70 per cent metro kids have below-median growth

May 27, 2014

Raising an alarm on the need for nutritional intake for urban kids, a new survey today said 70 per cent children in Indian metro cities have below-median growth.

The Abbott SureMoms survey shows 70 per cent children in the 2-10 year age group in all four Indian metros have below-median growth parameters of height and weight.

Around 54 per cent of the below-median children fail on both height and weight parameters, while as many as 45 per cent of these children are nutritionally at-risk, the survey report said.

Around 61 per cent of below-median children were found to be fussy eaters.

Dr Bhaskar Raju, paediatrician at Mehta’s Hospitals in Chennai, said, “These findings highlight the need to track growth in children regularly to ensure they do not progressively fall below the median, which will put them at risk nutritionally”.

“Growth in children can be impacted by different factors, nutrition being one of them. Nutrition is important and is linked to eating behaviour,” he said.

In the survey, Mumbai was observed to have a high percentage of below-median children with 78 per cent failing on either height or weight or both, while Kolkata had the lowest percentage of children with below-median growth.

SureMoms, a nutrition education platform for parents by Abbott, commissioned TNS, a leading market research agency, to find out how children in Indian metros were actually faring on growth parameters.

Trained dietitians measured children’s height and weight and interviewed mothers on their child’s eating behaviour, across a sample size of 1,181 respondents.

Source: business standard

British study examines mobile phone effects on children

May 23, 2014May 23, 2014

British scientists launched a major government-commissioned study on Tuesday into the effects of mobile phone usage on the developing brains of children.

About 2,500 children from London will be tested at the age of 11 and 12, and then again two years later, to assess how their cognitive abilities develop in relation to their changing use of phones and other wireless technologies.

Professor Patrick Haggard, deputy director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, said it was the “largest follow-up study of its kind in adolescents worldwide”.
The World Health Organisation says there is no convincing evidence that mobile phones affect health, but existing data only goes back about 15 years.

It has called for further research, particularly into young people and those who use mobile phones over a long period.
In the study, the children will undertake classroom-based computerised tasks to measure cognitive abilities that underpin functions such as memory and attention.

“Cognition is essentially how we think, how we make decisions and how we process and recall information,” said Dr Mireille Toledano of Imperial College London, the principal investigator on the study.
Participants and their parents will also be asked questions about how they use mobile phones and other devices, and other aspects of their lifestyle.

An estimated 70 percent of all 11- to 12-year-olds in Britain now own a mobile phone, rising to 90 percent by the age of 14, according to the researchers.

The Study of Cognition, Adolescents and Mobile Phones (SCAMP) is being carried out by Imperial College London at the commission of the British Department of Health.
Letters were sent out Tuesday to 160 different schools inviting them to enrol pupils, and tests will begin at the start of the new school year in September.

Imperial College is already involved in a separate international study, called Cosmos, into the possible long-term health effects of mobile phones on 290,000 adults in five European countries.

Source: Ctv news

Magnet-powered toys dangerous for kids: Study

May 20, 2014

Does your toddler play with magnet-powered toys? Throw these away as the chances of him/her ingesting tiny magnets is high, resulting in serious injuries that require surgery, an alarming study says.

“With the inclusion of smaller, spherical magnets in children’s toys, we are seeing an increased number of visits to the hospital for surgeries to remove them from the gastrointestinal tract,” said Matt Strickland, a general surgery resident at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and University of Toronto.

Strickland’s team focused their research on digestive-tract injuries because the majority of serious harm from magnets is due to perforations of the stomach, small bowel and colon.

Many children in the study required surgery – in some cases, to remove small parts of their intestines. They found that out of 2,722 patient visits to their hospital for foreign-body ingestions, 94 children had ingested those magnets – including 30 kids who had ingested multiple magnets.

With the smaller magnets, children tend to ingest multiple pieces which can adhere to one another as they travel through the bowel. “They can also attract other magnets in the gastrointestinal tract and tear a hole in the bowel,” Strickland cautioned.

