When Kathy Perusse had weight-loss surgery and shed 120 pounds, she may have done more than make her own life easier.
She went on to have two daughters, and she may have boosted their chances of avoiding becoming obese, like her two older children are.
That’s the implication of research suggesting that something in an obese woman‘s womb can program her fetus toward becoming a fat child and adult. It’s not about simply passing along genes that promote obesity; it’s some sort of still-mysterious signal. Read the rest of this entry »
Over the years, immunization has saved millions of lives and prevented hundreds of millions of cases of disease. Today in the United States, children routinely get vaccines that protect them from 14 diseases, all of which, at one time or another, were a serious threat to our country’s children.
For instance, diphtheria used to be one of the most dreaded of childhood diseases, killing more than 10,000 Americans each year, but today’s doctors are likely to never see a single case. And smallpox, which was one of the most devastating diseases the world has ever known, has been eradicated from the Earth thanks to vaccination. Read the rest of this entry »
Children can be taught to use their imagination to tackle frequent bouts of stomach pain, research shows.
A relaxation-type CD, asking children to imagine themselves in scenarios like floating on a cloud led to dramatic improvements in abdominal pain.
The US researchers said the technique worked particularly well in children as they have such fertile imaginations.
It has been estimated that frequent stomach pain with no identifiable cause affects up to one in five children. Read the rest of this entry »
A commonly used inhaler may fail to prevent asthma attacks in hundreds of thousands of children with the condition because they carry a genetic defect, scientists believe.
The inhaler, called salbutamol, or Ventolin, is commonly known as the “blue inhaler”.
More than one million children in Britain currently suffer from asthma and an estimated up to 130,000 are believed to carry a double copy of a gene variant, which researchers said could significantly inhibit the effects of the drug.
Researchers found that children with the gene variant and who also had to use the drug daily were significantly more likely to suffer an attack than those without the variant. Read the rest of this entry »
Children who are smacked are more aggressive and have poorer mental development than those who are verbally castigated, studies have found.
Research on toddlers and other studies following children into adolescence found physical punishment was bad for children and made them more likely to show anti-social behaviour.
The children who were smacked at age one were more aggressive and had not developed cognitive skills as well as those punished verbally. Read the rest of this entry »
Children with self-esteem problems are more likely to be obese as adults, a research team has found.
A study of 6,500 participants in the 1970 British Birth Cohort Study found that 10-year-olds with lower self esteem tended to be fatter as adults.
The effect was particularly true for girls, researchers from King’s College London reported.
One obesity expert said the results highlighted that early intervention was key to tackling obesity. Read the rest of this entry »
