Bad breath and poor tooth care
LOCAL doctors hope regular dental cleaning, increasingly popular in Shanghai, will help improve people's teeth.
Ginseng soup for some get-up-and-go
GINSENG is the root of a slow-growing perennial herb native to the mountain forests of northeastern China, the Korean peninsula, and the far eastern regions of the Russian Federation.
Apple keeps doctor away
LONDON - The old adage that an apple a day keeps the doctor away looks to have acquired an important scientific dimension. It might keep cancer away too.
Umbilical blood same as bone marrow
BOSTON - A new study of 2,165 blood and bone-marrow transplants in children has found that using a sibling's umbilical cord blood is less likely to cause the recipient's body to reject the donated material.
Facing death with dignity
THE mention of cancer seems a taboo for most cancer patients, because the disease used to indicate certain death.
Clay beads not 'plain Janes' of jewellery world
I USED to find clay beads dull and lacklustre compared with jewellery made with precious stones.
Look to winter fashion
SUMMER is still with us, but designers are preparing autumn/winter collections to be shown on September 26 to 28 at Shanghaimart for the China International Fashion Trade Fair for Casual and Career.
Dangers of later pregnancy warmed
LONDON - Despite the growing number of older mothers, Danish doctors advised women on Friday not to postpone pregnancy because the risks are still high and the chances of a successful outcome are poor. More than one fifth of pregnancies in women over 35 years old and over half in women over 42 end in miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy or stillbirth, scientists at the Danish Epidemiology Science Centre in Copenhagen said. "Our study shows an important increase in the risk of spontaneous abortion and other types of foetal loss among women aged more than 40 years and that the increase is already considerable among those in their 30s," Anne-Marie Nybo Andersen and her colleagues said in a report in The British Medical Journal. The researchers analyzed information on the pregnancies of more than 600,000 women between 1978 and 1992. They found the risk of spontaneous abortion rose from 8 per cent by the age of 22 to 84 per cent by the age of 48 or older. Chances of an ectopic pregnancy, outside the womb, increased from 1.4 per cent of all pregnancies at 21 years old to 6.9 per cent in women 44 or older. Stillbirths were also higher for older women. Zena Stein and Mervyn Susser, professors at the School of Pubic Health at Columbia University in New York backed up the Danish finding in an editorial in the journal. In addition to the risks of losing the baby, they said older pregnancies also carry an increased chance of multiple births, which can be dangerous for both mother and child. (Agencies via Xinhua)
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