Many children often don’t exhibit symptoms right away. Doctors may not discover the magnets until they do X-rays and severe damage has usually been done till then, said the study published in the Journal of Pediatrics.

Today’s magnets are 20 times more powerful than older magnets with the potential to cause more damage. These high-powered ball magnets are often sold in jewellery kits or adult desk toys.
Source: Zee news

Study finds 3.3% city children suffering from high blood pressure

May 9, 2014

A multicentre, cross-sectional study which was conducted on 10,842 children in five cities — Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune and Raipur — has found that 3.3 per cent or 358 children were hypertensive.

Dr Archana Dayal Arya, paediatric endocrinologist, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, and co-author of the study, said, “The prevalence of childhood obesity is rising in developing countries including India. Abdominal obesity is also on the rise and is associated with increased risk for metabolic syndrome (MS).”

MS in children has been defined as the presence of > or =3 of the following criteria: high triglyceride levels in blood, low HDL cholesterol (good cholesterol), increased fasting blood glucose levels, high systolic blood pressure and waist circumference > 75th percentile.

According to Dr Arya, MS results in increased risk for hypertension, type-2 diabetes mellitus, and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

“In my daily practice, I am seeing many children who are getting diseases which were earlier seen only in adults, primarily because of obesity. It is shocking to see children as young as 6 years old with diseases like hypertension, diabetes mellitus and abnormalities in the lipid profile. In this study we found 350 children suffering from hypertension,” said Dr Arya.

The study has suggested cut-off values of waist circumference for screening for metabolic syndrome in Indian children. It has also developed age and sex specific reference curves for waist circumference for Indian children.

The study, which appears in The Journal of Paediatrics, also found that risk factor for Indian children for developing MS was at 70th waist circumference percentile, which is significantly lower than international proposed WC cut-off of 90th percentile.

Dr Anuradha Khadilkar, consultant paediatrician, Jehangir Hospital, Pune and corresponding author of the study, said, “We found in the study that primary or essential hypertension, commonly seen in adults, is becoming common in children, who are obese or overweight. Therefore it is very essential for them to change their lifestyle and lose weight. They should be encouraged to participate in outdoor sports and other physical activities. They should cut down on the intake of high calorie foods with poor nutritional value (junk food) and a high fat diet.”

Source: India medical times

Kids who play outdoors are more spiritual and creative: study

May 9, 2014

Turn off the TV, hide the game consoles and send your kids to play in the great outdoors if you want to raise more thoughtful, fulfilled and spiritual children, suggest the findings of a small study.
Children who spend significant amounts of time playing outside were found to have a stronger sense of purpose, peacefulness and spiritual connection to the earth.

For their study, published in the Journal of the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, researchers from Michigan State University conducted in-depth interviews, drawings, diaries, observation and conversation with parents to measure the children’s esthetic values and sensibilities.

Children who spent five to 10 hours a week playing outside were found to demonstrate strong imaginations, creativity, and curiosity, as well as a deep appreciation for nature’s beauty, whether it be lush green bushes, water patterns or a fascination with bees’ nests, researchers noted.

The 10 children, ages seven and eight, reported feelings of peacefulness and wonderment at natural phenomena like storms, and said they felt happy.
They also expressed a sense of belonging in the world and an acute need to protect the earth.

Though small in scale, the findings underscore the importance of free play for children and its lasting impact: the parents of children who expressed the highest affinity toward nature likewise reported spending significant amounts of time playing outdoors in their childhood.

More than video game graphics and cartoons, researchers theorize that nature’s multisensory diversity — sights, sounds and colors — can help children feel more alive and build self-confidence.

Another study published out of Finland, meanwhile, found gender differences in the way school-aged boys and girls viewed nature: While girls said they appreciated the beauty of flowers and plants, more than 30 percent of boys in the study said they could live without vegetation.

