Married people are twice as likely to become obese than their single counterparts, scientists claim.

Greek researchers found that married couples were more likely to become fat due to their significantly changed lifestyle as they "let themselves go".

Married men are three times as likely to suffer obesity while married women are twice as likely to have weight problems, it found.

Mathematical flair, musical ability or a way with words have come to be thought of as innate talents or, biologically speaking, in our genes. But now David Shenk, the American writer on genetics, asks people to think again.

Stepping into the nature v nurture fray, he argues that the case for genetic predisposition has been vastly overstated and that this view is causing us to overlook our potential. "There is a profound misunderstanding about what great achievements are all about. Our genes don't limit us to mediocrity or worse than mediocrity," he says.

In his new book The Genius in All of Us, which is drawing comparisons to the work of the Canadian pop sociologist Malcolm Gladwell, Shenk describes an emerging view that far from being a static blueprint, our DNA is open to continual influence by external factors.

'Bomb pulse' in grapes harvested since atmospheric tests can be dated to within a year

A trace of Bikini atoll could join hints of black cherry and complex citrus notes in the sommelier's lexicon for describing fine wines, research has suggested.

Harmless amounts of radioactive carbon have been found in wines made from grapes harvested since the last atmospheric atomic bomb tests were carried out in the 1960s.

But the "bomb pulse" of radioactive carbon lingering in the alcohol of wines produced since could be a good thing for wine dealers and collectors.

Scientists have been able to pinpoint a wine's vintage to within a year by analysing the levels of radioactive carbon in the wine, a technique they say could help detect fraudulent attempts to repackage cheap plonk as a high-end tipple.

Children with insomnia and shorter sleep duration had impaired modulation of heart rhythm during sleep, Pennsylvania researchers reported at the American Heart Association's 50th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention.

In a study of young children, researchers showed that insomnia symptoms were consistently associated with impaired heart variability measures. They also found a significant but less consistent pattern with shortened sleep duration and decreased heart rate variability.

Heart rate variability is the beat-to-beat variations of heart rate. In a healthy person, beat-to-beat intervals change slightly in response to automatic functions like breathing.

A look at some of the principles of critical thinking.

University of Michigan (U-M) Medical School scientists have found a potent substance that could block the sexual transmission of HIV, the virus believed to cause AIDS. This HIV preventative isn't a potent new drug or chemical-laden vaccine. Instead, it's a natural substance derived from a popular, inexpensive fruit - bananas.

In their study, just published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the researchers noted that HIV/AIDS remains a world-wide epidemic. "HIV is still rampant in the U.S. and the explosion in poorer countries continues to be a bad problem because of tremendous human suffering and the cost of treating it," study senior author David Marvovitz, M.D., professor of internal medicine at the U-M Medical School, said in a statement to media.

Bottom line: new ways of stopping the spread of HIV are desperately needed. In fact, the rate of new HIV infections is currently outpacing the rate of new patients receiving Big Pharma's expensive anti-retroviral drugs by 2.5 to 1. And while the medical establishment has pushed the idea of an AIDS vaccine for decades, an effective vaccine remains elusive. However, lectins, which are naturally occurring chemicals in plants, could hold the key to fighting HIV/AIDS because they are able to stop the chain of reactions that lead to a variety of infections, including HIV.

Using pesticides in the home may significantly increase women's risk of developing autoimmune disorders, according to a study conducted by researchers from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Rheumatology in Philadelphia.

Although the study was not set up to prove that insecticides directly caused the disorders, the researchers did control for all other known risk factors, and none appeared to play a role.

"It's hard to envision what other factors might explain this association," lead researcher Christine Parks said.

In autoimmune diseases such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, the body's own immune system attacks some other part of the body. Previous research has shown that women exposed to agricultural pesticide use are at a higher risk of developing both rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. Women not living on farms, however, tend to be exposed to much lower doses of the chemicals, even if they use them in the home.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Commission (EC) have been working on establishing dosage limits on vitamins and supplements within the European Union (EU) using flawed toxicology risk assessment methods to make such determinations. A recent paper published in the journal Toxicology exposes the approach as "fatally flawed," citing the junk science being used to try to limit access to effective doses of nutritional supplements.

Robert Verkerk PhD, lead author of the article and scientific and executive director of the Alliance for Natural Health (ANH) International, has been working for years to explain to various European and international authorities the illogic of using toxicologic risk analysis to assess proper nutrient dosages. His paper in Toxicology is his most extensive and thorough critique thus far.

The Codex Alimentarius Commission, created jointly by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations back in 1963 to establish a world food code, established its guidelines for vitamin and mineral supplements back in 2005. Though not technically enforceable, especially in nations like the U.S. where such provisions would be wholly unconstitutional, the guidelines suggest establishing upper safe limits on vitamin and mineral supplements using the same toxicologic risk assessment methods used on dangerous toxins like mercury and lead.

The pesticide chlorpyrifos is associated with delays in the physical and mental development of young children, a new study shows.

The product is banned in U.S. households but is widely used as an agricultural pesticide on fruits and vegetables. The agricultural use of chlorpyrifos is currently under review by the Environmental Protection Agency.

This study included 266 children in low-income areas of the South Bronx and Northern Manhattan in New York City. Chlorpyrifos was commonly used in these neighborhoods until it was banned for household use in 2001.

The researchers found that a high level of exposure to the pesticide (greater than 6.17 pg/g in umbilical cord blood at the time of birth) was associated with a 6.5-point decrease in the Psychomotor Development Index score and a 3.3-point decrease in the Mental Development Index score in 3-year-old children.

Now that celiac disease has been allowed official entry into the pantheon of established medical conditions, and gluten intolerance is no longer entirely a fringe medical concept, the time has come to draw attention to the powerful little chemical in wheat known as 'wheat germ agglutinin' (WGA) which is largely responsible for many of wheat's pervasive, and difficult to diagnose, ill effects. Not only does WGA throw a monkey wrench into our assumptions about the primary causes of wheat intolerance, but due to the fact that WGA is found in highest concentrations in "whole wheat," including its supposedly superior sprouted form, it also pulls the rug out from under one of the health food industry's favorite poster children.

Below the radar of conventional serological testing for antibodies against the various gluten proteins and genetic testing for disease susceptibility, the WGA "lectin problem" remains almost entirely obscured. Lectins, though found in all grains, seeds, legumes, dairy and our beloved nightshades: the tomato and potato, are rarely discussed in connection with health or illness, even when their presence in our diet may greatly reduce both the quality and length of our lives.

Although significant progress has been made in exposing the dark side of wheat over the past decade, gluten receives a disproportionate share of the attention. Given that modern bread wheat (Triticum Aestivum) is a hexaploid species containing three distinct sets of chromosomes capable of producing well over 23,000 unique proteins, it is not surprising that we are only now beginning to unravel the complexities of this plant's many secrets.¹ What is unique about the WGA glycoprotein is that it can do direct damage to the majority of tissues in the human body without requiring a specific set of genetic susceptibilities and/or immune-mediated articulations. This may explain why chronic inflammatory and degenerative conditions are endemic to wheat-consuming populations even when overt allergies or intolerances to wheat gluten appear exceedingly rare. The future fate of wheat consumption, and by implication our health, may depend largely on whether or not the toxic qualities of WGA come to light in the general population.