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For Taller Children, Drink Milk While Pregnant

We're told not to smoke or drink while we're pregnant, run marathons (though some do), or decide to take up skydiving.  But did you know that milk is now another problem, too? Here's the deal.  Milk drinking is tied to height.  According to The New York Times, a new study suggests that the amount of milk a pregnant woman drinks may affect the adult height of her adult offspring. After adjusting for the mother's height, weight, BMI and other factors, researchers found that mothers who drank more than five ounces a milk a day had bigger babies, Nicholas Bakalar reports. By age 20, children whose mothers drank five ounces or more a day were a half-inch taller than those of mothers who did not. A team of scientists tracked babies born in the late ‘80s, and found that their height during adolescence was directly related to how much milk their mothers consumed when they were in the womb.  Another study found that drinking more milk raised babies' IQ (because of the ...

Tall, and Female? You May Be at Higher Risk for Cancer

It's no joke.  Scientists are discovering that post-menopausal women who are tall see their risk of cancer increase with their height. Tara Parker-Pope at the NYT writes," Among nearly 145,000 women between the ages of 50 and 79, researchers found that height was more strongly associated with cancer than such established risk factors as obesity." Don't panic if you're tall.  It's not your height itself that's the risk factor. It's that height “should be thought of as a marker for one or more exposures that influence cancer risk, rather than a risk factor itself," according to Parker-Pope, referencing the new study authors. In other words, it's more about your hormones -- and what contributes to growth -- than height itself.  " Cancer involves the uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in processes having to do with growth, so it follows that hormones or other growth factors that influence height may also influence cancer risk, Geo...