If women needed another good reason to get the right amount of sleep for their good health, besides helping them fight arthritis, the perimenopausal interval in a woman's life appears to demand it, according to a British study.

Researchers discovered the anomaly while comparing the health of some 3,000 men and women without cardiovascular disease for any links between sleep duration and hypertension. Unfortunately, the correlation between a lack of sleep -- less than six hours per night -- and hypertension affected only women, not men.

Overall, women who skipped on their sleep were 66 percent more likely to battle hypertension than those who slept more than six hours nightly. Moreover, this problem was experienced more than two-fold among women who were transitioning into menopause than those who were already past their child-bearing years.

All the more reason to check out these tips for improving your waking health by getting more sleep. (By the way, none of the items on this extensive sleep checklist require that you take a drug.)

Journal of Hypertension December 25, 2009

Warwick Medical School (UK) January 11, 2010

Scientists may have discovered a safer and more natural way to cut a person's daily consumption of salt to a more manageable level merely by adding small concentrations of vinegar to processed foods, according to a new study.

This survey of some 40 young women examined how rice vinegar and rice black vinegar affected a patient's perception of saltiness. The addition of vinegar, concentrated with acetic acid, to a salt solution (based on the detection threshold of each patient) lowered the threshold level of salt detection "significantly," researchers say.

Interestingly, the reverse scenario -- adding salt to vinegar at half the detection threshold -- wasn't true. In fact, patients couldn't discern any change in their perceptions of vinegar or salt.

One day, these results may be instrumental in having a great effect on the average person's health, considering salt often "hides" in processed foods -- cereal, canned vegetables frozen dinners and soups to name a few -- and
can trigger hypertension.

Journal of Food Science, Vol, 74, No. 4, p. 147-153, May 2009

Food Navigator.com May 29, 2009