For those who are looking for another reasons to give it up, here is the latest. Smoking, it has been found, could give you the painful disease, rheumatoid arthritis, when you get old. A study carried out by researchers in Liverpool found that people who had smoked 20 cigarettes a day for 40 years or more were 13 times more likely to have the disease than non-smokers. Environmental and genetic factors are also believed to play a role in the development of rheumatoid arthritis. The suggestion now is that there is a link between smoking and the production of rheumatoid factor, a chemical marker for the disease in the body. So, is that a reason enough? The choice is yours!

If a recent study carried out by German researchers is anything to go by, mothers needn’t worry about the frequent cold allergies that affect their children. Babies who get frequent runny noses may have a lower risk of developing asthma and other allergies later. The finding directly supports the ‘hygiene hypothesis’ which says that allergies and auto-immune diseases can be caused when our ultraclean lifestyles stop the immune system from being stimulated properly during its development. Sabina llli from the University Children’s Hospital in Munich and her colleagues looked at the prevalence of asthma in 1314 children born in 1990, and followed them until they were seven years old. Children who had mild virus infections such as a runny nose, two or more times in the first year of life were only half as likely to be diagnosed with asthma when they were seven compared to children who’d been ill once or less. "We think that repeated infections stimulate the immune system," says llli.

The number of cases registered for domestic violence in India as well as abroad is a serious point to ponder. According to new American research, it has been observed that the anti-social behaviour of violent people is not a side-effect of unemployment. Although it seems logical that the stress of unemployment could be a trigger factor in domestic violence, a study on 5,000 couples found that the stress of working in an unfulfilling job might be even more likely to cause violence. The study also found that, in a significant number of couples, the woman is as likely as the man to start a first fight - though, unsurprisingly, more women than men get hurt.

(courtesy : The Times of India