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There’s really only one way to teach people that it’s not a good idea to stick your hand in an alligator’s mouth. I can hear you thinking, “Is that something people have to be taught?” to which I answer, “Do you watch YouTube?” Yes, dedicated alligator trainers like Daniel Beck of “The Kachunga and The Alligator Show” travel to places like the Ohio State Fair to help people understand how to behave should one of these noble, misunderstood creatures one day appear in their wading pool. Last week, Mr. Beck got his point across a little too well, nearly losing his arm in the process. I’ve considered putting on a similar show myself, but with sloths.
Would You Like Fries With That?
This week’s biggest pediatric story is the finding that kids in states that regulate the availability of junk food in schools are less obese than kids in states that consider tortilla chips a vegetable. I can hear you thinking, “They got a grant for this?” to which I answer, “How long have you been reading this blog?” Some less rigorous studies favored by junk food lobbyists questioned whether kids even ate enough at school to make a difference. So researchers at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and the National Cancer Institute decided to use the Westlaw legal database to rank states’ regulation of “competitive” (read “junk”) foods in schools and then to cross-reference those data with actual height and weight records on 6300 students in 40 states.
The results showed a strong correlation between the strength and consistency of states’ food regulations and the obesity of their students. What do the authors mean by “strength”? It turns out some states’ laws are very specific about the nutritional content of foods to be sold to students, while others simply suggest that foods be “healthy,” a criterion that pretty much any food can meet when compared to, say, starvation. By “consistency” they mean that some states have strong regulations in place for younger children, but the rules relax as kids get older, since everyone knows that teenagers cannot gain weight from washing down cheese doodles with a 20-ounce soda.
The authors do not identify states by name for legal reasons, but you can research your own state’s laws, or, faster, just walk into the nearest high school and check out the vending machines. Do they sell stuff that’s orange, crunchy, and not carrots? If so, you have two choices: call your state representative about changing the law, or call your broker about investing in that mobile cath lab.
Bedbugs
Speaking of the obvious, we’ve known for a long time that kids who watch more violent television shows don’t sleep so well. But no study has ever proven that just because a child watches The Walking Dead at bedtime instead of Dora The Explorer there’s not some other unrelated reason he wakes up at midnight screaming about zombies. Until now.
Dr. Dimitri Christakis’ team at Seattle Children’s actually went into people’s homes to teach them to substitute educational and prosocial media (Curious George, Sesame Street) for the more violent media their preschoolers had been watching (Ben 10, Meet The Press). Then they followed up on children’s sleep behaviors for 18 months, demonstrating that kids who watched less violent TV shows indeed slept better. With this question settled, future studies are expected to determine whether old episodes of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood can be used for procedural sedation.
Pests aside
Boys can get a bad rap for not being sensitive, and I think it’s totally unfair. Did I burn ants with a magnifying glass when I was a kid? Well, yes. But I held a tiny little funeral for each and every one. A new study shows that boys are more sensitive than girls, at least when it comes to prenatal pesticide exposure. Chlorpyrifos (CPF) is an organophosphate bug-killer known to delay development and decrease working memory in children exposed to the chemical in utero. A Columbia University-based research team attempted to determine whether a nurturing home environment might attenuate some of the damage attributed to CPF.
The good news is ... wait, there is no good news. No amount of nurturing, defined as parental attentiveness, displays of physical affection, encouragement of delayed gratification, limit-setting, and mother’s ability to control her negative reactions, was able to restore baseline brain function in CPF-exposed children. But boys did respond marginally better than girls to such measures, for what it’s worth. My advice is that if you’re pregnant with a boy and you have bugs in your house, tell them they’d better get out now, or one day you’re going to give your boy a really big magnifying glass. But seriously, don’t encourage that sort of behavior. It’s a short step from ants to alligators.
David L. Hill, M.D, FAAP, is vice president of Cape Fear Pediatrics in Wilmington, NC and is an adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is Program Director for the AAP Council on Communications and Media and an executive committee member of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. He has recorded commentaries for NPR's All Things Considered and provided content for various print, television and Internet outlets. Dr. Hill's first book, Dad to Dad: Parenting Like A Pro will be available starting in April 2012 from AAP Publishing.
