Health : Health Buzz: Grandma Gives Birth to Her Grandson |
| Health Buzz: Grandma Gives Birth to Her Grandson Posted: 15 Feb 2011 08:50 AM PST 61-Year-Old Woman Gives Birth to Her Daughter's Child A Chicago woman gave birth to her first grandson last week. Kristine Casey, 61, served as a surrogate for her daughter, Sara Connell, 35, who had tried unsuccessfully for years to have a baby. When Finnean Lee Connell arrived via cesarean section, Casey became the oldest woman in Chicago's recorded history to give birth. "The surgery itself was uncomplicated, and the emotional context of this delivery was so profound," Susan Gerber, an obstetrician and maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, told the Chicago Tribune. Casey had not given birth in 30 years. Though it's difficult for older women to conceive and carry babies to term, Casey was successfully impregnated with the help of in vitro fertilization and other assisted reproductive technologies; about 6 to 10 percent of women older than 40 have children via IVF. Because pregnancy grows riskier with age, some fertility clinics limit the age of surrogates; at the University of Chicago Medical Center, for example, the cutoff is 55 years old. "It seems like an unquestionably loving and generous thing for a family member to do," Josephine Johnston, a research scholar at the Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute, told the Tribune. "It's a great story to tell the child."
Could Getting More Fiber Help You Live Longer? Hear fiber and you probably think of bran cereal, which doesn't exactly make you salivate. But new research suggests more fiber could equal more years. Analyzing data from nearly 400,000 men and women ages 50 to 71, researchers found that those who consumed the most fiber were 22 percent less likely to die from any cause during the nine years they were studied. Men were 24 to 56 percent and women 34 to 59 percent less likely to die of heart and infectious or respiratory diseases, according to findings from the National Institutes of Health's AARP Diet and Health Study, published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Why fiber reduces the risk of early death is unclear. Perhaps it's because fiber lowers levels of "bad" LDL cholesterol, improves blood glucose levels, reduces inflammation, and binds to potential cancer-causing agents, helping to flush them out of the body, says lead author Yikyung Park, a staff scientist at the National Cancer Institute. What is clear, however, is that participants only benefited when fiber came from grains, like oatmeal, cornmeal, and brown rice, U.S. News reports. Fiber from fruits, vegetables, and beans had no impact on death risk. "Whole grains are rich sources of fiber, but also good sources of vitamins, minerals, and other phytochemicals that may provide health benefits," Park says. And grains have powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties—another reason researchers say grain fiber is beneficial. [Read more: Could Getting More Fiber Help You Live Longer?]
10 Fiber-Friendly Food Swaps to Help You Lose Weight The Full Plate Diet is built on the notion that fiber is the key to weight loss. Eating 40 grams of fiber a day—rather than the 10 to 15 grams that most adults consume—the authors say, will keep you full and help you drop pounds without having to count calories. Whether or not fiber is the magic ingredient they say it is, the authors are correct that we generally don't eat enough fiber from whole-food sources like vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, and even nuts and seeds, U.S. News reports. Here are 10 food swaps the book suggests as a way to boost the fiber content of your diet. 1. Eat oranges instead of drinking OJ. A medium orange has 3 grams of fiber; the process that turns it into juice, however, strips all that out. (And the fruit has less sugar than a serving of juice.) 2. Opt for brown rice over white. A cup of cooked brown rice has 4 grams of fiber. But a cup of cooked white medium-grain rice has just 1 gram. If you're a sushi fan, ask the restaurant to substitute brown in pieces and rolls. 3. Choose whole-grain bread over white. A sandwich made from two pieces of whole-grain bread gives you 4 grams of fiber from the bread alone. White bread has none. [Read more: 10 Fiber-Friendly Food Swaps to Help You Lose Weight.] This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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