Close encounters in office

Offices are fertile grounds for rumours. They may range from casual leg-pulling to something serious that may subject you to stress and even a dip in performance.

Here are some tips to deal with them.

Confirm before taking action. Take some time before acting on it. You need to be sure whether what you have heard is true. Cross-check with more people, preferably the ones you trust the most.

Do a self-assessment. Sometimes your actions may have sparked off a rumour. For example, spending more time with your boss, going out with him too often for work that could have been done in office or taking too many liberties with the boss may have sent out the wrong signals. Take stock and take appropriate steps to ensure you're on the right side of office protocol.

Confront the people spreading the rumour. If the rumour still persists, identify the people behind these. Talk to them personally. Tell them what you have heard, the possible consequences it may have on you and try to convince them that what they think is wrong. Make sure your voice and body language do not give out a negative vibe. If the rumour is the product of professional jealousy or an inter-personal issue, then have an open conversation with the person concerned to resolve the differences.

Involve the boss if required. If you find yourself battling with this rumour beyond a point, involve your boss. Tell him how it is hurting you and you would want his help to stop this at once. If your boss can't help, try telling the HR personnel in your company.

Dr Sanjay Salooja

Bye-bye back pain

A chronic back pain that refuses to disappear? Blow off some steam.

People with chronic lowerback pain who kept tightlipped about harassment, experienced more tension in the muscles along their spine, according to a study in Psychosomatic Medicine.

And tight muscles hurt. So go ahead, get mad.

Wash up kids: There are killer bugs on your hands

Schoolchildren have hands full of disease-causing organisms, a study conducted in two major Indian cities found. A huge 61 per cent children surveyed had germs on their hands.

The most common of them was staphylococcus aureus, which causes food poisoning, respiratory and skin diseases.

Enteric bacteria like escherichia coli, klebsiella, enterobacter, proteus and enterococci, which cause diarrheal diseases, and Group A streptococcus, which is a potential respiratory and skin pathogen, were also found.

The study - done by scientists from Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Kolkata's KPC Medical College and Bangalore's Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences - involved 208 school children in Bangalore and Kolkata in the 10-14 age group.

Scientists took hand swabs of the students before mid-day meal time. The students were also asked questions on the practice of hand washing and the material used for that, hand washing facilities at home and school and the importance of hand washing.

"Their hands were contaminated before taking food. Although they washed hands before meals, they hardly used soap because of non-availability," a scientist said.

In the absence of water and soap for hand washing, it is not possible to inculcate the habit of washing hands in children, scientists said in the study published in the Indian Journal of Public Health. In addition, children should dry hands with clean dry cloth. Otherwise, the effect of hand washing is lost.

In the study, only 18 per cent of the students said their school had the facility for washing hands with soap while 79 per cent said the facility was not available. Some of the students did not respond to the query.

Around 86 per cent children said they washed hands before lunch, but only 21 per cent said they used soap to wash hands.

Contaminated hands play a major role in fecal-oral transmission of diseases.

Hands should be cleaned before, during, and after preparing food, before eating, before and after attending to an ill person, before and after treating a cut or wound, after using the toilet, after changing diapers or cleaning up a child who has used the toilet, after blowing your nose, coughing or sneezing, after touching an animal or animal waste and after touching garbage.

Violent relationships lead to bad parenting

Married or cohabiting couples who have been mutually violent during pregnancy are likely to have more trouble parenting as a team, a study reveals.

"This finding is helpful because working as a parenting team, is a key influence on everything from mothers' postpartum depression, to sensitive parenting, to the children's emotional and social adjustment," said Mark E. Feinberg, research professor at Penn State University and study co-author.

Researchers interviewed 156 expectant couples at three different times, once before the baby was born, again about six months after the birth of the child and a final time when the baby was approximately 13 months old, the Journal of Family Issues reported.

The interviews determined the degree of physical violence between couples prior to the birth of the baby, and how well couples were able to act as a team while parenting, after the baby was born, according to a university statement.

"The results suggest that working with couples to curtail, or prevent violence in their relationships before the birth of their child, may have positive implications for the development of co-parenting relationships after the child is born," said Feinberg, from the Prevention Research Centre for the Promotion of Human Development at Penn State.

Researchers reported that 29.8 percent of mothers acted violently at least once in the past year, while 17.3 percent of fathers acted violently.

Finding mothers to be more violent than fathers is not an uncommon discovery in average community samples, according to the researchers.

Home births riskier for first-time mothers

To-be-moms please take note: Women who opt for a home birth for their first baby are almost three times more likely to suffer complications than if they go to hospital, a landmark study has found.

The largest ever study, conducted by Oxford University involving more than 65,500 births in the UK, also found that up to half of first-time mothers were transferred to hospital while in labour from home and third from a midwifery unit.

