Poor sleep equals high blood pressure for teens

Poor sleep habits amongst teens can lead to high blood pressure, US researchers reported. Teens who slept less than six and a half hours a night had more than twice the risk of high blood pressure and those with troubled sleep had more than triple the risk, the team at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio found. The team studied 238 13 to 16-year-olds and had the volunteers fill out sleep diaries but also measured their movements while in bed to gauge whether they were really asleep. On average, the teens got just 7.7 hours of sleep a night, while they need nine hours at that age. The researchers found that 14 per cent of the adolescents had high blood pressure or readings at the borderline, called pre-hypertension.

Smoking doubles stroke risk in women
Younger women who smoke have more than double the risk of stroke compared to nonsmokers, with the heaviest smokers among them having nine times the risk, according to a study published in the American Heart Association’s journal Stroke, said. The research assessed stroke risk in women aged 15 to 49 years who smoked cigarettes. Current smokers were 2.6 times as likely to have a stroke than women who never smoked, according to the researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. Women who smoked the most faced the highest increased risk. For example, women who smoked 21 to 39 cigarettes a day had a risk of stroke 4.3 times higher than a nonsmoker, while those who puffed at least two packs a day —40 cigarettes—had a stroke risk 9.1 times higher than a nonsmoker.

Clumsy children more likely to become obese
Children with poor hand control and coordination are more likely to become obese adults, researchers said. A study of thousands of British children found those with the worst cognitive and physical function at the ages of seven and 11 years were far more likely to be obese in later life.
The study by experts from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute and London’s Imperial College is based on more than 11,000 individuals participating in Britain’s ongoing National Child Development Study, which began in 1958.Around 8,000 of them were assessed by teachers at age seven years to identify hand control and clumsiness, and just under 7,000 were tested for hand control and coordination at age 11 by a doctor. The results were published in the British Medical Journal.