There’s really only one way to teach people that it’s not a good idea to stick your hand in an alligator’s mouth. I can hear you thinking, “Is that something people have to be taught?” to which I answer, “Do you watch YouTube?” Yes, dedicated alligator trainers like Daniel Beck of “The Kachunga and The Alligator Show” travel to places like the Ohio State Fair to help people understand how to behave should one of these noble, misunderstood creatures one day appear in their wading pool. Last week, Mr. Beck got his point across a little too well, nearly losing his arm in the process. I’ve considered putting on a similar show myself, but with sloths.
Would You Like Fries With That?
This week’s biggest pediatric story is the finding that kids in states that regulate the availability of junk food in schools are less obese than kids in states that consider tortilla chips a vegetable. I can hear you thinking, “They got a grant for this?” to which I answer, “How long have you been reading this blog?” Some less rigorous studies favored by junk food lobbyists questioned whether kids even ate enough at school to make a difference. So researchers at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and the National Cancer Institute decided to use the Westlaw legal database to rank states’ regulation of “competitive” (read “junk”) foods in schools and then to cross-reference those data with actual height and weight records on 6300 students in 40 states.
The results showed a strong correlation between the strength and consistency of states’ food regulations and the obesity of their students. What do the authors mean by “strength”? It turns out some states’ laws are very specific about the nutritional content of foods to be sold to students, while others simply suggest that foods be “healthy,” a criterion that pretty much any food can meet when compared to, say, starvation. By “consistency” they mean that some states have strong regulations in place for younger children, but the rules relax as kids get older, since everyone knows that teenagers cannot gain weight from washing down cheese doodles with a 20-ounce soda.
The authors do not identify states by name for legal reasons, but you can research your own state’s laws, or, faster, just walk into the nearest high school and check out the vending machines. Do they sell stuff that’s orange, crunchy, and not carrots? If so, you have two choices: call your state representative about changing the law, or call your broker about investing in that mobile cath lab.
Bedbugs
Speaking of the obvious, we’ve known for a long time that kids who watch more violent television shows don’t sleep so well. But no study has ever proven that just because a child watches The Walking Dead at bedtime instead of Dora The Explorer there’s not some other unrelated reason he wakes up at midnight screaming about zombies. Until now.
Dr. Dimitri Christakis’ team at Seattle Children’s actually went into people’s homes to teach them to substitute educational and prosocial media (Curious George, Sesame Street) for the more violent media their preschoolers had been watching (Ben 10, Meet The Press). Then they followed up on children’s sleep behaviors for 18 months, demonstrating that kids who watched less violent TV shows indeed slept better. With this question settled, future studies are expected to determine whether old episodes of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood can be used for procedural sedation.
Pests aside
Boys can get a bad rap for not being sensitive, and I think it’s totally unfair. Did I burn ants with a magnifying glass when I was a kid? Well, yes. But I held a tiny little funeral for each and every one. A new study shows that boys are more sensitive than girls, at least when it comes to prenatal pesticide exposure. Chlorpyrifos (CPF) is an organophosphate bug-killer known to delay development and decrease working memory in children exposed to the chemical in utero. A Columbia University-based research team attempted to determine whether a nurturing home environment might attenuate some of the damage attributed to CPF.
The good news is ... wait, there is no good news. No amount of nurturing, defined as parental attentiveness, displays of physical affection, encouragement of delayed gratification, limit-setting, and mother’s ability to control her negative reactions, was able to restore baseline brain function in CPF-exposed children. But boys did respond marginally better than girls to such measures, for what it’s worth. My advice is that if you’re pregnant with a boy and you have bugs in your house, tell them they’d better get out now, or one day you’re going to give your boy a really big magnifying glass. But seriously, don’t encourage that sort of behavior. It’s a short step from ants to alligators.
David L. Hill, M.D, FAAP, is vice president of Cape Fear Pediatrics in Wilmington, NC and is an adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is Program Director for the AAP Council on Communications and Media and an executive committee member of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. He has recorded commentaries for NPR's All Things Considered and provided content for various print, television and Internet outlets. Dr. Hill's first book, Dad to Dad: Parenting Like A Pro will be available starting in April 2012 from AAP Publishing.