Source: ctv news

Have a one-year-old baby? Dental care a must

May 7, 2014

While many parents remain ignorant about how much dental care their little ones need, a new study has found that babies, who are most susceptible to cavities in their early lives, are least likely taken care of even though they need it the most.

The study reveals that less than one per cent of healthy children receive dental care by the recommended age of 12 months and less than two per cent had seen a dentist by the age of 24 months.

Prolonged bottle use, especially at night, and sweetened drinks are suspected risk factors for cavities because the carbohydrates in the beverages promote the growth of the bacteria that causes cavities, said Jonathon Maguire, a paediatrician at St Michael’s Hospital in Canada.

The findings showed that of the 2,505 children around four years of age who were surveyed from 2011-13 for the study, 39 percent had never been to a dentist.

Maguire said that barriers to dental care for families with young children may include financial cost, access to transportation, school absence policies and a belief that dental health may not be important to overall well-being.

He said previous studies had shown that children who receive preventive dental care in the first year of life have less dental disease and are less likely to require restorative or emergency treatment and have lower dental-related health care costs – particularly among high-risk populations.

According to Dr.Maguire, cavities can cause not just pain in children but also contribute to feeding problems, poor nutritional status and behavioural problems.

The study appeared in the journal Pediatrics.

Source: Zee news

What to do when children reject vegetables

April 30, 2014

Our kids eat less than half the vegetables they need, according to a recent report published by the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Some parents have taken to hiring outsiders to help them raise a veggie lover, but for those not wanting to outsource – or not having the money to do so – science offers some ways to make the peas and carrots go down easier.

Resistance often starts around 18 months of age: sealed lips, head turned away, food left untouched on the plate. Scientists have a term for when children won’t try new foods – food neophobia – and it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. Peaking between ages 2 and 6, being standoffish from unknown foods protects a child, who is becoming less dependent, from eating substances that might be poisonous. Unfortunately, because there are so many kinds of vegetables, these are often the rejected foods.

How much your kid fears new foods may be highly heritable, say authors of a study of twins published last year. If you loathe trying new food, it appears, your child may, too. What’s more, many vegetables are bitter, and children are preprogrammed by nature to avoid bitter taste, since it may signal the presence of toxic compounds.

“Many parents don’t realize that it’s quite normal that most children will be fussy with vegetables,” says psychologist Gemma Mitchell of Britain’s Loughborough University.

So should you just give up and fry the potatoes, and opt for a once-a-day vitamin pill that will deliver the vitamin C, E and folate that picky eaters often miss in their diets?

Probably not. Nutritionists say vitamin pills are no replacement for vegetables and fruit. Veggies contain many important substances in addition to vitamins and minerals such as phytonutrients, which lower the risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease.

With all this in mind, here are some techniques, gleaned from the latest research, for dealing with food neophobia:

Offer vegetables with a glass of water
Don’t give up, even after many rejections. “The child doesn’t even have to eat it. Repeated exposure is all that is needed.”

Increase the portions. This may sound counterintuitive, but it turns out that if you pile up more veggies on your kid’s plate, more will get eaten. “What’s really effective is giving children big portions of vegetables at the start of a meal when they’re hungry. In our lab we’ve done this with raw carrots and with tomato soup. The bigger the portion was, the more the kids ate,” says Barbara Rolls, a professor of nutritional sciences at Penn State. So serve a salad before the mac and cheese. And you should probably keep the main portion small: An investigation published last year in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that the bigger the entree (the authors used mac and cheese in their experiments), the fewer fruits and vegetables get cleared off the plates.

Disguise the vegetables. “One of the most effective strategies we’ve found is the hidden-vegetable approach: putting pureed vegetables into dishes,” Rolls says. “Most kids don’t care what’s in their food as long as it tastes good. With baked goods like zucchini bread or pumpkin bread, we’ve found that kids actually prefer those with added vegetables because they are moister.” So put some grated vegetables into casseroles, pasta dishes or mac and cheese.

