Children's Health Issues

A study in the February 9, 2006 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine reports that there is a definite association between mothers taking certain antidepressants (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) late in pregnancy and the risk of their babies being born with a serious condition called persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn (PPHN). Read more »

The December 2005 issue of Pediatrics presents an important study that looks at reasons why women stop breastfeeding.

The study looked at data over 2 years (2000 and 2001) with the intent to discover:

1. If there are specific periods during which nursing moms are especially vulnerable to giving up breastfeeding. Read more »

One of the reasons why my wife and I decided to have a home birth was to ensure that our baby would go straight where he belonged as soon as he entered the world: to my wife's chest. It saddens me to know that providing newborn babies with immediate physical contact with their mothers is not always given the priority it deserves in today's health care system. Read more »

One of the most powerful ways of giving your baby a healthy start in life is by breastfeeding. The following are a few of the numerous physical and mental benefits of breastfeeding:

Just ran across an article on Yahoo News that provides some sad statistics on junk food in our schools.

The U.S. General Accountability Office reported yesterday that 9 out of 10 U.S. schools offer junk food like candy bars and soda to students that directly compete against school lunches.

To break it down, the GAO report indicates that 83 percent of elementary schools, 97 percent of middle schools, and 99 percent of high schools offered "competitive" foods for sale, foods that are not within the parameters of the National School Lunch or School Breakfast Programs.

To me, there are few health conditions that are more sad than depression, particularly depression among children and teenagers.

A recent study out of the University of Sweden indicates that depression among children and teenagers is strongly linked to the following psychosocial factors:

1. Being shamed and humiliated.

With tomorrow being the first day of school for many children around the world, I just wanted to remind all of you parents out there to have your children develop the habit of wearing their backpacks evenly over both shoulders.

This habit will help to prevent the development of a spinal curve from the uneven distribution of weight caused by slinging a backpack over just one shoulder. Young children in particular are susceptible to developing permanent curves because their growing spines are quite malleable.

The Center for Environmental Health (CEH) in Oakland, California filed a lawsuit on August 31, 2005 against manufacturers and retailers of soft vinyl lunch boxes that can potentially expose children to dangerous levels of lead.

The amount of lead found in soft vinyl lunch boxes is not enough to cause acute lead poisoning, but is enough to contribute to health problems now and in the future, the most common of which are: Read more »

Did you know that even on relatively cool days, the temperature inside a parked car can get hot enough to cause heatstroke? A recent study by researchers at Stanford Medical School found that the temperature inside of a parked car with the windows rolled up can rise an average of 40 degrees Fahrenheit within an hour. 80 percent of of this increase occurs within the first half hour. Read more »

Here in Canada, a cable channel called The Food Network just began showing a television series out of the United Kingdom, called Jamie's School Dinners. The two episodes that I have watched have been positively brilliant.

This television series follows celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver, as he visits schools around the country with a mission to change the way that the government and parents are feeding their kids. It was both shocking and sad to see Jamie ask a group of elementary students to identify various vegetables, only to have asparagus mistaken for onion and celery mistaken for potato. I thought that I was the only kid to have soda and chocolate bars for lunch.