You & Your Family

As more immigrants crowd its waiting room, Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens--a borough that is home to 2.3 million people from more than 100 countries--is joining a growing number of hospitals in New York and across the country that are going beyond hiring interpreters and offering translated paperwork and are adopting practices intended to improve care for an increasingly diverse patient population. (nytimes.com)

The Institute of Medicine, the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, reported last year that more than a third of normal-weight women and more than half of overweight and obese women gain more weight than is recommended during pregnancy. Excessive weight gain in pregnancy, recent findings show, can result in bigger-than-average babies who are prenatally programmed to become overweight children--who, in turn, are more likely to develop diabetes, heart disease and cancer later in life. (nytimes.com)

Babies and children under the age of five getting less than ten hours of sleep at night are more likely to be overweight or obese five years later, a new study suggests. Researchers found that insufficient sleep at night may be a lasting risk factor for obesity later in life and that napping cannot replace the benefits of nighttime sleep, according to a study publishing Monday in the journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. (cnn.com)