Children’s Health

Exercise can help kids stave off negative effects of maternal obesity

Researchers have found that off springs whose mothers were fed a high-fat diet during pregnancy and nursing were able to stave off some of the detrimental health effects of obesity by exercising during their adolescence.

It was found that even though the rat offspring weighed the same as their sedentary counterparts, the exercising rats had fewer fat deposits and their brains were better able to respond to a hormone known to suppress the appetite, long after they stopped running on their exercise wheels.

Because mammals (including rats and humans) share much of their biology, the findings suggest that childhood exercise might help mitigate some of the risks that human children of obese parents are biologically primed to follow in their parents’ footsteps and to develop diabetes and other obesity-related disorders.

“Just three weeks of exercise early in life had a persistent effect on the satiety centres of the brains of these rat pups,” study’s lead author Kellie L. K. Tamashiro, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said. “If we can find a way to take advantage of th

at phenomenon in humans that would be great, because preventing obesity is probably going to be much easier to do than reversing it.”

Tamashiro and her colleagues fed pregnant rats a high-fat diet and continued that diet while they were nursing their pups. The animals were weaned on a healthier, standard low-fat diet and at four weeks of age, the equivalent of rodent early adolescence, some were given free access to running wheels in their cages, while the others remained sedentary.

To determine the impact of the exercise on appetite, at 14 weeks of age, the rats’ brains were injected with the appetite-suppressing hormone leptin. Those that had exercised weeks before ate less, while the sedentary rats showed no differences in their appetites.

The study is published in the American Journal of Physiology

Too much exposure to TV can stall preschoolers’ cognitive development

A new study has suggested that preschoolers who have a TV in their bedroom and are exposed to more background TV have a weaker understanding of other people’s beliefs and desires.

Amy Nathanson, Molly Sharp, Fashina Alade, Eric Rasmussen, and Katheryn Christy, all of The Ohio State University, interviewed and tested 107 children and their parents to determine the relationship between preschoolers’ television exposure and their understanding of mental states, such as beliefs, intentions, and feelings, known as theory of mind.

Parents were asked to report how many hours of TV their children were exposed to, including background TV. The children were then given tasks based on theory of mind. These tasks assessed whether the children could acknowledge that others can have different beliefs and desires, that beliefs can be wrong, and that behaviours stem from beliefs.

The researchers found that having a bedroom TV and being exposed to more background TV was related to a weaker understanding of mental states, even after accounting for differences in performance based on age and the socioeconomic status of the parent.

However, preschoolers whose parents talked with them about TV performed better on theory of mind assessments.

“When children achieve a theory of mind, they have reached a very important milestone in their social and cognitive development. Children with more developed theories of mind are better able to participate in social relationships. These children can engage in more sensitive, cooperative interactions with other children and are less likely to resort to aggression as a means of achieving goals,” lead researcher Nathanson said.

The study is published in the Journal of Communication.

Source: Deccan Chronicle

Steroid injections for premature babies could raise ADHD risk

Injections are vital to baby’s survival but could increase likelihood of behavioral and emotional problems

Steroid injections commonly given to pregnant women due to give birth prematurely may raise the risk of the child developing behavioral problems such as ADHD, researchers have found.

The injections, which mimic the hormone cortisol, are essential in helping the baby’s lungs develop and lower the risk of life-threatening breathing problems caused by early birth.

But the steroids, known as glucocorticoids, may also increase the likelihood of the child developing emotional and behavioral disorders, researchers said.

They said the study should not scare women into avoiding the crucial steroid injections, but claimed their findings support a theory that cortisol released naturally due to stress during pregnancy can raise the risk of ADHD.

The scientists, from Imperial College London and the University of Oulu, Finland, compared 37 children whose mothers were given glucocorticoids before going into labor, and compared them against 185 children who were born at the same gestational age but whose mothers did not have steroid treatment.

Their findings, published in the PLOS ONE journal, showed that those whose mothers had been treated performed worse on average in general mental health tests at ages eight and 16, and were more likely to have ADHD symptoms.

The researchers said the benefits of the steroids far outweigh the potential harms, and that only a small proportion of children with treated mothers had been affected.

But they said their study could shed light on previous research showing that stress during pregnancy can harm mental development in the child.

