540 children in the US have died so far this year from known or suspected H1N1 flu. This tragic number is more than six times higher than in an entire typical flu year, and the current flu season may only be getting started. This tragic number is very low, however, compared to the more than seventy million children in the US.
Medications to treat H1N1 flu work better the earlier they are started. Many children who would benefit from these medications are getting them late or are not getting them at all. But the flip side is also true: many children who don’t need treatment are being dragged to clinics and ERs, creating cost, inconvenience, and risk for that child and for the community.
The simple tool at www.feelingflu.com* was designed to help you make the right decision for you and your child.
When you get the flu, whether it’s H1N1 (swine) flu or not, you want relief. It’s even worse when your little one gets sick and you watch him suffer. It’s understandable that we’d want to seek immediate care, especially with the news stories about the flu epidemic.
I’d like to congratulate Shelby Rodriquez, Healthy Child Healthy World’s winner of this year’s Mom on a Mission award. The video below tells her story. You can get more detail about Shelby’s mission on our Perspective’s Blog where she was recently a guest blogger.
Even though the flu is less dangerous than many think and this vaccine less dangerous than many think, factory farming of animals may continue to promote the creation of serious viruses and bacteria that threaten human populations. Swine flu comes from pigs shoved together where the virus spreads and mutates, then escapes to spread in people. The avian flu comes from chickens. E coli comes from the factory farming of cows and ends up other places, such as spinach (and our dinner tables!). Salmonella? From factory farming of chickens, and on and on.
The growing, emerging illnesses that are scariest right now are growing because of animal agricultural practices. Here’s where your choices as a parent can really make a difference. When you choose meat and poultry products for your family’s table, look for keywords like organic, cage-free, grass-fed and pasture-fed. You’re not only lessoning the risk that you’ll run into contaminated products, you’re also supporting sustainable agriculture practices that can reduce the that factory farming of animals can pose.
For more about choosing healthy food products for your family, check out my Organic Prescription, which lists the top 10 most important organic choices you can make.
The Centers for Disease Control say all people from 6 months through 24 years are in a high priority group for getting the flu shot this year. But I can understand the fear some parents have about the vaccine for the swine flu (H1N1). It has just now become available, and it’s natural for parents to question whether it’s safe to give their little ones.
The bottom line is I’m getting it happily because I work in a hospital and am around people with it so often - and don’t want to spread it, never mind being sick. And I’m giving it to all my kids. I do prefer the version of the vaccine that comes in single dose vials without the added preservative, rather than the multi-dose vials with them - though not enough to sway the decision either way. I wouldn’t argue with parents either way they chose, though, because I see advantages and disadvantages both ways, and parents need to make their own decisions about the health of their family.
I trust the new vaccine. The H1N1 vaccine being offered in the US at first is less dangerous than people fear. It’s very similar technology to the flu vaccine given to millions every year - just aimed at a different strain. The new experimental vaccines with adjuvants to make them Continue reading »
How can you tell the difference between cold and flu? I recorded this video with A.D.A.M. to give you information that will help you determine the difference between the two.
How do you know if you have swine flu (H1N1)? There’s a great new online tool that can help you find out — and it’s free! Just go to http://www.FeelingFlu.com
Get in on the free beta launch of KEAS, a new online service that provides step-by-step Care Plans to help you understand diagnoses and lab results, set health goals, and do what it takes to achieve your goals. I’m excited to be one of the founding experts, providing Care Plans on asthma and ear infections. Ear infections are the most common acute illness treated by physicians in kids treated by physicians, the most common reason antibiotics are prescribed to kids, and the most common reason for kids to get general anesthesia. Asthma is the most common chronic illness in kids, and a major cause of missed school. We designed these free Care Plans to help you minimize symptoms, minimize medications, and prevent future problems. Click here to join for your child’s conditions or here to join for your own wellness goals.
You’ll also be able to ask questions of other KEAS members, offer answers to other parents with questions and add resources to the ever-growing community of people who want to be able to make their own healthcare decisions. And your feedback will help us build the best tool possible to empower people to take control of their health.
Konrad Lorenz made his mark by studying a special type of learning where key exposures during a critical and sensitive window of development can have a lasting influence - a process he called imprinting. The famous example of this is imprinting in geese. Newly hatched goslings are programmed to follow the first moving objects they see. They quickly become imprinted on this object and will move their little feet fast to keep up with it. This is highly adaptive. Most of the time. Usually this moving magnet is the gosling’s mother.
