There are already growing evidence which suggest that while you carry the same set of genes for life, the environmental aspects such as diet or even health of mother while you were in the womb, could affect the activity and the chances of getting certain illnesses later in life.

A research team from the Gladstone Institute in San Francisco focused on two genes and their role in cardiomyopathy. Cardiomyopath is an expanding and weakening of the heart muscle that plays the lead role in life-threatening heart defects in children and adults. One of the genes known as Six1 seems to play a significant role in embryonic heart development.

The other gene Ezh2 seems to have performed the job of turning off genes including Six2, when they are needed no longer. Their precise relationship has been tested by researchers by halting Ezh2 from functioning in the embryo and foetus at various levels during pregnancy, in this manner allowing Six1 gene to continue working for longer than normal.

They found that mice in which the gene was left active were born apparently normal and healthy, but in later life they developed the signs of cardiomyopathy. This suggested that though leaving Six1 switched on in human being might produce an apparently healthy baby, but it could be storing up heart problems for later in life.

The study analysis revealed that in a healthy pregnancy, Six1 should only normally be switched on momentarily during heart development. Dr Paul Delgado-Olguin, one of the team researchers stated when Six1 remains active for too long in Ezh2-deficient mice, boosts the activity of other genes that should not be activated in heart muscle cells such as genes that make skeletal muscle.

The enlargement and thickening of the hearts in mice over time ultimately led to heart failure. They are expectant that more work will disclose more about the roots of congenital heart problems in early life, added Dr Delgado-Olguin. The study is reported in a Nature Genetics.

According Prof Peter Weissberg from the British Heart Foundation, the research shows that a crucial step in normal heart development is the switching off of genes. There was the possibility thatcould be corrected, although it would be some years before such techniques could be used in humans.

The long working hours like shift working increased anxiety during recession and watching TV at late night, all had impact on night sleep. As a result the sleeping hours have reduced to two hours less than the old times and sleeping less has been associated with raised risk of hypertension or high blood pressure.

In a bit to verify how daytime might influence cardiovascular revival, a team led by researchers Ryan Brindle and Sarah Conklin, PhD, from Allegheny College in Pennsylvania, carried out an experiment on eighty-five healthy university students. The participants were divided into two groups. First group was given sixty minutes interval during the day when they have opportunity to sleep.

But the second group did not sleep during the day time. The study participants were asked to complete a questionnaire related sleep quality and cardiovascular reactivity task, relating to a complex mental subtracting exercise. The team measured the blood pressure and pulse rate of study participants at regular intervals all through the study.

It was fund that daytime sleep appeared to have a restorative effect with students reporting lower blood pressure during the post-activity period than those who did not take the afternoon sleep. Though, blood pressure and pulse rates increased in both group between baseline and the stress phase, during the recovery phase.

Those who had napped had significantly lower average blood pressure readings than those who had not slept. The overall results show that sleeping forty to sixty minutes during daytime seems to assist blood pressure recovery after a stressful event at work. Their findings suggest that daytime sleep may offer cardiovascular benefit by hastening cardiovascular recovery following mental stressors, explained study authors.

They added that further research is needed to discover the mechanism by which daytime sleep is linked with cardiovascular health and to evaluate daytime sleep as a recuperative and protective practice, especially for individuals with known cardiovascular disease risk and those with suboptimal sleep quality.

In a study survey that included the subjects aged between sixty-five and hundred and long term residents of Greek island of Ikaria. This land is known as land of longevity and a third person reach the age of ninety. These people suffer twenty percent less cancer and half the rate of heart disease as compared to western population.

The latest experts claim that Mediterranean diet supplemented with locally made honey and herbal teas that play key role. Researchers examined more than four hundred people with hypertension. By raising the load on the heart, high blood pressure results in rigidity of arteries and decreased elasticity that in order raises the chances of heart attack and stroke.

There was inconsistent proof about the effect of coffee drinking on heart health with several studies showing it provoked high blood pressure, explained the lead researcher Dr Christina Chrysohoou. But drinking coffee is a deeply rooted social tradition in Greek culture which made it essential to examine on this island of high life-expectancy, she added.

All subjected were evaluated for elasticity. It was found that fifty-six percent moderate drinkers of coffee who drink one and two cups a day had best arterial health and their blood vessels behave like young people. Moreover arteries of coffee drinkers were more elastic than others.

The team of researchers from the American Heart Association observed more than thirty-two thousand Swedish middle aged and elderly women to find the association between the amounts of high quality chocolate the women consumed and the risk of heart failure. They found that women who consumed an average of two serving had thirty-two percent lower risk of heart failure.

Women who consumed one to three serving per month had twenty-six percent lower risk but those who ate chocolate every day did not appear to reduce their risk of heart failure at all. The lack of positive effects among women who ate chocolate daily was possibly due to consumption of additional calories.

Excessive consumption of chocolate is unhealthy as it is a relatively calorie-dense food and large amount of it raise your risk of weight gain. But at the same time chocolate also contains high concentration of composited known as flavonoids that can lower blood pressure and protect against heart diseases, earlier studies have found.

The quality of chocolate eaten by the women had higher concentration of cocoa content. Higher cocoa content is linked to greater heart benefits.This is for the first time that long-term effects related specifically to heart failure have been shown, said Dr Murray Mittleman, study leader and director of the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Research Unit at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre in Boston.

He added, you cannot ignore that chocolate is a comparatively calorie-dense food and large amounts of habitual consumption is going to raise your risks for weight gain. But if you are going to have a treat, dark chocolate is probably a good choice, as long as it is in moderation.

The house bed can contain up to 1.5 million house dust mites. These bugs are very minute and nourish on scales of human skin and produce allergen that are easily inhaled during sleep. The warm and moist condition formed in an engaged bed are ideal for the bugs. But they are less likely to flourish when there is short of moisture.

Researchers have developed a computer model that can track how changes in home can reduce the numbers of bugs in the beds. They knew that bugs could only survive by taking water from the atmosphere using glands outside its body. Sometimes leaving a bed unmade during day can remove moisture from the sheets and mattress so the bugs would dehydrate and eventually die, explained Researcher Dr Stephen Pretlove.

Researchers put mite pockets into beds in thirty six houses to test their computer model and to investigate how daily routine of people affect the population of mites. Other building features like heating, aeration and wadding will also be changed to monitor how the mites manage. The research had possibility to reduce expenditure to treat the mite induced illness each year.

Their findings could help building designers to create healthy home and health care workers to point out environments most at risk from mites explained Dr Stephen Pretlove. House-dust mite allergen could be an important trigger for many people with asthma, but was notoriously difficult to avoid, told Dr Matt Hallsworth from the charity Asthma UK.

They took study by focusing on length of telomere which is the length of protective caps that are present on the ends of chromosomesthat carry DNA. When these protective caps get short it can cause premature aging and cancer also. Researchers measured the length of telomere in stroke patients to find any affiliation between omega-3 fatty acids level and change in length of telomere over time.

They found that increased amount of omega-3 fish oil in the blood can decrease the rate of biological aging process. Patients with high level of omega-3 fatty acids had longest telomeres while patients with low level of omega-3 fatty acids had shorter telomeres. Fish oil is primary source of omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 is also found in leafy green vegetables, walnuts and flax seed oils.

Omega-3 fish oil counter-checks oxidative stress which is caused due to cell damaging chemical reaction and it can make telomeres short. Fish oils can increase the production of telomeres that is an enzyme which gives length and repair the short telomeres.