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Teeth, or maybe I should say mouths, have been in the news lately.   First, vitamin D and cavities.  According to The New York Times, low levels of vitamin D in pregnancy are associated with the development of cavities in babies, researchers say. Children in the study had dental examinations when they were an average of one year old, and their mothers completed another questionnaire on  breast-feeding , introduction of solids and other health and behavioral factors, The NYT reports. "About a third of the women were deficient in vitamin D, 22 percent of the infants had deficient or thinning enamel and 23 percent had cavities," according to The Times. After controlling for other factors, they found that the lower the prenatal vitamin D level in the mother, the higher the number of cavities in the child. Defective enamel and prenatal vitamin D levels were both independent predictors of cavities. So the answer is clear.  Pregnant or planning to be?  Take...

We've all seen the commercials, the handsome middle-aged man taking his wife's hand and the next shot is of a slowly filling bathtub or, in the old days, a couple smoking side by side on the terrace with smiles on their faces. But medications like Viagra and Cialis are on the air all the time, as are ads for testosterone .  Now, while most men don't really need this hormone, did you know that men with truly low levels may suffer from sleep apnea?  And that sleep apnea can kill? Sleep apnea is a disorder that can happen to anyone but usually affects those who are overweight or obese. What happens is that, when you're sleeping, you stop breathing, as many as hundreds of times a night.  You don't know you're doing this because you're asleep, but it can hurt your heart, even over time cause heart attacks, and it can be a silent killer. According to the the NIH's National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, breathing pauses can last from a few seconds to...

OK, I admit it.  I snore.  Mostly when I have a cold, and I'm sure I snored when I was pregnant, which, a new study has found, leads to a higher risk for C-sections -- and smaller babies. I had a C-section and the doctors placed bets on just how big my baby would be.  Turns out he was only 8.15 (some had said 11 pounds), so I'm not sure that's always true.  But for some strange reason, snoring affects fetuses in the womb. "Chronic snorers (moms who snored before and during pregnancy) are two thirds more likely to have a baby that’s born below the tenth percentile for babies of the same gestational age (smaller than 90 percent of other babies the same gestation) compared to non-snorers," reports newswise.com. They are also more than twice as likely to need an elective C-section, researchers found. Now, I had a C-section because I was an older mom and apparently, we're the ones most likely to have one, out of the general pregnant population.  And it was s...

So it's true, what we've known all along.   Sleep better, look better.  According to a story at newswise.com, it's not just getting rid of the bags under the eyes (or, in my case, brown puddles), over time it actually has "shown specific improvement in facial appearance after at-home treatment for sleep apnea, a condition marked by snoring and breathing interruptions." Sleep apnea affects millions of adults – most undiagnosed -- and puts them at higher risk for heart-related problems and daytime accidents. Some people stop breathing as many as 120 times an hour. Researchers used a sensitive “face mapping” technique usually used by surgeons, and a panel of independent appearance raters, and they "detected changes in 20 middle-aged apnea patients just a few months after they began using a system called CPAP to help them breathe better during sleep and overcome chronic sleepiness." It stands to reason that if you're getting enough sleep, yo...

Have you had to move to another bedroom because of your spouse's snoring?  It's possible he (or she) has  sleep apnea , a period of not breathing during the night that can happen hundreds of times during the night.   Not only does this not allow the person to get real sleep, it can also kill him. Experts estimate that between 10 and 20% of the population who are middle-aged suffers from sleep apnea, where breathing is briefly interrupted or becomes very shallow during sleep. But here's where the death part comes in. Sleep apnea can lead to serious health problems over time, including diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and weight gain. And now they're even connecting it to Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Markers for the disease are present 15 to 20 years in people with sleep apnea, before the disease manifests itself, according to newswise.com. You just have to know what you're looking for. Strangely enough, markers for AD were only found in...