Build positive associations. “If a child is upset, many parents will say, ‘Oh, come here, have a cookie.’ Children are quick learners: Soon they start equating biscuits with comfort,” Mitchell says. But you can build a similar positive association with vegetables, offering up a carrot stick instead of a cookie.

Relax and have fun. Cut the veggies into creative shapes, mix as many colors on the plate as possible, allow the kids to get messy while eating. In other words: Let them have fun with food.

Finally, even if none of this works, relax – and wait. A 2010 study that followed a group of kids from age 2 to 11 found that picky eating declines as kids get older. By the time most are 6, only about 3 percent remain very fussy.

Source: Star news

Managing Your Child’s Asthma at School

April 26, 2014April 26, 2014

If your child has been diagnosed with asthma, you know the difficulty of managing your child’s asthma symptoms at school. Many children with asthma have symptoms at school. That’s why it’s important to get the school involved in managing your child’s asthma, so a responsible adult at the school knows when and how to administer asthma inhalers or other asthma treatment. Even if your child has mild asthma, working with the classroom teacher and other school officials is vital for managing your child’s condition and treating mild symptoms early on before they worsen.

With the prevalence of asthma increasing rapidly among children in the U.S., most schools have many students with asthma. Many classroom teachers — and certainly the school nurses — are very familiar with helping children with asthma. Still, it is important to take steps to ensure that your child gets adequate attention at school and that all the key people are familiar with what is needed in managing your child’s asthma and preventing asthma symptoms at school.

How Can I Prevent Asthma Problems for My Child at School?

The most important thing you can do to prevent asthma problems for your child at school is to talk to your child and, depending on how old he is, explain to him as much about asthma as he can understand. Ideally, your child should be able to keep track of when it’s time to take his medicine, how to use the asthma inhaler properly, how to use a peak flow meter, what the number on the peak flow meter means, and what to do if that number is too low.

You should also make sure that the school officials know all about managing your child’s asthma. They must know how severe the asthma is, what the what the triggers are, what asthma medications to use and how to properly give them, how to use the peak flow meter, and what to do in case of an asthma attack.

The specific steps for managing your child’s asthma at school should be written up in your child’s asthma action plan. The asthma action plan should be distributed to every school official who may care for your child. It’s important to have a conference with the child’s teachers and other school officials and explain the asthma action plan, including your child’s triggers, the severity of the asthma, and common symptoms and effective treatment of your child’s asthma.
Read Also Premature Birth Linked to Asthma in Childhood

In addition, you should look around your child’s classroom and other areas where he or she goes at the school to see if there are any known allergy or asthma triggers. If you identify possible asthma triggers (dust mites and dust are common triggers in a classroom), you should work with the teacher to reduce your child’s exposure to these triggers.

Source: Managing Your Child’s Asthma at School

1 in 13 U.S. schoolkids takes psych meds: report

April 25, 2014

More than 7 percent of American schoolchildren are taking at least one medication for emotional or behavioral difficulties, a new government report shows.

Apparently, the medications are working: More than half of the parents said the drugs are helping their children, according to the report.

“We can’t advise parents on what they should do, but I think it’s positive that over half of parents reported that medications helped ‘a lot,’ ” said report author LaJeana Howie, a statistical research scientist at the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics.

Howie and her colleagues weren’t able to identify the specific disorders the children were being treated for, although she said 81 percent of the children with emotional or behavioral difficulties had been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) at some point in their lives.

The researchers were also unable to identify the specific medications prescribed to the children for their emotional and behavioral difficulties, according to Howie.

An expert not involved with the report agreed that ADHD likely would be one of the most common conditions involved.

“Although the authors don’t really talk about the diagnoses, ADHD is likely the most overwhelming diagnosis. Oppositional defiant disorder, anxiety and depression are other likely diagnoses,” said Dr. Andrew Adesman, chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Steven and Alexandra Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York, in New Hyde Park.

Data for the study came from the National Health Interview Survey, which continually collects information about health and health care in the United States. All of the information on children is obtained through parental (or other guardian) responses. None of the information comes from medical records.