There’s really only one way to teach people that it’s not a good idea to stick your hand in an alligator’s mouth. I can hear you thinking, “Is that something people have to be taught?” to which I answer, “Do you watch YouTube?” Yes, dedicated alligator trainers like Daniel Beck of “The Kachunga and The Alligator Show” travel to places like the Ohio State Fair to help people understand how to behave should one of these noble, misunderstood creatures one day appear in their wading pool. Last week, Mr. Beck got his point across a little too well, nearly losing his arm in the process. I’ve considered putting on a similar show myself, but with sloths.
Would You Like Fries With That?
This week’s biggest pediatric story is the finding that kids in states that regulate the availability of junk food in schools are less obese than kids in states that consider tortilla chips a vegetable. I can hear you thinking, “They got a grant for this?” to which I answer, “How long have you been reading this blog?” Some less rigorous studies favored by junk food lobbyists questioned whether kids even ate enough at school to make a difference. So researchers at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and the National Cancer Institute decided to use the Westlaw legal database to rank states’ regulation of “competitive” (read “junk”) foods in schools and then to cross-reference those data with actual height and weight records on 6300 students in 40 states.
The results showed a strong correlation between the strength and consistency of states’ food regulations and the obesity of their students. What do the authors mean by “strength”? It turns out some states’ laws are very specific about the nutritional content of foods to be sold to students, while others simply suggest that foods be “healthy,” a criterion that pretty much any food can meet when compared to, say, starvation. By “consistency” they mean that some states have strong regulations in place for younger children, but the rules relax as kids get older, since everyone knows that teenagers cannot gain weight from washing down cheese doodles with a 20-ounce soda.
The authors do not identify states by name for legal reasons, but you can research your own state’s laws, or, faster, just walk into the nearest high school and check out the vending machines. Do they sell stuff that’s orange, crunchy, and not carrots? If so, you have two choices: call your state representative about changing the law, or call your broker about investing in that mobile cath lab.
Bedbugs
Speaking of the obvious, we’ve known for a long time that kids who watch more violent television shows don’t sleep so well. But no study has ever proven that just because a child watches The Walking Dead at bedtime instead of Dora The Explorer there’s not some other unrelated reason he wakes up at midnight screaming about zombies. Until now.
Dr. Dimitri Christakis’ team at Seattle Children’s actually went into people’s homes to teach them to substitute educational and prosocial media (Curious George, Sesame Street) for the more violent media their preschoolers had been watching (Ben 10, Meet The Press). Then they followed up on children’s sleep behaviors for 18 months, demonstrating that kids who watched less violent TV shows indeed slept better. With this question settled, future studies are expected to determine whether old episodes of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood can be used for procedural sedation.
Pests aside
Boys can get a bad rap for not being sensitive, and I think it’s totally unfair. Did I burn ants with a magnifying glass when I was a kid? Well, yes. But I held a tiny little funeral for each and every one. A new study shows that boys are more sensitive than girls, at least when it comes to prenatal pesticide exposure. Chlorpyrifos (CPF) is an organophosphate bug-killer known to delay development and decrease working memory in children exposed to the chemical in utero. A Columbia University-based research team attempted to determine whether a nurturing home environment might attenuate some of the damage attributed to CPF.
The good news is ... wait, there is no good news. No amount of nurturing, defined as parental attentiveness, displays of physical affection, encouragement of delayed gratification, limit-setting, and mother’s ability to control her negative reactions, was able to restore baseline brain function in CPF-exposed children. But boys did respond marginally better than girls to such measures, for what it’s worth. My advice is that if you’re pregnant with a boy and you have bugs in your house, tell them they’d better get out now, or one day you’re going to give your boy a really big magnifying glass. But seriously, don’t encourage that sort of behavior. It’s a short step from ants to alligators.
David L. Hill, M.D, FAAP, is vice president of Cape Fear Pediatrics in Wilmington, NC and is an adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is Program Director for the AAP Council on Communications and Media and an executive committee member of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. He has recorded commentaries for NPR's All Things Considered and provided content for various print, television and Internet outlets. Dr. Hill's first book, Dad to Dad: Parenting Like A Pro will be available starting in April 2012 from AAP Publishing.