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How to Reduce the Risks of Sports Concussions in Young Athletes
Tweet Share on Facebook August 31, 2010 Comment (6)Student athletes risk concussion in many sports, and it's tempting for coaches and players to ignore the fact that concussions are traumatic brain injuries that can lead to permanent disability or death. Fortunately, attitudes are changing, thanks to publicity on the devastating brain injuries suffered by some pro football players, as well as a push by doctors to be more proactive in treating concussions.
That may be why a new report in Pediatrics found that from 1997 to 2007, the number of emergency room visits for concussions in 8- to 13-year-olds doubled, and more than doubled in 14- to 19-year-olds. Parents may be more aware that head injuries need medical attention, leading to more ER visits. Or it could be that young athletes are playing harder and getting hurt more often.
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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Can Help With ADHD
Tweet Share on Facebook August 24, 2010 CommentAdults who struggle with being disorganized, late, and distracted as a result of having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder can benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy that teaches them how to solve problems, use calendars and lists effectively, and write down distractions instead of being distracted by them, according to new research in the Journal of the American Medical Association. But CBT not only helps the 4 percent of adults with ADHD; it also helps children who struggle with schoolwork and friendships because of the disorder.
[Struggling at Work? If It's ADHD, There's Help]
Cognitive behavioral therapy is a technique that teaches skills for handling life challenges or overcoming negative thoughts. CBT for children with ADHD is aimed largely at improving their behavior through praise and rewards that motivate them to calm down enough to cope with school or other challenges. Parents or teachers would be trained to reward a child with praise or small treats for paying attention and responding to requests, for example. That's different than CBT for adults, which teaches thinking and self-management skills. Although CBT doesn't cure ADHD, it does make it easier for children to get along in a world that's often intolerant of typical ADHD behavior, explains Richard Gallagher, an associate professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine. Gallagher is working on a randomized, controlled study that is trying to see if CBT can help children with thinking skills like managing time, keeping track of homework assignments, and planning ahead.
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Pesticide Exposure in the Womb Increases ADHD Risk
Tweet Share on Facebook August 20, 2010 Comment (5)Exposure to pesticides while in the womb may increase the odds that a child will have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to researchers at the University of California-Berkeley School of Public Health. Combine that with research published in May in Pediatrics finding that children exposed to pesticides were more likely to have ADHD, and it's enough to make parents wonder how to reduce their family's exposure to pesticides.
[Why Parents Who Smoke Put Their Kids at Risk]
The California researchers are studying the impact of environmental exposures on the health of women and children who live in the Salinas Valley, an agricultural region with heavy pesticide use. They tested the urine of pregnant women for pesticide residue, and then tested the behavior of their children at ages 3½ and 5. The 5-year-olds who had been exposed to organophosphate pesticides while in the womb had more problems with attention and behavior than did children who were not exposed. What's more, the heavier the pesticide exposure, the more likely that the child would have symptoms of ADHD . The results were published online in Environmental Health Perspectives.
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3 Ways to Protect Your Teen from Hearing Loss
Tweet Share on Facebook August 17, 2010 Comment (3)Teenagers are losing their hearing in greater numbers: One in five now has some hearing loss, a 31 percent rise from a decade ago, according to a new study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That means 6.5 million teens now have hearing loss. Much of that hearing loss was slight, but the trend is troubling. Though researchers don't know the cause, it's easy to conclude that the popularity of MP3 players and other personal music players might be a major contributing factor.
[It's Not Too Late to Guard Against Hearing Loss]
We tend to think of hearing loss as an old person's problem, but hearing loss due to exposure to loud sounds is different than age-related loss and affects all age groups. Many teens, even some adults, don't realize that hearing loss from excessive volumes—be it from street noise, live music or earbuds—is permanent. "Noise is pollution," says Pam Mason, a certified audiologist at the American Speech Language Hearing Association who works with rock musicians to protect their hearing. "Children don't often think that by putting themselves in a noisy environment, they're putting their hearing in danger."
