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In this edition of EmpowHER's "HER Week In Health" we'll learn how worrisome mothers might be affecting their child's development by disrupting their sleep during the night, why women have more knee injuries than men, and how some middle schoolers are already showing signs of skin cancer.
Hi, I’m Bailey Mosier. This is your EmpowHER HER Week in Health.
Sad or worrisome mothers tend to disrupt their child’s sleep during the night and in this week’s edition, we’ll learn how doing so may be a detriment to their development. We’ll also learn why women have more knee injuries than men and that middle schoolers already show signs of UV exposure that could lead to skin cancer later in life.
Pennsylvania State University researchers conducted home visits with 45 mothers and their infants between the ages of 1 month and 2 years over one week to collect information about depression symptoms among the mothers and infants' quality of sleep.
They found that mothers with more symptoms of depression interfered with infants' sleep. The depressed mothers were likely to pick up babies who were sleeping because they, themselves, sought emotional comfort.
This isn’t healthy behavior to get babies in the habit of, because sleep problems can have a negative effect on various aspects of development, including emotional, behavioral and academic functioning.
We’ve heard it before and we’re telling you again: women are more prone to knee injuries than men. But what we didn’t already know is that it may have something to do with differences in our nervous systems.
Oregon State University researchers suggest women have more knee injuries than men not simply because of differences in muscular and skeletal structure – but because males and females also differ in the way they transmit the nerve impulses that control muscle force.
The scientists found that men control nerve impulses like those of a sprinter – explosive muscle usage – while the nerve impulses of women are more similar to those of a distance runner.
This is one of the first studies to look at how the nervous system impacts knee injuries and more studies like this one may lead to improved types of training and exercises that should reduce injury.
Researchers from the University of Colorado Cancer Center in Denver found that middle schoolers already showed evidence of UV exposure that could raise their risk for melanoma later in life.
The team analyzed 585 boys and girls who were born in 1998, and were 11 or 12 at the study's start. They used UV photography to unveil hidden signs of sun damage such as dark spots and freckling that are otherwise invisible to the naked eye. Boys and girls who had light-colored skin, blue eyes, red hair, and/or freckles did indeed show more skin damage on the UV photographs than those who did not.
For the first time, researchers confirmed that these UV photographs actually correlate with skin cancer risk later in life. These UV photos are scary looking and researchers hope by seeing them, they will get kids to think about sun safety in a more serious way.
That wraps up your EmpowHER HER Week in Health. Join me here at EmpowHER every Friday as we recap the latest in women’s health.
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