Are first born children smarter than their siblings?
According to a study published in the Journal of Human Resources, first born children outperform their siblings in thinking skills. They score better than their siblings in IQ tests as early as age one.
This is because even though all children receive the same levels of emotional support, first-born children receive more mental stimulation from their parents in their early years.
About 5,000 children were observed from before birth to age 14. Every two years the children took tests that assessed reading and vocabulary skills. Information about family background and economic conditions was also assessed.
The advantages for first born children start very early in life—from just after birth to three years of age. The differences increased with age, and was seen in verbal, reading, mathematics and comprehension test scores.
With subsequent children, mothers take more risks during pregnancy and are less likely to breast feed.
Younger siblings don’t get as much attention. Parents engage in fewer activities such as reading with the child, crafts and playing musical instruments.
The findings help explain why first-born children usually are more educated and earn better wages as adults. “Our results suggests that broad shifts in parental behaviour are a plausible explanation for the observed birth order differences in education and labour market outcomes,” the study concluded.
Perils of harsh parenting
Where do you draw the line when it comes to parenting?
According to a study in the journal Child Development, harsh parenting that includes frequent yelling, hitting and use of verbal and physical threats as punishment may backfire and encourage risky behaviour and lower academic achievement in kids.
The study followed 1,482 students from different racial, socioeconomic and geographic backgrounds for nine years from the 7th grade until age 21.
Students who said in 7th grade that their parents were too harsh were more likely to say in 9th grade that their peers were more important than following their parents' rules or doing homework.
By 11th grade, these kids were more likely to engage in risky behaviour such as hitting, stealing and early sexual behaviour. They were also more likely to drop out of high school or college.
"We're primed as individuals to pay attention to our environmental cues. If we're in a situation where there's a lot of harshness, unpredictability or danger, we're more likely to try to capitalise on immediate and short-term rewards. But if you're in a really stable, secure environment, it makes sense to put resources toward a long-range goal, like education," said the study author.
A better therapy
Adding antiandrogen therapy (testosterone-suppressing drug) to radiation therapy can improve survival when prostate cancer recurs after surgery, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
For most men with localised prostate cancer, surgery is the first line of treatment, but for more than 30 per cent of them the cancer can come back.
The study included 760 patients who had their prostate gland removed for localised cancer, but later showed signs of recurrence, indicated by an increase in prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels.
The patients were randomly assigned to receive either a hormone-blocking drug or a placebo for 24 months, along with six and a half weeks of radiation therapy and were followed for an average of 13 years.
The combination therapy reduced the risk of death from prostate cancer by half—5.8 per cent vs 13.4 per cent for radiation alone and also reduced the risk of cancer spreading to other parts of the body—14.5 per cent vs 23 per cent.
Overall survival rate in the combination therapy group was 76.3 per cent compared with 71.3 per cent among those who received radiation alone.
There were no significant differences in long-term adverse effects, including effects on the heart and liver.
“This study's findings—that adding antiandrogen therapy to the radiation typically used against recurrence reduces the incidence of metastasis, death from prostate cancer and overall deaths—will change the standard of care for patients experiencing a postoperative recurrence," the lead study author noted.
Killer fruit
Researchers from India and the US have finally identified the cause for the mystery illness that has been killing more than 100 children a year in Muzaffarpur, Bihar.
Since 1995, during the hot months of May or June, numerous healthy children would suddenly get sick in the night. They would wake up screaming in the night and then have seizures and lose consciousness. About 40 per cent of the children would eventually die.
The study in The Lancet Global Health had identified the litchi fruit that is widely produced in Muzaffarpur as the reason for the mysterious deaths.
The children who got sick often ate the fruit on an empty stomach and then went to bed without dinner. Litchis contain a toxin that inhibits the body's ability to produce glucose. This resulted in dangerously low levels of blood sugar as well as swelling in the brain and the related seizures and coma and even death.
“To prevent illness and reduce mortality in the region, we recommended minimising litchi consumption, ensuring receipt of an evening meal and implementing rapid glucose correction for suspected illness,” the author wrote.
Did You Know
Taking nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as aspirin, naproxen and ibuprofen for back pain may provide only limited pain relief and improvement of function. On the other hand, patients taking these drugs are 2.5 times more likely to suffer from gastrointestinal side effects.
Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases
Slimming whole grain
Want a simple strategy to lose weight? Substitute white rice with brown.
According to a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, substituting whole grains such as brown rice for refined grains such as white rice can help lose weight.
Consuming whole grains can increase calorie loss by reducing the calories the body retains during digestion and speeding up metabolism.
The study enrolled 81 men and women, aged 40 to 65. All the participants ate the same type of food for the first two weeks of the study and individual calorie needs to maintain their weights were determined.
The participants were then randomly assigned to eat either a whole-grain or refined-grain diet. They could eat only the food that was provided and were asked to continue their usual physical activity. The only difference between the two diets was the type of grains consumed. The total energy, total fat, and total servings of fruits, vegetables and proteins were similar in both diets.
Those on the whole-grain diet absorbed fewer calories—about 100 fewer calories per day, had higher resting metabolic rate (calories burned at rest) and had greater faecal output.
"We provided all food to ensure that the composition of the diets differed only in grain source. The extra calories lost by those who ate whole grains was equivalent of a brisk 30 minute walk—or enjoying an extra small cookie every day in terms of its impact," said senior study author.
The whole-grain group also saw modest improvement in immune responses, which deal with infections and healthy gut bacteria.