The findings support the idea that cortisol, a hormone produced naturally in response to stress, causes this link because it is extremely similar to glucocorticoids, they explained.

Prof Alina Rodriguez, senior author of the study, said: “There are a lot of studies that have found links between stress in pregnancy and effects on children’s mental health, especially ADHD, and this might be related to cortisol.

“Synthetic glucocorticoids mimic the biological reaction when the mother is stressed, so we wanted to see if babies who were exposed to this treatment are affected similarly in terms of mental health outcomes.”

Source: Telegraph

Rotavirus Vaccination Protect Children Against Seizures

A new study suggests an additional—and somewhat surprising—potential benefit of vaccinating children against rotavirus, a common cause of diarrhea and vomiting. Besides protecting kids from intestinal illness caused by rotavirus, immunization may also reduce the risk of related seizures, according to findings published in Clinical Infectious Diseases and available online.

Lead study author Daniel C. Payne, PhD, MSPH, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and colleagues from CDC and other institutions carried out a retrospective analysis that included roughly a quarter of a million U.S. children born between March 2006 and November 2009. All were enrolled in the Vaccine Safety Datalink, a nationwide project that collects data for vaccine safety research, and included 186,502 children fully immunized against rotavirus (74.4 percent) and 64,099 who were not (25.6 percent).

The researchers found that children who were fully vaccinated against rotavirus had an approximately 20 percent reduced risk of seizure-related hospitalizations and emergency department visits during the year following vaccination, compared to unvaccinated children. “The protective association we found between rotavirus vaccination and seizures is another good reason for having your child fully vaccinated against rotavirus,” Payne says.

Although several mechanisms could explain the protective association, the most probable, the study authors wrote, is that “vaccination directly prevents systemic rotavirus infection, including extra-intestinal complications involving the central nervous system.” Seizures have been observed in children with acute intestinal illness caused by rotavirus: A large multi-center Canadian study from 2007, for example, estimated that 7 percent of young patients hospitalized with rotavirus illness experienced seizures.

The authors of this latest study estimated that rotavirus vaccination could potentially save more than $7 million in U.S. health care costs each year by preventing approximately 1,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 emergency room visits for seizures among young children. “Caring for children who have seizures can be expensive and emotionally taxing for families,” Payne says. “Seizures sometimes lead to painful procedures, medication regimens, trips to the emergency room, or hospital stays.”

The reduction in seizure risk the researchers found complements the already well-documented benefits of vaccinating kids against rotavirus—declines in doctor’s office visits, emergency room visits, and hospitalizations for severe diarrhea—noted Geoffrey A. Weinberg, MD, of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, in an accompanying editorial.

“Work such as this not only is interesting scientifically, but provides yet another reason to strongly promote universal rotavirus immunization,” Weinberg wrote. “In addition, the work provides us an opportunity to reflect on the fact that sometimes, unexpected effects of vaccination are beneficial and are a cause for celebration, rather than the more commonly publicized concern for unexpected adverse effects.”

Source : ICT

Is Your Child Getting Enough Fiber?

Three out of four children aren’t getting enough fiber, which puts them at high risk for chronic constipation, among other things. Here are some ways to make sure your child isn’t at risk and how to incorporate more fiber in your family’s diet.

Why Fiber is Important 

Fiber is the part of natural foods (plant foods, the only place fiber is found) that isn’t digested. It provides “roughage” for everything that you eat and helps things move through the digestive process. In Dr. Rex Russell’s book, What The Bible Says About Healthy Living, he notes the importance of fiber based on a group of African men, some living in Africa and some attending school in England. The African natives ate a traditional high-fiber diet and rarely needed medical attention. The Africans who were at school in England were enjoying processed foods without fiber. They suffered from episodes of appendicitis, hemorrhoids, ulcers, and gallstones.

The term “processed foods” refers to products made with grains that are heavily processed and very far from their natural state. These include products like enriched macaroni, cookies, cakes, pies, and cereals.

Inadequate fiber intake is also believed to contribute to, and sometimes even cause, heart disease, colon cancer, high blood pressure, and adult onset diabetes. Without sufficient fiber to move food through the body, toxins and bodily waste can fester inside the body for extended periods of time.

