‘Don’t talk with your mouth full.’

The world’s longest health study, which has followed the fates of Brisbane mothers and their families since 1981, has found that teens stay slim when they eat with mom and dad. Dr. Abdullah Al Mamun and his team at the University of Queensland routinely surveyed 3,795 mothers and their teenagers asking about dietary and lifestyle habits. Despite the fact that family diets ranged from vegetarian to fast food, and only half of the families had active children, families that ate together had less weighty children than those that didn’t. The researchers surmise that when families eat together, parents have more control over what and how much kids eat. The study also found that thinking it important to eat as a family also reduced a child’s chances of becoming obese.

Financial AIDS

HIV patients of lower socio-economic status die more frequently than other HIV patients according to a study published in the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved. Dr. William Cunningham and his team at UCLA compared the mortality rates of 2,864 patients receiving HIV care from 1996-2000. They used variables such as wealth, annual income, race, and education level to ascribe patients to a socioeconomic class. Patients with no financial assets had 89 per cent higher mortality risk, and those with less than a high school education had a 53 per cent greater risk. Cunningham attributes greater mortality to the lower quantity and quality of health care received by individuals of lower socioeconomic classes, mainly because they cannot afford it.

Tsunami stoppers

A recent study in Science shows that mangroves helped protect a coast line from the ravages of the 2004 tsunami. Mangroves are one of the world’s most threatened environments. Using satellite imagery of the Cuddalore District of southeastern India, Dr. Faizal Parish, director of the Global Environment Centre in Malaysia found that areas with mangroves during the 2004 tsunami suffered much less damage than areas without mangroves. Although mangroves could not protect areas against total tsunami intensity, this study backs up previous experimental studies showing that 30 trees within 100 square metres stop less intense tsunami flows by 90 per cent. This is the first study to link coastal vegetation with tsunami protection and Parish believes this research could be applied to more common disasters like hurricanes.

-Chris Damdar

Sources: Obesity Research, Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, Science