Heena Sharma Blog

Couples who play board games or take a painting class together produce more oxytocin or ' love hormone ', which is associated with bonding and family cohesiveness, a study has found. The study, published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, found that men wielding paintbrushes released twice as much or more oxytocin as the level of women painters and couples playing games. "We were expecting the opposite -- that couples playing the board games would interact more because they were communicating about the games and strategies, or because they were competing, and with more interaction, they would release more oxytocin," said Karen Melton, an assistant professor at the Baylor University in the US. Researchers also expected that painting couples would be more attentive to the instructor and to the canvas than to their partners -- but instead, couples in the art class reported more partner-touching than those playing board games. "Typically, an art cl...

While it's a known fact that there are many physical and mental health benefits of breastfeeding for mothers and babies, according to the latest research, this might be due to genetic changes induced by breastfeeding. Dr Lester, one of the lead researchers said, "What we found is that maternal care changes the activity of a gene in their infants that regulates the infant's physiological response to stress, specifically the release of the hormone cortisol." " Breastfeeding was associated with decreased DNA methylation and decreased cortisol reactivity in the infants. In other words, there was an epigenetic change in the babies who were breastfed, resulting in reduced stress than those who were not breastfed," said Dr Lester. Read Complete Article Business Standard

Breastfeeding is majorly correlated with positive health outcomes in infants, but it might not be the causal mechanism. Researchers from the University at Buffalo found that the benefits of breastfeeding, reported in the vast majority of prior research, could be influenced by the mother's characteristics, such as what they know about health and nutrition. "It's important to understand that we are not trying to imply that just intending to breastfeed is what's leading to these health outcomes," said Jessica Su, co-author of the study. "What we found is that intending mothers had more information about nutrition and diet; they more frequently consulted their physicians; and had better access to information related to infant health than those moms who did not intend to breastfeed." Read Complete Article Article Source >> BS

Turns out, women who breastfeed their first child for five months or longer are more likely to have more children as compared to women who breastfeed for shorter durations or not at all. Cornell University professor of sociology Vida Maralani, with Hunter College professor Samuel Stabler, reported that women who initiate breastfeeding did not differ in how many children they expected to have before they started their families. Rather, the number of children women actually bear differs by how long they breastfeed their first child. Women who breastfeed for shorter durations are more likely to have fewer children than they expected, while women who breastfeed longer are as likely to achieve their expectations to exceed them. Read Complete Article Article Source >> Business Standard