A lack of fiber also highly contributes to obesity problems in America. Part of this results from the negligible amount of fresh fruits and vegetables consumed by Americans. Both fruits and vegetables, along with other natural foods, contain two types of fiber: soluble and insoluble. Soluble is the kind of fiber that changes as it moves through your digestive system, while insoluble doesn’t change; both are equally important.

Soluble fiber is most often found in dried beans, oats, barley, fruits and vegetables. It stabilizes blood sugar, reduces blood pressure and cholesterol, and speeds up your body’s transit time (the time it takes to move food through your digestive system and complete the digestion process). Most Americans’ transit time is around 50 to 60 hours. That’s a long time, considering the normal transit time should be around 12 to 18 hours. (If you’re interested in finding out your child’s transit time, watch her bowels after she’s eaten corn. Since corn does not digest, you will see it in her bowels and be able to estimate her transit time starting from when she ate the corn to when it was in her bowel.

How Much Fiber Do Children Need? 

Currently, children ages four to 19 years get around 12 grams of dietary fiber per day, according to Dr. Christine Williams, previously with the American Health Foundation. Dr. Williams recommends that children get at least their “age plus five” grams of fiber per day. For eight year olds, this means at least 13 grams of dietary fiber per day.

A minimum of five fruits and vegetables per day, as recommended by the USDA Food Pyramid, will give your child a large percentage of his necessary fiber. The remaining amount should come from sources such as whole grain products, beans, nuts, and seeds.

Source: Pediatrics for parents

Children at risk of AIDS should be tested at birth – UN

More than a quarter of a million children each year are born infected with the virus that causes AIDS, but too few are being tested early to receive treatment and prolong their lives, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

Michele Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, called for diagnostic kits to be improved for detection in babies of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, and for their “still high” current price of $25-50 to be brought down.

Children are the “forgotten” victims of the AIDS epidemic, yet 260,000 babies joined their ranks last year, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, he said.

“Irrespective of the market size we need to make sure that diagnostics are made available for children,” he told a news conference in Geneva ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1.

“We made a lot of progess during the last 2-3 years in terms of treatment, in terms of medicines, in terms of making sure that the molecules are more well-targeted for children. But where we are failing is also making early diagnostics.”

U.S.-based Abbott Laboratories and Swiss drugmaker Roche are among the main manufacturers of HIV diagnostics, according to senior UNAIDS officials.

Some 3.3 million children under age 15 have HIV, but only 1.9 million of them require treatment today, according to the Geneva-based agency. Fewer than 650,000 or 34 percent of the 1.9 million received antiretroviral AIDS drugs in 2012, still a rise of 14 percent from the year before, it said.

Some 14 million adults with HIV need treatment, and 9 million of them or 64 percent are receiving it, a far higher coverage rate than for children.

UNAIDS has identified 22 priority countries for stopping infections in children, 21 of them in sub-Saharan Africa, home to 90 percent of women living with HIV. The other is India.

In three of these priority countries – Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo and Malawi – fewer than 5 percent of infants at risk are being tested for HIV at birth, UNAIDS says.

“In priority countries, only 3 in 10 children receive HIV treatment. We have seen tremendous political commitment and results to reduce mother-to-child transmission but we are failing the children who become infected,” said Sidibe, who is from Mali.

All children under five who test positive for the virus should be put on treatment, according to Mahesh Mahalingam, UNAIDS director for its global plan for stopping new infections in children.

Current PCR tests are able to detect the virus in a baby only after the age of six weeks and require sending a blood sample to a specialised laboratory, he said.

“What we looking for are easier tests that we can administer earlier on, this will help detect the virus and start them on medicines faster. We recommend that as soon as the child is known to be HIV positive, you start on anti-retroviral drugs,” Mahalingam told Reuters.

He added: “The earlier we can diagnose, the earlier we can treat them which increase chances of child survival. Children are now getting to grow into adults. If we start pretty early they have the same chance of living as any other children.”

Source: New Vision

Combining breastfeeding and solid food can reduce allergies

Giving a baby solid food besides breast milk after the 17th week of its birth helps it develop a better, stronger immune system to fight food allergies, new research has found.

The University of Southampton study, led by dietician and senior research fellow Kate Grimshaw, revealed that introduction of solid food before this may promote food allergy whereas solid food introduction after the 17th week seems to make the immune system stronger.

