Archive: February, 2012
Beth Wallace, Registered dietitian, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Growing up, my family always had orange juice in the refrigerator. Weekday breakfasts were a no brainer: oatmeal or an English muffin and orange juice. It was fast, easy, and pretty darn healthy. Never once did my parents stop and say, "Maybe the calorie content is too high and perhaps we should be more conscious of this." Juice was part of our morning … but not part of our whole day.
Today, it seems that juice has become a dirty word in the nutrition and medical communities. Juice gets some big-time blame for problems it never intended to be part of (diabetes and obesity are at the top of that list). Do I think that drinking one serving of 100 percent fruit juice is the cause of the obesity crisis? No. Do I think that the fluorescent pints of fruit-beverage/juice cocktail/punch may be a contributing factor to bigger waistlines? Absolutely. Why? Because American children are drinking too much, and much of what they drink is not the real deal (100 percent fruit juice).
The University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health asked parents how much juice their children drank daily. Thirty-five percent of families across all economic levels averaged two or more cups per day for children ages 1 through 5. That is at least twice the amount recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics for that same age group.
Anna Nguyen, Healthy Kids blog Editor
To provide you with the timely, credible, in-depth resource you need to raise a healthy family, we have been growing our panel of bloggers to include pediatric experts from around the Philadelphia region. Here is a quick look at our regular contributors, beginning with the editor. Stayed tuned for even more.
Sari Harrar
Moving from “kid” to “teen” isn’t easy. Everything is changing – their bodies, minds, emotions, friendships – making life feel out of control at times. Now, research from the Stanford University School of Medicine suggests that laughter can help kids negotiate this tricky passage.
Brain scans while 6- to 12-year-olds watched episodes of America’s Funniest Home Videos turned up something that surprised researchers: Even though a kid’s sense of humor is still developing, laughter "tickled" the same brain networks that light up when adults start guffawing. Developing these networks with regular doses of age-appropriate humor, the scientists suspect, could help them build the resilience they’ll need later on.
“Humor is a very important component of emotional health, maintaining relationships, developing cognitive function and perhaps even medical health,” researcher Allan Reiss, MD, who directs the Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research at Stanford, noted in a Stanford University report about the study. “In particular, we think a balanced and consistent sense of humor may help children negotiate the difficult period of pre-adolescence and adolescence.”
Gary A. Emmett, M.D., Pediatrics Professor- Thomas Jefferson Univ. & Director, Hospital Pediatrics- TJU Hospital
A few weeks ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration changed their recommendation for the HPV (Human Papillomavirus) vaccine for teenage males from “approved” to “recommended.” Translation: This important vaccine, once recommended for pre-teen, teen and 20-something young women, is now recommended for teen-aged and 20-something guys, too.
Here’s why:
The HPV vaccine is safe for males. I personally worked on HPV vaccine safety studies (full disclosure: I was compensated by Merck for my time). We have known for a while that HPV is safe in males – just as it is in girls and women. The only significant side effect is that teenage males will sometimes faint after getting a shot — but that seems independent of the ingredients in the shot itself. (Keeping young men seated for 15 minutes afterward reduces fainting risk.)
Sari Harrar
Three interesting articles from HealthDay you might want to take a look at:
- 'Active' Video Games May Not Boost Kids' Fitness looks at a study comparing physical activity among kids who were given physicaly demanding games for the Wii.
- As Youth Baseball Season Nears, Experts Urge Injury Prevention provides advice on keeping kids healthy and safe as spring sports come into view.
- Fruit Juices and Kids offers tips from the American Academy of Pediatrics on healthy levels of juice for your young ones.
Sari Harrar
Tanning bed use by teens is in the news again, as 18 states consider following California’s lead in restricting their use among those younger than 21. Back in January, the Inquirer took an in-depth look at how the incidence of malignant melanoma – a deadly skin cancer – has risen every year for the last 12 years in young women, keeping pace with growth of the tanning-salon industry.
Currently, 14- to 18-year-olds in New Jersey and Delaware are supposed to have parental permission for indoor tanning, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Pennsylvania has no restrictions, according to the National Tanning Training Institute’s state-by-state list. As winter turns to springtime, more teens may be considering indoor tanning as they get ready for prom season. I asked adolescent medicine specialist Rima Himelstein, M.D., a Crozer-Keystone Health System pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist, about tanning and teens. Here’s what she told me:
Q: What’s the health issue with indoor tanning and teens?