Overall, the researchers found that 7.5 percent of U.S. children between the ages of 6 and 17 were taking medication for an emotional or behavioral problem. Significantly more boys than girls were given medication — 9.7 percent of boys compared with 5.2 percent of girls.

Older females were more likely than younger females to be given medication, but the age difference among males wasn’t significant, according to the report.

White children were the most likely to be on psychiatric medications (9.2 percent), followed by black children (7.4 percent) and Hispanic children (4.5 percent), according to the report.

The study found that significantly more children on Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program were on medication for emotional and behavioral problems (9.9 percent), versus 6.7 percent with private insurance and just 2.7 percent of children without insurance.

Additionally, more families living below 100 percent of the federal poverty level had children taking medications for emotional and behavioral problems than those above the federal poverty level.

Fifty-five percent of parents reported that these medications helped their children “a lot,” while another 26 percent said they helped “some.” Just under 19 percent said they didn’t help at all or helped just a little.

Parents of younger children (between 6 and 11) were slightly more likely to feel the medications helped a lot compared to parents of older children. Parents of males were also more likely to feel the medications helped a lot — about 58 percent of parents of males reported that they helped a lot compared to about 50 percent of the parents of females.

The report found that parents with incomes less than 100 percent of the federal poverty level were the least likely to feel the medications helped a lot. Just 43 percent of those parents said the medications helped a lot, while about 31 percent said they helped some. More than one-quarter of these parents said the medications only helped a little or not at all.

Of those findings, Howie said, “We really can’t speculate what factors would account for the difference.”

For his part, Adesman said there are many factors that might contribute to more use of medications in people living under the poverty line and for those on government insurance programs.

“There may be parenting challenges, such as more single-parent households, medications may be more available than access to behavioral treatments, there may be more logistical issues with nonpharmaceutical interventions, like getting time off from work,” Adesman said. “Many more families have access to prescription medications than to non-pharmaceutical interventions. There’s a lack of mental health treatment parity.

“It’s encouraging that children who are identified as taking prescription medications are benefiting from those medications,” Adesman said. However, he added, “There are nonpharmaceutical treatments for virtually all psychiatric diagnoses in children. For households where a child has significant emotional or behavioral difficulties, counseling, behavior management and some forms of psychotherapy can be helpful as well.”

Source: healthy living

Strong muscles in kids lower heart disease, diabetes risk

April 25, 2014

Teenagers with stronger muscles have a lower risk of heart disease and diabetes later in life, a study shows. Stronger kids also have lower body mass index (BMI), lower percent body fat, smaller waist circumferences and higher fitness levels.

“It is a widely-held belief that BMI, sedentary behaviours and low cardiovascular fitness levels are linked to diabetes, heart disease and stroke but our findings suggest muscle strength possibly may play an equally important role in cardiometabolic health in children,” explained Mark D Peterson, an assistant professor at University of Michigan Medical School.

Researchers analysed health data for more than 1,400 children ages 10 to 12, including their percent body fat, glucose level, blood pressure, cholesterol levels and triglycerides. Those with greater strength-to-body-mass ratios – or pound-for-pound strength capacities – had significantly lower risks of heart disease and diabetes.

Researchers also measured cardiorespiratory fitness – how well the body is able to transport oxygen to muscles during prolonged exercise, and how well muscles are able to absorb and use it. The study is one of the the first to show a robust link between strength capacity and a lower chance of having diabetes, heart disease or stroke in adolescents.

“The stronger you are relative to your body mass, the healthier you are,” Peterson says. Exercise and even recreational activity that supports early muscular strength acquisition should complement traditional weight-loss interventions among children and teenagers in order to reduce risks of serious diseases throughout adolescence, the researchers mentioned.
Previous studies have found low muscular strength in teenagers is a risk factor for several major causes of death in young adulthood, such as suicide and cardiovascular diseases, said the research published in the journal Pediatrics.

Source: IBN