Photo by Howard Schoenberger
Lorenz showed, however, that if he were the first mover that a gosling saw, it would be imprinted on Lorenz and follow him about, refusing to follow a goose. A goose could even imprint on a toy train and ignore other geese, even its own mother. Later, as adults, these geese would even choose toy trains for their life partners (which didn’t work out well for the geese — or the trains). Lorenz won the Nobel Prize for this work in 1973.f
A new federal study of fish from 300 streams across the U.S. showed every fish in the sample contained mercury. Mercury damages children’s immune systems and kidneys, but we’re even more concerned about its effect on the developing brain of a child in the womb. The mercury we find in fish can damage the nervous system and cause learning disabilities before kids are born, and can affect infants and young children as well.
The relatively good news from the study is that while all the fish samples had some mercury, only about 25 percent exceeded the EPA’s maximum recommendations for contamination for people who eat an average amount of fish.
Researchers examined more than 1,000 fish, including bass, trout and catfish. According to the study, the main source of the mercury is emissions from coal-fired power plants, where it is released from smokestacks and ends up in our water. The highest levels of concentration were found in fish from the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida and Louisiana. They attributed mercury sources in Western states to runoff from gold and mercury mining areas.
It’s such a shame that one of the best sources of lean protein and healthful nutrients has become such a storehouse for toxic waste. Continue reading »
Water is essential to maintain health for children and adults alike, and it should be the beverage of choice for all of us, with one notable exception. For infants, water is not necessary and may even be harmful to your little one. Before you give your baby water, review these three facts that every parent should know about babies and water.
Babies exclusively on breast milk or formula usually don’t need to drink water Before a baby starts solid food, he receives plenty of water from mother’s milk or formula. These rich liquids more than suffice to replace the water babies will lose with their normal bodily functions. If the weather is hot, usually a little extra milk will make up for the extra loss of fluids, but you can also supplement with a small bottle (2 to 4 ounces) of water between feedings.
Too much water can cause water intoxication
Baby’s urine contains water as well as sodium and other electrolytes, and the milk or formula he drinks contains just the right amount to keep the baby’s system balanced. If an infant consumes too much water, he may lose too much Continue reading »
We’ve all been hearing about the worst case scenarios regarding the H1N1 flu, otherwise known as the swine fluf. We don’t know how bad H1N1 will be this fall, but it looks like it could be several times worse than the usual seasonal flu (which kills about 36,000 people a year in the US), but with this one children, college- and grad school-age adults, and pregnant women are especially vulnerable. Boys who catch H1N1 in particular seem to get a lot sicker than the regular flu, and children are the largest group of flu sufferers who end up needing hospitalization.
This year may be the most important year in recent history to get your flu shots. It’s important to note that this year we’ll see a regular flu shot as well as one for H1N1, which should be available this October. The regular flu shot may help some, by keeping people healthier and stronger overall, and reducing fevers that will keep people out of school or work, but won’t be a major help for the current strain for H1N1.
Join me in support of California Bill SB 797. My three minute speech at the State Capitol starts 4 minutes into the rally video. Actress and environmentalist, Amy Smart speaks next.
The long crying spasms of colic can be exhausting for parents and babies alike. Because babies with colic have been shown in some studies to have fewer species of beneficial bacteria in their intestines, researchers in Turin, Italy wondered whether giving babies probiotics (beneficial bacteria) might help solve the colic. Ninety breast-fed colicky babies were randomly assigned to get either the probiotic L. reuteri (0.8 billion cfu per day) or another colic remedy, simethicone (60 mg per day). The breastfeeding moms avoided cow’s milk in their own diets to reduce complicating factors. They recorded the total minutes of crying each day.
At the start, the babies in both groups averaged a parent-exasperating 197 minutes a day of crying spasms. They were rechecked 7, 14, 21, and 28 days after starting their remedy. By day 7, those who were getting the probiotics were crying and average of 38 minutes less than they were before, about twice the improvement seen with the other remedy. At each check-up, those given the probiotics fared better. The colic had resolved for 95 percent of those receiving probiotics and for only 7 percent of those receiving simethicone.
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