American researchers have found that too much of sleep is as dangerous as too little for females. They stated that sleeping for seven hours or less considerably increases women’s heart disease risk and, on the other hand, those who sleep nine hours or more are at as much risk as the chronically sleep deprived.

In the study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, more than 70,000 nurses aged between 45 and 65 were asked in 1986 how much sleep they usually managed during 24 hours.

Compared to women who slept for eight hours daily, those who slept only five hours were at 45 per cent higher risk of heart attacks. But even those who slept seven hours had nine per cent more heart problems than the eight-hour sleepers. At the other extreme, those with nine or more hours per day had 38 per cent higher heart disease risk, reports The Sydney Morning Herald.

Excessive sleepiness was linked to sleep apnoea, in which the sleeper is starved of oxygen-another heart disease risk factor.

If a University of Edinburgh study is to be believed, women’s eggs may be twice as vulnerable to radio-therapy as doctors had earlier thought.

"This implies that even women receiving a fraction of a standard dose of abdominal, pelvic or total-body irradiation could be left infertile or an earlier menopause," said Hamish Wallace in a report in nature.com. "Almost any radiation will knock out their ovaries," he warned.

A new study suggests that brief exposures to pure oxygen not only help chronic and other hard-to-heal wounds heal completely, such exposures also help wounds heal faster.

Surgical scientists at the Ohio State University, USA used topical oxygen therapy to treat 30 patients with a total of 56 wounds. The therapy required placing a bag containing pure oxygen over the wound for 90 minutes a day. More than two-thirds of the difficult wounds healed with the oxygen treatment alone.

When parents lighten up, kids follow

When adults want to lose weight, they often revamp their eating and exercise habits by choosing healthier foods and being more active. But losing weight is trickier for children and adolescents who have to eat what their parents buy or their schools serve and do the sports and activities that are available to them, say pediatric weight-loss experts. Weight-loss success for children often depends on over-hauling the family’s lifestyle.

Almost 65 per cent of adults in the US are either over-weight or obese; overall, 20 per cent to 30 per cent of children are either overweight or at risk of becoming so, say the latest government statistics.

Children with about 15 to 20 pounds to lose can do so by following a balanced low-fat, low-sugar diet and becoming more active; says Melinda Sothern of Baton Rouge. She recommends that families cut back on junk foods, increase fruit and vegetable intake, trim saturated fats (fatty meats and whole dairy products), reduce snacking, cut TV and computer time and increase physical activity. Sothern suggests:

l Make changes, gradually going from macaroni and cheese to whole grain pasta with tomato sauce. Instead of a baked potato with butter, try veggie pizza made with whole grain bread.

l Insist that children eat in limited areas of the house-either at the dining room table, kitchen table or snack bar. No eating in the car, in front of the TV, in front of the computer or anywhere else.

She says that when kids are allowed to watch TV while eating, they don’t pay attention and eat away too much.

Drinking too many caffeinated soft drinks may be preventing adolescents from getting a good night’s sleep, says a study. The more caffeine that kids had, the less they slept overnight and the more daytime napping they did, says Charles Pollak of Ohio State University Medical School.

In a study in Pediatrics, 191 students aged 12 to 15 consumed about 70 per cent of their daily caffeine in soft drinks, Pollak said. An additional 20 per cent came from coffee or tea, and 10 per cent from food or medications.

Eating fish as infrequently as once or twice a month reduces the risk of the most common type of stroke by almost half. Fish contains Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids that enhance blood flow and help prevent formation of the blood clots that cause most ischemic strokes.