Boys are on a faster track to puberty reaching the milestone an average year earlier than their fathers' generation, a study has found.
A study in Bulgaria found boys today start to develop at 12 years old, while those in the 1970s began changing when they were aged 13.
The findings suggest that trends towards earlier puberty aren't limited to girls, who have already been shown to be developing sexually at increasingly younger ages.
When Janet Holmessuddenly started feeling dizzy, sweaty and had headaches, she just put it down to flu. The former mayor of Wakefield, West Yorkshire, also had a terrible pain just below her shoulder blades.
But because she’d just been walking with her husband on a bitter December morning— it was minus 3c— she assumed this was down to the cold.‘So I took two aspirins and went to bed with a hot water bottle to try to warm up.’
But when she got up the next morning, Janet felt a crushing pain in her chest which went through to her back.
Your head is full of important organs and structures, so problems around it can be worrying.
Luckily, most are harmless and will go away by themselves, but some can indicate serious conditions.
Three years ago, at the age of 61, former Pan's People dancer Babs Powell awoke with an unusual feeling of stiffness in her hips and strange flu-like symptoms.
For a woman who only six years before had sailed around the world and was just about to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, this was not an ailment she anticipated.
A teenager has realised her dream of becoming a model - just three years after a horrific car crash left her with a broken back.
Marita Davies, 19, was in a wheelchair for a year and had to learn to walk after she suffered terrible injuries as a passenger in car driven by a drunk driver.
The vehicle crashed into a lamp-post, which crushed her leg and broke her back on New Year's Eve in 2007.
Scientists found pregnant women who lived near major roads had a far higher risk of giving birth to a preterm baby compared to those residing in quieter areas
Women living near busy major roads are more likely to give birth prematurely, a study has found.
Study author Dr Takashi Yorifuji said air pollution and the noise from the traffic could be to blame although it was too early to make definite links.
The team from the Okayama Graduate School of Medicine studied more than 14,000 babies born between 1997 and 2008 in Shizuoka, about 94 miles west of Tokyo.
They obtained detailed records on each pregnancy and how close to major roads the mothers lived.
They found 15 per cent of women living within 650ft a major road gavebirth before 37 weeks, compared to 10 per cent of those living furtheraway. A normal pregnancy is 40 weeks.
Other factors have been tied to preterm birth as well, such as age,job, and smoking. But even after accounting for those, the researchteam found a 50 per cent increase in preterm births among women livingnext to highly trafficked thoroughfares.
These women also had a higher risk of delivering before 32 and 28weeks. Very premature births carry an especially heavy public healthburden.
'Air pollution is considered to be a potentially important risk factor of preterm births,' Dr Yorifuji said.
'We found a higher risk in housewives than outside workers, and housewives would probably spend more time at home during their pregnancy, and reflect more accurate exposure,' he added.
Women living close to busy roads also had about double the risk of both high blood pressure and early rupture of the membranes surrounding the foetus, both potential causes of prematurity.
The findings seem to support previous studies linking air pollution to high blood pressure and inflammation, which could lead to premature rupture of the membranes.
'Everybody always worries that it's not really living by busy roadways, but that it's other things that makes these mothers different,' said Beate Ritz of the University of California, Los Angeles, who reviewed the study, published in the journal Epidemiology.
'But after all the adjustments, the effect was still there,' she said.
So what should a pregnant woman do if she lives near a motorway?
Dr Yorifuji recommended that a pregnant woman who can't avoid living near a major road might want to reduce the time she is active outside, along with cutting out smoking and improving her diet.
A diet rich in oily fish could hold the key to preventing blindness among thousands of the elderly, research has found.
The omega-3 group of fatty acids, found in oily fish such as salmon, mackerel and fresh tuna, may help protect against the most common form of sight loss among older people, it suggests.
Scientists studying the diets of adults over the age of 65 found those who regularly ate seafood were far less likely to develop age-related macular degeneration, which is caused by the death of cells in the retina.
