vanessaterritory: September 2007

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Lack of sleep may be deadly

Lack of sleep may be deadly, research shows
September 24, 2007 06:39:50 AM PST

People who do not get enough sleep are more than twice as likely to die of heart disease, according to a large British study released on Monday.

Although the reasons are unclear, researchers said lack of sleep appeared to be linked to increased blood pressure, which is known to raise the risk of heart attacks and stroke.

A 17-year analysis of 10,000 government workers showed those who cut their sleeping from seven hours a night to five or less faced a 1.7-fold increased risk in mortality from all causes and more than double the risk of cardiovascular death.

The findings highlight a danger in busy modern lifestyles, Francesco Cappuccio, professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Warwick's medical school, told the annual conference of the British Sleep Society in Cambridge.

"A third of the population of the UK and over 40 percent in the U.S. regularly sleep less than five hours a night, so it is not a trivial problem," he said in a telephone interview.

"The current pressures in society to cut out sleep, in order to squeeze in more, may not be a good idea -- particularly if you go below five hours."

Previous research has highlighted the potential health risks of shift work and disrupted sleep. But the study by Cappuccio and colleagues, which was supported by British government and U.S. funding, is the first to link duration of sleep and mortality rates.

The study looked at sleep patterns of participants aged 35-55 years at two points in their lives -- 1985-88 and 1992-93 -- and then tracked their mortality rates until 2004.

The results were adjusted to take account of other possible risk factors such as initial age, sex, smoking and alcohol consumption, body mass index, blood pressure and cholesterol.

The correlation with cardiovascular risk in those who slept less in the 1990s than in the 1980s was clear but, curiously, there was also a higher mortality rate in people who increased their sleeping to more than nine hours.

In this case, however, there was no cardiovascular link and Cappuccio said it was possible that longer sleeping could be related to other health problems such as depression or cancer-related fatigue.

"In terms of prevention, our findings indicate that consistently sleeping around seven hours per night is optimal for health," he said.

Reuters

Monday, September 24, 2007

Baby Meditation

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Brad Pitt & Jennifer Aniston Have a 'Deep Friendship'

Brad Pitt & Jennifer Aniston Have a 'Deep Friendship'

THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 06, 2007 05:30 PM EDT
By Kristin Boehm

Brad Pitt says he is still friends with ex-wife Jennifer Aniston – and handled their breakup the best way he knew how.

"Jen and I still maintain a deep friendship and have a lot of life together that isn't erased in any way," the actor tells V magazine of the couple's four-and-a-half year union, which ended in 2005.

"I don't know how better to have handled [the split]. My view was, this was no one's business in the end – at least in matters of the heart," he says. "The thing guiding me then was, you don't know how many days you have, and you need life to be everything you need it to be."

Despite the intense attention to the couple, Pitt says he and Aniston did their best to ignore the frenzy. "The most important thing about that time was for Jen and me to figure out if – how do I put it? – if we didn't want to go on without any outside influence. Is this where we got off? Have we taken this as far as we wanted to go?"

Adds Pitt, who now has four children with Angelina Jolie: "Those questions had to be answered before an attraction to Angie could be answered."

Of his relationship with Jolie, 32, Pitt, 43, recalls fondly their time together when he was in Canada filming The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which recently debuted at the Venice Film Festival.

"Angie was pregnant. It was a very nice time for us," he says. "We stayed out in the woods by a river. We were in a big log cabin. So personally, it was a magical time."

Joel Madden says He Will Marry Nicole Richie

Joel Madden Says He Will Marry Nicole Richie
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 18, 2007 02:45 PM EDT

By Kim Peiffer

Joel Madden says there is no need to worry – marriage to Nicole Richie is all part of the master plan.

"Obviously, marriage is in our future," Madden told Ryan Seacrest on his KIIS-FM radio show Tuesday. "I don't know when or where or how, but right now our priority is our family and is the baby."

The singer added: "That's all we've been thinking about. We are in love and are really happy."