However, it found that women having their second or third babies, who were classed as low risk, were just as safe at home or in a midwife-only unit as they were in a hospital unit with specialist obstetricians.

The research, published in the British Medical Journal, also found that rates of complications affecting the baby including stillbirth after the start of labour, the baby dying within the first week of birth, brain injury, fractures to the upper arm or shoulder during birth, and faeces in the lungs, were higher for first time mothers.

There were 9.5 such complications per 1,000 births for first time mothers having their baby at home, compared with 3.5 per 1,000 births to first time mothers in hospital.

There was no increased risk for babies whose birth was planned at units led by midwives, either ones that stand alone in the community or which are attached to a clinic, it found.

Prof Peter Brocklehurst, who led the study, said: "For every 1,000 women, 995 babies would have a completely normal outcome.

"These results should reassure pregnant women planning their birth that they can make informed decisions about where they'd most like the birth to happen, knowing that giving birth in England is generally very safe.

"There is an increase in risk for first-time mums planning home births, but poor outcomes for the baby are still uncommon."

Women, please note: Divorce could be in your genes

Women, please note -- men may not be always at fault in a divorce. The chances of a successful marriage also depends on a female's genetic make-up, so says a new study.

This is after researchers at Karolinska Institute in Sweden claim to have for the first time identified a female "divorce gene" that can predict a rocky marriage and identify women who may struggle to commit to their partner.

Women who inherit the variation of a common gene are less likely to get married in the first place as they find it harder to bond with other people, the 'Daily Mail' reported.

But if they do marry, they are 50 per cent more likely to report a troubled relationship filled with marital strife.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, partners of women with the gene are also more likely to report being unhappy, says the study.

According to the researchers, the gene affects how women process the "cuddle hormone" oxytocin, which is known to promote feelings of love and maternal affection.

Women produce oxytocin naturally, particularly during childbirth and while breastfeeding. It helps them bond with their baby. But if women cannot process oxytocin properly, they may not be able to bond normally with other people -- including their partners, friends and children, they say.

"We've found evidence that oxytocin can be involved in the regulation of human pair-bonding by showing that variation in the oxytocin receptor gene is linked to how strongly women bond to a partner," lead researcher Hasse Walum said.

In fact, the researchers have based their findings on an analysis of the DNA of more than 1,800 women and their partners. Each couple had been together for more than five years, and were either married or living together.

Women who were identified as carrying the variation of the oxytocin receptor gene, described as the A-allele, were 50 per cent more likely to report "marital crisis or threat of divorce". Men married to these women were also far less satisfied in their relationships, the study found.

How long will your love last

Are you in a relationship and want to know how long it will last? Just check the level of oxytocin or the 'love hormone' in your blood, scientists say.

Researchers from Bar-Ilan University in Israel found that couples who have higher levels of oxytocin in their blood stay together longer than those with lesser level of the hormone.

For their study, the team measured levels of oxytocin in people who had recently begun relationships. Six months later, the couples with the higher levels of oxytocin tended to still be together, while the others had split.

The finding suggests oxytocin, a hormone also involved in mother/infant bonding, plays an important role in the initial stages of our romantic attachments, the researchers said.

"These findings suggest that oxytocin in the first months of romantic love may serve as an index of relationship duration," they wrote in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.

The study also shows that at a biological level, the process of becoming attached to a new partner may be similar to the process of bonding with a new child, they added.

A previous study had found that a nasal spray of oxytocin could improve interactions between couples. The new findings show that such oxytocin-based treatments "may improve specific relational components among couples in distress", they said.

For their study, the researchers interviewed 60 couples in their 20s who had begun a relationship within the previous three months.

Members of the couple were first interviewed separately about their thoughts, worries and hopes for the new relationship, and then together to discuss a positive experience they had shared.

Blood samples were taken from the participants, as well as from 43 volunteers who were single.

It was found that those in new relationships had oxytocin levels that averaged nearly double those of singles. And for couples who stayed together, oxytocin levels remained stable over a six-month period.

In both singles and couples, levels of oxytocin did not depend on an individual's gender, body weight, height, smoking status, use of contraceptive pills or sexual activity.

Couples with higher levels of oxytocin exhibited more affection during interviews, such as touching and eye-gazing.

Such intimate behaviours may increase oxytocin levels and, in turn, increase a couple's emotional involvement in the relationship, the researchers said.

Elevated levels of oxytocin also have been seen in new parents, although the levels were not as high as those seen in couples in this study, suggesting the initial period of romantic love may induce the most intense oxytocin activity, the researchers said.

The researchers noted that as the people in relationships were not tested before they paired up, it wasn't clear which was the cause and which was the effect: whether the new relationship increased their oxytocin, or people with naturally high oxytocin levels are more likely to couple up.

In addition, it wasn't clear whether oxytocin levels in the blood reflect those in the brain, but studies suggest the two are coordinated.