A British health report has warned that adults with a large waistline are five times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes.

In its report, the Public Health England (PHE), an executive agency of Britain's Department of Health, said they encourage people to monitor their waistline and assess risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

According to the report, men having a large waist circumference of over 102cm (40 inches)are five times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes. Women with a large waist circumference of over 88cm (34.6 inches) are three times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, Xinhua reported.

Currently 90 percent of the adults with type 2 diabetes are overweight or obese, and the prevalence of both obesity and diabetes are on the increase, said PHE experts.

Being overweight or obese is the main avoidable risk factor for type 2 diabetes, they added.

According to Alison Tedstone, chief nutritionist at PHE, type 2 diabetes is a very serious public health issue which can have significant consequences, such as limb amputations or blindness.

The key to reducing your chances of type 2 diabetes is losing weight which can be achieved through a healthy diet and being more active, she added.

The report also revealed that deprivation is closely linked to the risk of both -- obesity and diabetes in Britain, with type 2 diabetes being 40 percent more common among people in the poorest communities compared to the rich ones.

A new study has found that young adults who were breastfed for three months or more as babies have a significantly lower risk of chronic inflammation associated with cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.

The research from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, shows that

birth weight and breastfeeding both have implications for children's health decades later.

The researchers used data from the US National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, including parent surveys, and blood samples providing measurements of CRP.

These findings held up in a series of sibling models, in which one sibling was breastfed and the other was not. Such models provide improved confidence in the results by implicitly controlling for genetic factors for elevated CRP.

"These findings underscore the importance of a preventive approach but not limited to prenatal health care and postnatal breastfeeding support," said Molly W Metzger, co-author of the study with Thomas W McDade, PhD, of Northwestern University.

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

If you wish to see your kids emerge as intelligent adults, start now to mind their reading skills. Researchers have found that early reading skills might positively affect later intellectual abilities.

"Early remediation of reading problems might aid in not only the growth of literacy, but also more general cognitive abilities that are of critical importance across the lifespan," said Stuart Ritchie, a research fellow in psychology at University of Edinburgh in Britain.

"Children who do not receive enough assistance in learning to read may also be missing out on the important, intelligence-boosting properties of literacy," Ritchie said.

For the study, researchers looked at 1,890 identical twins who were part of the "Twins Early Development Study", an ongoing longitudinal study in Britain.

They examined scores from tests of reading and intelligence taken when the twins were aged seven, nine, 10, 12, and 16.

The researchers found that earlier differences in reading between the twins were linked to later differences in intelligence.

Reading was associated not only with measures of verbal intelligence (such as vocabulary tests) but with measures of nonverbal intelligence as well (such as reasoning tests).

The differences in reading that were linked to differences in later intelligence were present by age seven, which may indicate that even early reading skills affect intellectual development.

The study appeared in the journal Child Development.

A recent study has revealed that television programmes running in the back ground have a negative impact on the children, during their play and learn phase.

University of Iowa researchers found that background television could divert a child's attention from play and learning and that non-educational programs could negatively affect children's cognitive development.

The team found a relationship between the content children were exposed to and their executive function, an important facet in learning and development.

Deborah Linebarger, UI associate professor, said that Children, whose parents created a home environment that was loving and nurturing and where rules and expectations were the same from one time to another, were better able to control their behavior, display more empathy, and did better academically.

In particular, Linebarger suggested the parents to be mindful what their children view on the tube, especially the content of a show.

Researchers said that among the impacts of background TV, it recruited kids' attention away from other activities, such as play and learning.

The study was published in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.

A new study has found that the puberty age of girls largely depends on which of the two parents' 'imprinted' genes they have.

The findings come from an international study of more than 180,000 women involving scientists from 166 institutions worldwide, including the University of Cambridge. The researchers identified 123 genetic variations that were associated with the timing of when girls experienced their first menstrual cycle by analysing the DNA of 182,416 women of European descent from 57 studies. Six of these variants were found to be clustered within imprinted regions of the genome.

Lead author Dr John Perry from the University of Cambridge said that normally, the inherited physical characteristics reflect a roughly average combination of our parents' genomes, but imprinted genes place unequal weight on the influence of either the mother's or the father's genes, it was found that one parent may more profoundly affect puberty timing in their daughters than the other parent.

He added that they knew some imprinted genes controlled antenatal growth and development, but there was an increasing interest in the possibility that imprinted genes may also control childhood maturation and later life outcomes, including disease risks.

Senior author Dr Ken Ong said that they were also studying the genetic factors to understand how early puberty in girls is linked to higher risks of developing diabetes, heart disease and breast cancer in later life, and to hopefully one day break this link.

The research is published in the journal Nature.