Smoking - First class ticket to a heart attack!!!

Yes, you've heard the antismoking rant before. But there's a reason for it. Quitting smoking should top your list of things to do to avoid heart disease. And that's true even if the only time you light up is over mojitos with friends. Recent research shows that smoking between one and five cigarettes a day triples your chance of dying from a heart attack, and that it's even worse for women than for men. Smoking narrows arteries, raises blood pressure, thickens blood, and makes it more likely to clot — the classic recipe for a heart attack. This is especially true if you have other risk factors, like high blood pressure and high cholesterol, which together with smoking make you much more likely to get heart disease. You take birth control and smoke? You've just put another bullet in the gun. That combo raises blood pressure and can lead to blood clots, further increasing your risk.

While studies have shown that women have a harder time breaking the habit than men, there is encouraging news: A fall 2006 study from the University of Chicago shows that the prescription drug naltrexone — when used in combination with behavioral therapy and nicotine patches — boosted smoking cessation rates among women by 50 percent (though it made no difference in men). Naltrexone also reduced weight gain in the first month after quitting. Talk to your doctor about the drug.


Source: Womenshealthmagazine.com
Photo credit : themindofjustin.com

Men: your biological clock is ticking too :D

MEN who put their career before having a family should be aware that the ticking of the biological clock is as important for fertility in men as it is in women.
American scientists have discovered that genetic damage to sperm routinely starts to cause infertility in men as young as 35. The strongest biological evidence yet for a significant drop in male fertility in the late thirties is a warning to the increasing number of grey-haired fathers who are leaving it later to have children.

The popular worry that career women risk losing the chance to have children has long been supported by infertility research focusing on how the quality of women’s eggs deteriorates with age. Researchers from the University of Washington in Seattle have now provided the first firm molecular explanation for why childless career men should worry too. The chances of having a baby are reduced if the man is in his late thirties or forties.

The study examined the sperm of 60 volunteers aged between 22 and 60. All the men had healthy sperm counts.

they found that, whatever the sperm count, its genetic quality was closely related to age, with a cut-off point for serious damage of about 35.

Men in the older group had higher concentrations of sperm with broken strands of DNA, more acute levels of such genetic damage and their immune systems were much less efficient at getting rid of faulty sperm. The sperm of the older men were also less vigorous swimmers.

the findings cast new light on the often overlooked problem of male infertility.
apparently about a third of all infertility is male factor. “Male-factor" infertility is more prevalent than people think. It’s not generally in the public’s mind that male sperm quality does indeed go down with age, from, as we now see, the age of 35.”

Men concerned about their fertility should avoid activities such as smoking that may damage the DNA of their sperm. there’s nothing anyone can do about getting older so men who want to retain their own best capacity to father children should try to minimise contact with toxic agents and maintain a healthy lifestyle.


The findings do not suggest that most men who wait until after 35 to try for children will have problems, particularly if the man’s partner is in her twenties or early thirties. But the study does alert fertility doctors to another potential problem when older couples have difficulty in conceiving

Reference: the sunday times