a child became overweight by age 9 or 11, the mother was more likely to have been overweight or obese than was the father, they reported in PloS Medicine.

40 AND ABOVE

Heart-risk protein unaltered by daily psyllium

Daily fiber supplementation with psyllium does not reduce levels of an inflammatory protein connected to heart disease in people who are overweight or obese. This is what new research indicates — in contrast to previous research that found lower inflammation in people with high fiber intake. The study’s objective was to see whether daily fiber supplementation will lower blood levels of C-reactive protein or CRP and other markers of inflammation. High CRP levels are a common feature of obesity and have been linked to diabetes, the metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, and other risk factors for heart disease, according to a report of the study in the current issue of the Annals of Family Medicine.