LIFE LINES.

Underage Drinking Legacy

The younger people are when they begin using alcohol, the more likely they will become alcohol abusers or alcoholics. A new study from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse shows that young people who begin drinking before age 15 are four times more likely to become alcoholics as those who begin drinking at age 21.

(National Institute of Health)

Violent Evenings

Violence on prime-time television has increased during the past three years despite efforts of policymakers to lessen the number of violent acts portrayed in entertainment programming. Even more discouraging, 40 percent of the violent acts are committed by characters who are portrayed as attractive role models, and in 70 percent of violent scenes the offenders showed no remorse and faced no penalty. Researchers say that the context in which television violence is portrayed increases the chance that viewers, especially children, will become desensitized to aggression or become fearful of harm in their own world.

(American Medical News)

Feeling Down, Then Out

Life getting you down? Watch out. Men diagnosed with depression are three times more likely to develop heart disease compared with controls of the same age. And while depression often leads to poorer health habits, researchers found that depression remained an independent risk factor for heart disease even after taking smoking, hypertension, and diabetes into account.

(British Medical Journal)

Nipping Smoking in the Bud

Programs to keep children from starting to smoke should begin in the early primary grades, not middle elementary grades, as previously believed. Researchers followed more than 400 fifth graders for three years, and by the end of the study 54 percent of the students had tried smoking. Anti-smoking efforts aimed at young children need to counter the influence of peers and parents smoking.

(Health Education and Behavior)

Bad Bounces

Backyard trampolines injured almost 250,000 children under age 18 during a six-year period ending in 1995, with the number of annual injuries increasing 98 percent during that same time. Soft tissue injuries, fractures, dislocations, and lacerations were the most common injuries treated at hospital emergency rooms, and annually more than 1,400 children required hospitalization because of a trampoline-related injury.

(Pediatrics)

Pressured to Remember

Controlling your blood pressure may help prevent memory loss as you age. A Swedish study of 999 men uncovered a connection between hypertension at age 50 and thinking ability 20 years later. Men with the lowest blood pressure had the most cognitive skills, while men with the highest pressures had their cognitive abilities diminished most.

(Johns Hopkins Medical Letter)

Obesity Causes Daytime Sleepiness

Even after taking into account sleep apnea and other sleep disorders, researchers report obese people fall asleep faster and sleep longer during daytime naps compared to a control group. This same group of obese subjects took longer to fall asleep at night and slept for less time than the controls. While the specific physical reasons for these sleep problems are unknown, researchers speculate that the cause could be a metabolic abnormality inherent with obesity.

(Archives of Internal Medicine)

Your Best Foot Forward

Women's fashion is undergoing a quiet revolution. A new survey reports that only one woman in four who works outside the home wears shoes with greater than a one-inch heel to the office. Fewer than 3 percent report wearing three-inch or taller heels. And it's the twentysomethings leading the shoe revolution. Only 16 percent of women under age 30 wear heels higher than one inch to work. High heels place pressure on the forefoot, and can lead to bunions, hammertoes, heel pain, and other foot problems. And pressure on the balls of the feet increases with heel height: three-inch heels create seven times more stress on the forefoot than a one-inch heel.

(Health and Fitness News Service)