Whole grains include the outer layer of grains. Whole-wheat flour, oatmeal and brown rice are examples of whole grains. Refined grains lose all their nutritional value when processed. White flour, white bread and white rice are examples of refined grains.
Did You Know
The pleasure that we feel when we listen to music is triggered by the same brain chemical system that provides pleasure from sex, recreational drugs and food.
Scientific Reports
Labour and lose
Women whose work involves lifting heavy objects, and those working evening or night shifts may experience decreased fertility, according to a Harvard University study published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
The study was based on nearly 500 women undergoing fertility treatments. This allowed the researchers to directly measure many biomarkers of fertility which would not have been possible in women trying to conceive naturally.
Moving or lifting heavy objects at work adversely affected fertility. Women whose job involved a lot of moving or lifting heavy loads had 8.8 per cent fewer total eggs and 14.1 per cent fewer mature eggs compared with women who did not do such intense physical labour. The negative impact was even stronger among women who were overweight or obese and those aged 37 or older.
A similar inverse relationship was seen in women doing night or rotating shifts.
“Our study suggests that women who are planning pregnancy should be cognizant of the potential negative impacts that non-day shift and heavy lifting could have on their reproductive health," the lead author of the study cautioned.
Fat chance
Couples who are obese may take longer time to get pregnant, according to a US study published in the journal Human Reproduction.
Previous studies have shown that obese women may have lower odds for pregnancy in a single menstrual cycle. “But our findings underscore the importance of including both partners,” said lead study author Rajeshwari Sundaram.
The study included 501 couples—27 per cent of the women and 41 per cent of the men were obese. The women ranged in age from 18 to 44 years and the men were above 18. Women kept journals about their menstrual cycles, intercourse and home pregnancy test results. The BMI of each participant was also calculated. The couples were followed until pregnancy or for up to a year of trying to conceive.
Couples with the highest BMIs (35 and above) took 55-59 per cent longer to get pregnant compared with normal-weight couples. According to the authors, fertility specialists should consider the couples’ weight status when counselling them about achieving pregnancy.
Maintaining a healthy weight not just reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer, it will also help reduce the time to conception.
Did You Know
Erectile dysfunction is 2.28 times more common in men with periodontitis or chronic bacterial infection of the gums.
International Journal of Impotence Research
Changing perceptions
Patients treated in American hospitals have lower death rates if they are treated by doctors who were trained in foreign countries than at American universities.
Harvard researchers looked at data from more than 1.2 million patients aged 65 and older who were admitted to US hospitals between 2011 and 2014. Patients were slightly less likely to die within 30 days after admission if they were treated by foreign-trained doctors than US graduates (11.2 per cent vs 11.6 per cent), even though patients treated by international graduates had slightly more chronic conditions.
International medical graduates account for about 25 per cent of doctors in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, the study authors said. In the US, international medical graduates are mostly from India, the Philippines and Pakistan.
The study questions the perception that some people may have that the quality of care provided by international graduates may not be on par with US-trained doctors.
“America has a history of attracting the best and brightest from around the world and that appears to be true in medicine as well. We hope that we are able to maintain that openness because the biggest beneficiaries of these doctors coming to the US have been the American people,” said senior author Ashish Jha.
The findings were published in The BMJ.
Bilingual advantage
Speaking two or more languages may slow down mental decline associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
Previous research has already shown that bilingualism can delay the onset of dementia by nearly five years.
The current Italian study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that bilingual people with Alzheimer's performed better in short- and long-term memory tests compared to those who only spoke one language.
For the study, 85 people in their 70s who had been diagnosed with probable Alzheimer's underwent brain scans and memory tests; 45 of the participants were bilingual, while 40 were monolingual.
Overall, the bilingual people outperformed the monolingual speakers on memory tests even though brain scans showed more signs of deterioration in the brain’s ability to convert glucose into energy, a characteristic of Alzheimer's. Bilingual people were also on an average five years older than the monolingual participants.
Bilingual people tend to have better functional connectivity in frontal brain regions, which helps them maintain better thinking skills and withstand the damages from Alzheimer's.
Constantly switching between different languages causes structural brain changes, creating a "neural reserve" that helps bilingual people resist mental deterioration.
Bilingual people also have better 'neural compensation'—the brain looks for alternative pathways to help maintain thinking skills and compensate for the loss of brain structure that comes with ageing.
"Considering that delaying the onset of dementia is a top priority of modern societies, governments and health systems should be stimulated to activate social programmes and interventions to support bilingual or multilingual education, and to maintain the use of more languages in ageing," the study author added.
Care for life
Caring for grandchildren can help grandparents live longer. Grandparents who occasionally care for their grandchildren live up to five years longer than those who don’t.But the keyword is occasional childcare. Caring for your grandchildren full-time or not having any contact with your grandchildren can both have negative physical and mental health impacts.
The study published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior was based on more than 500 people aged between 70 and 103 years.
Overall, the risk of dying was 37 per cent lower for grandparents who cared for their grandchildren compared with grandparents who did not provide any childcare. Half of the grandparents who cared for grandchildren were still alive ten years after their first interview for the study in 1990.
In contrast, about half of the participants who did not provide childcare died within the first five years of the start of the study.
Caring for friends and relatives also improved longevity. Half of those who provided support to friends or neighbours lived for seven years after the study began, whereas non-helpers on an average lived for only another four years.
CONTRIBUTOR: SHYLA JOVITHA ABRAHAM
