STUDY: BEING A PARENT GOOD FOR HEALTH

PARENTHOOD SEEMS TO PROTECT
 AGAINST CATCHING COLDS: STUDY

www.doctorslounge.com - Parents are about half as likely to catch a cold as people without children, regardless of their preexisting immunity, a new study says.  Psychological or behavioral factors could play a role. The researchers said that unknown "psychological or behavioral differences between parents and nonparents" might help explain their findings. "We found parenthood predicted a decreased probability of colds among healthy individuals exposed to a cold virus," study leader Rodlescia Sneed of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and co-authors reported. 
For the study, the researchers examined information on 795 adults from three previous studies. Volunteers in the studies were given nose drops either containing rhinovirus, which causes the common cold, or a flu virus. After being exposed to the virus, about one-third of participants developed a cold. The study found, however, that there was a 52 % lower rate of colds among parents compared to volunteers who didn't have any children. This protective effect increased along with the number of children parents had.

And when parents didn't live with any of their children, their risk of having a common cold dropped even more - to 73 % lower than nonparents. The study is published in the July issue of the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. Parents were less likely to catch a cold regardless of whether they had protective levels of antibodies, the study authors noted in a journal news release. Being married had no effect on the findings. However, the risk of colds was not lower for the youngest parents studied, those aged 18 to 23. 
The researchers also suggested that being a parent may improve the regulation of immune factors that are triggered in response to infection. More research is needed, they said, to explain how being a parent affects the body's response to the common cold.  "Our results, while provocative, have left room for future studies to pursue how various aspects of parenthood ([such as] frequency of contact with children, quality of parent/child relationships) might be related to physical health, and how parenthood could 'get under the skin' to influence physical health," researchers concluded.

Being a parent can be good for your health, according to this new study. The more children you have the better your chance of escaping coughs and colds. Researchers have found that parents are 52 % less likely to develop a cold than those with no off-spring. The more children you have the strong the affect due to 'psychological benefits of parenthood'.  Our concept of gratitude to the parents and to our Heavenly Father should be based on unmotivated love, but we are still far from experiencing such a feeling.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US? 

The attribution of Parenthood to God must have some cause behind it. Him or her whom we call father or mother and who are adorable, we cannot worship, when, averse to God, we stay in the mother's womb; even after being born we cannot do so in our infancy or childhood. Rather we being their indulged pets treat them as our servants. ...  instead of worshiping them, we demand and accept service from them. ... Though with the growth of intelligence we show some efforts to serve them, generally this has its origin in a retributive sense of gratitude or dutifulness in return for the benefit received from them. ... 
The service of God or attribution of Parenthood to Him or calling Him as the Sustainer, Protector, Saviour, Affectionate, Gracious, etc., arising out of the sense of awe, hope, dutifulness or gratitude, all these originate from some motive or cause and, as such, are far from His service and worship arising from the natural love of the soul towards Him.

Śrīla Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thākura Prabhupāda :
"Colloquies with Foreigners"
Prof. Albert E. Suthers Interviews - January, 1929.
http://www.bvml.org/SBSST/cwf.html#7

Published by dasavatara das - "Vedic Views on World News"
http://www.vedicviews-worldnews.blogspot.com.ar/