“Introducing solid foods alongside breastfeeding can benefit the immune system,” Grimshaw said.

“It appears the immune system becomes educated when there is an overlap of solids and breast milk because the milk promotes tolerogenic mechanisms against the solids,” he said.

The researchers recruited 1140 infants at birth from the Hampshire area.

The diet of these infants was compared with the diet of 82 infants who did not develop food allergy by the time they were two.

Forty one of these children went on to develop a food allergy by the time they were two years of age.

The team found that children who had developed allergies began eating solid food earlier than children with no allergies, roughly at 16 weeks or earlier.

Children with allergies were also more likely to not being breastfed when the mother introduced cow’s milk protein from any source.

Grimshaw said women who are not breastfeeding are encouraged to introduce solids before 17 weeks.

Source: Top News

Children at risk of AIDS should be tested at birth: UN

More than a quarter of a million children each year are born infected with the virus that causes AIDS, but too few are being tested early to receive treatment and prolong their lives, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

Michele Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, called for diagnostic kits to be improved for detection in babies of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, and for their “still high” current price of $25-50 to be brought down.

Children are the “forgotten” victims of the AIDS epidemic, yet 260,000 babies joined their ranks last year, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, he said.

“Irrespective of the market size we need to make sure that diagnostics are made available for children,” he told a news conference in Geneva ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1.

“We made a lot of progress during the last 2-3 years in terms of treatment, in terms of medicines, in terms of making sure that the molecules are more well-targeted for children. But where we are failing is also making early diagnostics.”

U.S.-based Abbott Laboratories and Swiss drugmaker Roche are among the main manufacturers of HIV diagnostics, according to senior UNAIDS officials.

Some 3.3 million children under age 15 have HIV, but only 1.9 million of them require treatment today, according to the Geneva-based agency. Fewer than 650,000 or 34 percent of the 1.9 million received antiretroviral AIDS drugs in 2012, still a rise of 14 percent from the year before, it said.

Some 14 million adults with HIV need treatment, and 9 million of them or 64 percent are receiving it, a far higher coverage rate than for children.

UN AIDS has identified 22 priority countries for stopping infections in children, 21 of them in sub-Saharan Africa, home to 90 percent of women living with HIV. The other is India.

In three of these priority countries – Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo and Malawi – fewer than 5 percent of infants at risk are being tested for HIV at birth, UNAIDS says.

“In priority countries, only 3 in 10 children receive HIV treatment. We have seen tremendous political commitment and results to reduce mother-to-child transmission but we are failing the children who become infected,” said Sidibe, who is from Mali.

All children under five who test positive for the virus should be put on treatment, according to Mahesh Mahalingam, UNAIDS director for its global plan for stopping new infections in children.

Current PCR tests are able to detect the virus in a baby only after the age of six weeks and require sending a blood sample to a specialized laboratory, he said.

“What we looking for are easier tests that we can administer earlier on, this will help detect the virus and start them on medicines faster. We recommend that as soon as the child is known to be HIV positive, you start on anti-retroviral drugs,” Mahalingam said.

He added: “The earlier we can diagnose, the earlier we can treat them which increase chances of child survival. Children are now getting to grow into adults. If we start pretty early they have the same chance of living as any other children.”

Source : Zee news

 

Aldi Rizal, Chain Smoking Toddler, Picks Up Junk Food Addiction

Indonesia’s chain-smoking baby has kicked the habit. Aldi Rizal, the 2-year-old Indonesia boy who picked up the horrific habit of smoking 40 cigarettes a day has picked up a new habit.

The now five-year-old boy has picked up a food addiction. His huge appetite has seen him gorge on junk food and fatty snacks. According to The Sun, Rizal weigh 56 pounds, due to his unhealthy

A new documentary series revisits the family two years later to find out how Rizal is getting on and reveals he has managed to stay off the cigarettes, but he’s still dangerously unhealthy. The young boy’s mother said her son begs for food in the same way he used to beg for cigarettes, and the family struggles not to give in to his tantrums.