Sari Harrar
Parent alert! With innocent-sounding names like Monkey Dust, Purple Rain, White Rush and Vanilla Sky, “bath salts” may sound like something you swirl into a tub of hot water. But these outlawed designer drugs pack a dangerous double punch similar cocaine plus methamphetamines, researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University warned this week.
You’d have every reason to believe the bath-salt danger was over. After plenty of media coverage in 2011, these synthetic stimulants have been outlawed in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and many other states. But news this week shows that they’re still around – and may be even more dangerous than experts realized:
Aimed at teens and young adults, bath salts are still on sale: Just this week, bath salts were discovered in police raids at six Pennsylvania businesses in Berks, Centre and Schuylkill Counties. And these drugs are still sold online – where they’re also sometimes called "plant food," "party powder" and “insect repellent.” They’re usually sold in small packets, about the size of a moist towelette.
Stephen C. Aronoff
Today we welcome another regular contributor to the Healthy Kids blog: Stephen C. Aronoff, M.D., M.B.A., Waldo E. Nelson Chair, Department of Pediatrics, Temple University School of Medicine. Dr. Aronoff is a specialist in infectious diseases, and he gets started with one of the most common of all: the cold.
Who hasn’t had a child return from school early one afternoon with the complaint “I have a cold”? We all know what’s coming: Three to five days of coughing, sneezing, runny nose, fever and missed school. We also know that within a week or so, everything will return to normal. It may come as a surprise, then, that colds (also called acute upper respiratory tract infections) are the leading cause of visits to pediatricians’ offices and emergency rooms across the country. The cost for all of these visits runs into billions of dollars nationally — all for a disease that has no specific treatment and that will be over in about a week.
Colds raise two questions for parents of otherwise healthy children: “What can I do to make my child more comfortable” and “When should I seek medical care for my child?” Here’s what you should know:
Philly.com staff
Early CPR can triple the survival rate of a child or an adult who has suffered from cardiac arrest.
In this week's Healthy Kids Minute, Jared P. Caruso, chief of in-patient pediatrics at Bryn Mawr Hospital, explains how and when it can save lives. And, maybe most important, a demonstration shows how to perform chest compressions even if you don't have CPR training.
Sari Harrar
A mother’s relationship with her baby, kid or teen has secret health super-powers, a string of new studies says. I’m not surprised - are you? Moms everywhere – and anyone who’s been fortunate enough to have one – already knew this! Still, it’s great when science finds ways to measure the wide-ranging, long-lasting benefits of the caring, time, effort – and worry - that mothers put into raising their children every day.
Among the latest scientific findings about the “motherhood effect” on kids:
- Bigger brains. Elementary schoolers who were nurtured as babies and toddlers have a bigger hippocampus – a brain region crucial for learning, remembering and responding to life’s challenges. Researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis videotaped mother-child interactions, then returned a few years later to scan the brains of 92 of the kids. Nurtured kids had a hippocampus almost 10 percent bigger than those who weren’t as well-supported emotionally.
- Healthier attitude toward sex among teens. Teen girls who say their relationship with their mother is good were less likely to buy into media messages that recreational sex is OK, Belgian researchers found. (Oddly, it didn’t have that effect on boys who watched a lot of TV – but boys and girls who weren’t close to their mothers were more likely to endorse risky behavior.)
- A healthier weight. Toddlers who shared a warm, comforting relationship with their mothers were half as likely to be overweight as teens, according to a recent Ohio State University study.
- Protection from poverty’s health consequences. Children who grow up in poverty have a 40 percent higher risk for metabolic syndrome – body chemistry shifts that raise risk for diabetes, heart disease, stroke and even some types of cancer. But a recent University of British Columbia study found that a nurturing mom on the scene reduced the extra risk to zero.
- Less commitment phobia. Young adults whose moms were supportive in their toddler years had an easier time making a commitment in romantic relationships, report researchers from St. Olaf College. Scientists had watched how the moms interacted with their children at age 2. Trust and the stamina to work through relationship conflicts was higher for young adults whose moms had encouraged them as 2-year-olds, lower in those whose moms ignored or laughed as their kids tried to complete a challenging task while researchers watched.
One common denominator? Resilience. Kids with supportive moms seem to develop more of the heavy-duty brain wiring that lets them cope more easily with stress, the researchers say. But fathers, grandparents and other close caregivers shouldn’t feel left out. The Washington University scientists say their nurturing works similar wonders.
