Findings clarify genetic puzzle in heart condition that affects thousands of newborns each year.

Every year, thousands of babies are born with severely malformed hearts, disorders known collectively as congenital heart disease. Many of these defects can be repaired though surgery, but researchers don’t understand what causes them or how to prevent them.

Although genetic factors contribute to congenital heart disease, new research shows that about 10 percent of these defects are caused by genetic mutations that are absent in the parents and siblings of affected children, suggesting that new mutations that arise spontaneously—known as de novo mutations—might contribute to the disease.

“Until recently, we simply didn’t have the technology to test for this possibility,” said Richard Lifton, chair of the department of genetics at Yale School of Medicine.
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Eat your way to top form hair. Nutritional responses to preventing hair loss are simple common sense approaches to keeping you, your hair, and your scalp healthy and are beneficial for your health all round – a healthy body is more likely to have healthy hair than an unhealthy one. It is possible that hair loss can be slowed by a healthy diet filled with vegetables and fruits.The following nutritional requirements that can be sourced adequately from a healthy diet in most cases can be of help with preventing or minimizing hair loss

Iron:
This is an essential mineral, known as heme iron in animal food sources and non-heme iron in plant sources. Good sources of iron in your diet include: liver, beef, fish, leafy greens, fortified cereal, beans, and pumpkin seeds.Vegetarian women may experience a lack of enough iron more than other people. Read more

Don’t subject your hair to frequent, constant heating and drying procedures. Heat weakens hair proteins, no matter the gimmicks promising softness and shine, and constant heating and drying can lead to brittleness and fragility that causes hair loss that would not have occurred otherwise.

Minimize the usage of hair dryers, hot curlers, hot brushes, hair straighteners, hair fasteners, and chemical treatments and your hair will lastlonger. And watch where you put those heated tools; burned scalps can permanently damage hair follicles! Ultimately, natural drying is best for you hair, so aim to dry it naturally more often than drying it with heat.

Slow down on the dyeing. Never color your hair more often than 6 to 8 weeks and try for semi-coverage rather than full dyeing. When it comes to going gray, it’s a lot kinder to your hair to let it turn gray than to dye it. While there are a lot of well-meaning comments about not needing to look older than you are, this ageist “beauty before health” slant overlooks the value of having your hair at all! Read more

Hair transplantation is surgery that involves removing a narrow strip of hair-bearing scalp from the back of the head and using it to fill an area with thin or no hair. Most hair transplants are performed in the doctor’s office under local anesthesia.

To transplant hair, the surgeon first cleans the scalp, then injects an anesthetic to numb the area where a 3- to 4-inch strip of scalp will be removed. After removing the strip of scalp with a scalpel, the surgeon sets it aside and sews the scalp closed. This area is immediately hidden by the hair around it.

Next, the surgeon divides the strip of removed scalp into approximately 500 to 2,000 tiny grafts containing an individual hair or just a few hairs each. The number and type of graft used depends on the hair type, quality, and color as well as the size of the area where it will be transplanted. Read more