“When Ardi first quit smoking he would demand a lot of toys,” his 28-year-old mother, Diane said. “He would bang his head on the wall if he couldn’t get what he wanted… Now I don’t give him cigarettes, but he eats a lot. With so many people living in the house it’s hard to stop him from getting food.”

Nutritionist Fransisca Dewi said the young boy is overweight and his ideal weight should be 17kg to 19kg. He’s 24kg already.

“I think it is difficult for them. The mother says Aldi is a spoilt kid,” Dewi said. “If she wants to forbid him eating, it will be hard. She will need the cooperation from the entire household. One obvious thing is they let him have too much condensed milk. He drinks three cans a day and eats too many carbohydrates.”

Loved ones are now trying, again, to steer the young boy in the right direction, by feeding him a steady diet of fruit and vegetables. Diane said she is trying to persuade her son’s siblings and the rest of the family not to give in and provide him with junk food when she is not around.

Rizal early smoking habits may contribute to his current weight problems, as nicotine affects hormone, insulin and glucose levels in the body.

According to The Mirror, Rizal quit smoking in a rehabilitation program set up by the Indonesian government. Rizal’s smoking habit even caused such outrage that the administration launched a nationwide campaign to end childhood smoking.

During his rehabilitation treatment, Aldi saw psychiatrists who encouraged his mother to keep him busy with playing and taught her about the dangers of smoking. Diane said people still offer her son cigarettes even though he has kicked the habit.

 

Source: Food World News

 

Kids Are Less Fit Than Their Parents Were

Today’s kids can’t keep up with their parents. An analysis of studies on millions of children around the world finds they don’t run as fast or as far as their parents did when they were young.

On average, it takes children 90 seconds longer to run a mile than their counterparts did 30 years ago. Heart-related fitness has declined 5 percent per decade since 1975 for children ages 9 to 17.

The American Heart Association, whose conference featured the research on Tuesday, says it’s the first to show that children’s fitness has declined worldwide over the last three decades.

“It makes sense. We have kids that are less active than before,” said Dr. Stephen Daniels, a University of Colorado pediatrician and spokesman for the heart association.

Health experts recommend that children 6 and older get 60 minutes of moderately vigorous activity accumulated over a day. Only one-third of American kids do now.

“Kids aren’t getting enough opportunities to build up that activity over the course of the day,” Daniels said. “Many schools, for economic reasons, don’t have any physical education at all. Some rely on recess” to provide exercise.

Sam Kass, a White House chef and head of first lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move program, stressed the role of schools in a speech to the conference on Monday.

“We are currently facing the most sedentary generation of children in our history,” Kass said.

The new study was led by Grant Tomkinson, an exercise physiologist at the University of South Australia. Researchers analyzed 50 studies on running fitness — a key measure of cardiovascular health and endurance — involving 25 million children ages 9 to 17 in 28 countries from 1964 to 2010.

The studies measured how far children could run in 5 to 15 minutes and how quickly they ran a certain distance, ranging from half a mile to two miles. Today’s kids are about 15 percent less fit than their parents were, researchers concluded.

“The changes are very similar for boys and girls and also for various ages,” but differed by geographic region, Tomkinson said.

The decline in fitness seems to be leveling off in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and perhaps in the last few years in North America. However, it continues to fall in China, and Japan never had much falloff — fitness has remained fairly consistent there. About 20 million of the 25 million children in the studies were from Asia.

In China, annual fitness test data show the country’s students are getting slower and fatter over the past couple of decades.

Experts and educators blame an obsession with academic testing scores for China’s competitive college admissions as well as a proliferation of indoor entertainment options like gaming and web surfing for the decline.

China’s Education Ministry data show that in 2010 male college students ran 1,000 meters 14 to 15 seconds slower on average than male students who ran a decade earlier. Female students slowed by about 12 seconds in running 800 meters.

Tomkinson and Daniels said obesity likely plays a role, since it makes it harder to run or do any aerobic exercise. Too much time watching television and playing video games and unsafe neighborhoods with not enough options for outdoor play also may play a role, they said.

Other research discussed global declines in activity.

Fitness is “pretty poor in adults and even worse in young people,” especially in the United States and eastern Europe, said Dr. Ulf Ekelund of the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in Oslo, Norway.

World Health Organization numbers suggest that 80 percent of young people globally may not be getting enough exercise.

Source: abc News