[Start Early to Protect Children’s Ears From That MP3 Player]
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Yes, Only Children Do Lag in Social Skills—But They Catch Up
Tweet Share on Facebook August 16, 2010 Comment (1)Parents of only children fret that they miss out on peer interaction, and the evidence does suggest that kindergarteners who are only children have fewer social skills than kids with siblings who can teach them the rules (and help try them out). But Ohio State University researchers say that onlies overcome any social skills deficits by the time they are in high school and have just as many friends as their peers. An only child won't be doomed to a lonely adolescence.
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How to Help Girls Cope With Early Puberty—or Avoid It
Tweet Share on Facebook August 12, 2010 Comment (5)Early puberty is no fun. Girls who mature earlier than their peers are more likely to be teased and have behavior problems. They may struggle to deal with sexual advances that come before they are emotionally mature enough to cope. Early puberty in girls also can increase the risk of early sexual activity, depression, and eating disorders. So the news that girls are maturing earlier than ever before is sobering: Ten percent of 7-year-old white girls are already developing breasts, as are 23 percent of black girls, and 15 percent of Hispanic girls, according to a new study from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, which appears in the September issue of Pediatrics. Those numbers are greater than they were 10 to 30 years ago, and appear to still be on the rise for white girls.
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Pets Can Pose Health Risks for Children
Tweet Share on Facebook August 10, 2010 Comment (1)The bowl of pet food on the kitchen floor can make babies and toddlers seriously ill, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It turns out that salmonella bacteria in dried dog and cat food sparked an outbreak of salmonella infections between 2006 to 2008. Half of the 79 cases reported were in children ages 2 and under.
Salmonella can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children and the elderly, and it's no fun for healthy adults, either. People infected with salmonella usually suffer four to seven days of fever, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain.
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Sisters Bring Happiness
Tweet Share on Facebook August 9, 2010 Comment (2)Parents spend a lot of time dealing with arguing and other nastiness between siblings. But having siblings can save teenagers from negative emotions, and encourage them to be more kind and generous.
"As a parent, it's really good to know that sibling affection is related quite strongly to helping, generosity, kindness," says Laura Padilla-Walker, a professor at Brigham Young University who studies the effects of sibling relationships. "We often don't see them [as] a protective factor."
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Teen Depression Linked to Internet Overuse
Tweet Share on Facebook August 5, 2010 Comment (8)Teenagers who have an unhealthy dependence on the Internet are almost twice as likely to become depressed as other teens, giving parents yet another good reason to limit kids' screen time. That's the news from a study in Pediatrics, which tracked the Internet use of teenagers in China, where "Internet addiction" is considered a serious and growing problem.
The researchers tracked 1,041 teenagers, finding out how much they used the Internet and whether that use was unhealthy. They used surveys similar to those used with pathological gamblers. A typical question asked: "How often do you feel depressed, moody, or nervous when you are offline, which goes away once you are back online?" The vast majority of the teens, 94 percent, weren't pathological Internet users. But 6 percent were considered moderately at risk. Nine months later, those students were one-and-a-half times more likely to have symptoms of clinical depression than teens who were less dependent on the Internet, though they had not been depressed before.
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Preschoolers and Spray Cleaners Don't Mix
Tweet Share on Facebook August 2, 2010 Comment (3)Parents may think they've childproofed the house, but household cleaners are still posing a risk to curious toddlers and preschoolers, despite years of effort to promote child-resistant packaging and safe storage of dangerous chemicals. The good news is that the number of children ages 5 and younger who landed in emergency rooms because of injuries caused by household cleaning products dropped by 46 percent from 1990 to 2006, according to the new study in Pediatrics. But that still means that more than 10,000 children a year are being needlessly harmed by bleach, detergent, and other toxic yet common cleaners.
[Pesticides: 5 Ways to Reduce Children's Exposure]
Spray bottles are the biggest culprit. The percentage of injuries caused by products in spray bottles rose from 30.3 percent in 1990 to 40.8 percent in 2006. That may be because products are more commonly packaged in spray bottles these days; was anyone using laundry pre-treatment sprays in 1990? But the researchers, at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, and the Arizona Emergency Medicine Research Center in Tucson, speculate that it may be that the shut-off valves on spray products are no match for a curious 4-year-old. And in many cases, the child injured was not the one wielding the spray bottle. It's easy to imagine the appeal of a spray-bottle war for children too young to realize that the liquid inside isn't harmless water.
