Archive for December, 2004

A Child’s Nightmare

Monday, December 27th, 2004

More than a million children will go to bed tonight having lost their parents or having been made homeless by the devastating tsunami. And when they awaken, their communities in tatters, they will face the threat of diseases borne by quieter water. Standing water can be deadlier, if slower, than racing tidal waves. The tsunami-related […]

A Gift from the Gut

Friday, December 24th, 2004

What can you give a child to help prevent asthma? Asthma in children has more than doubled in the last decade, and quadrupled since 1973. Scientists are scrambling to understand the changes in our environments responsible for this rapid increase. One part of the environment gaining more attention is the tiny world that lives inside […]

A Gift from the EPA

Monday, December 20th, 2004

The percentage of people with asthma has doubled in the last decade, and quadrupled since 1973. Asthma has become the most common chronic medical condition in children. To help those with asthma, allergies, and other respiratory illnesses, a number of governmental agencies have teamed up to provide a free gift. This gift comes from the […]

Iron and ADHD

Friday, December 17th, 2004

Here’s a very interesting study . the first to connect children’s iron levels and ADHD. In Paris, France, 110 children from the same school district were referred to a university hospital between March 2002 and June 2003 to be evaluated for school-related problems. Fifty-three of these children met the criteria for a definite diagnosis of […]

Screening to Prevent SIDS?

Thursday, December 9th, 2004

Italy is considering a new screening program for all newborn babies, based on the impressive initial results of a pilot study, suggesting this program could prevent the anguish of 30 sudden infant deaths (SIDS) in Italy each year. Babies in the pilot study all had newborn EKGs. This screening EKG is a simple, cheap procedure […]

Shampoo and Brain Cells

Wednesday, December 8th, 2004

When Dr. Elias Aizenman declared that a common shampoo and ingredient might harm developing babies. brains, it triggered a flurry of news reports, many of them with enough information to alarm people, but not enough to help them decide what to do. He made his controversial statement on December 5, 2004 at the annual meeting […]

Stress, Asthma, and 6 Weeks Later!

Monday, December 6th, 2004

Bouts of asthma come and go, brought on by various triggers. How might stressful life events affect asthma attacks? To find out, researchers tracked the frequency and severity of asthma attacks in school-aged children at a specialist asthma clinic at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow. None of the children in the study […]