Richie, 25, and Madden, 28, first announced on Good Morning America in late July that they are to become parents. "Yes I am. We are. I'm almost four months," Richie told the show's Diane Sawyer. The couple has been dating since earlier this year.

Meanwhile, the Good Charlotte frontman is not shy about his enthusiasm for impending fatherhood. "I'm excited. We are all really excited about it," he told Seacrest. "Its the best thing that has ever happened to us. It's awesome."

Do they know if it is a boy or a girl? "No, we are waiting. We don't even know. So right now it's an it. Which sounds wrong. We call it the baby. When we talk to it, it's a you," Madden said.

Madden revealed that the baby has already started kicking, and the couple is getting everything ready, including the nursery. "We've started it'," he said. "I already went to Target and got a stroller and a playpen."

Brother Benji Madden chimed in to say how impressed he is with the couple: "They are doing really good. They always know what stage they are at."

More Gossip..

Sexually Assaulted

THEY thought someone had dropped off a bag of books in front of their offi ce in Petaling Jaya Utama.
Instead, the sports bag contained the lifeless and nude body of a girl, aged between six and nine, who had been subjected to unimaginable horror.

A post-mortem at Kuala Lumpur Hospital last night found that she had been brutally assaulted. Traces of brinjal and cucumber were found in her anus and vagina.

The assault was so intense that it ruptured her abdomen, which probably caused her death.

The employee who found the bag, Cheng Yan Fong, 32, thought it contained books and brought it in.

“It was heavy but I thought nothing of it. Then I waited for my boss to arrive before asking him if it was his. That was when he opened the bag, and a leg fell out.” SHE had been brutally assaulted.

The victim, whose body was bundled into a bag and dumped in front of a staircase in Jalan PJS 1/48, Petaling Jaya Utama, had been sexually assaulted with foreign objects.

A post-mortem at Kuala Lumpur Hospital last night found traces of brinjal and cucumber in the anus and vagina.

Sources said the assault was so intense that it ruptured her abdomen, which probably resulted in her death.

The victim, believed to be between six and nine years old, was placed in a 1.2m-long sports bag in an upright position with both legs curled to her chest.

She was naked.

Those who found the body said it was clean. There were bruises on the neck and minor injuries on the legs but no traces of blood in the bag.

A woman in her 20s seen loitering in the area hours before the body was found may be able to shed light on the case.

Clad in a red top and a pair of black pants, the woman was caught on closed circuit television cameras hours before the body was found.

The camera was one of two installed by a workshop operator next to an office where the body was dumped. Police have seized the recordings and are analysing them.

Sources who saw the recordings said the woman was seen making her way down the stairs of an offi ce and entering a Perodua Kancil, driven by another person.

It could not be ascertained if the woman was carrying anything.

The identity of the victim has yet to be ascertained. Police did not find any missing person’s report which matched the victim.

Yeoh Huat Lip, 51, general manager of IMM Management Sdn Bhd, said the bag was found by a worker who arrived for work at 8.30am and brought it inside, thinking that it belonged to Yeoh since he had just returned from Singapore.

“I suspected there was something wrong when I caught a foul smell coming from the bag,” he said, adding that he and a worker had the shock of their lives when they saw a leg fall out after they unzipped the bag.

“I thought it was a prank, that it was a doll. But when I saw the fl ies and got a whiff of the stench, I realised it was a body,” he said.

The employee who found the bag, Cheng Yan Fong, 32, thought the bag contained books and brought it in.

“It was heavy but I thought nothing of it. Then I waited for my boss to arrive before asking him if it was his. That was when he opened the bag,” he said.

Petaling Jaya deputy police chief Superintendent Mohd Shukor Sulong said the victim had short hair.

“We are still trying to ascertain her identity,” he said.

Mohd Shukor said the case is being investigated under Section 302 of the Penal Code.

He appealed to those with information to call 03- 79662222 or the nearest police station.

More News...