Infant car seats have saved countless young lives, but those same seats are also responsible for injuring thousands of youngsters when improperly used outside a vehicle, a new study found.

More than 43,000 infants in the United States required emergency room care between 2003 and 2007 after falling in car seats that were improperly placed on tables, counters and other elevated surfaces. Accidents were even reported after seats rolled over on soft surfaces, such as beds and sofas, the study discovered.

“In our hospital, we saw some fractures caused by these falls, and decided it was probably a wider problem,” said study author Dr. Shital Parikh, a pediatric orthopaedist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. “These injuries are not common compared with some other causes, but they are significant enough to take notice.”

Parikh was to present the research Monday at the American Academy of Pediatrics’ annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Accidents occur when unrestrained babies, especially those older than 2 months, rock and fidget inside an unattended seat, causing the device to tip over or fall, said Dr. Peter Richel, chief of pediatrics at Northern Westchester Hospital Center, in Mount Kisco, N.Y.

According to Parikh, the most common injuries during the five-year period were to the head, followed by fractures and dislocations. Three babies died.

The study comes two months after another study advised parents to remove their children from infant car seats after a car trip because the seats can compress the chest and lower levels of oxygen.

However, experts all agree that car seats are critical inside a vehicle to protect children from injury in a collision, just like seatbelt restraints protect adults.

In Parikh’s study, 62 percent of the accidents involved infants younger than 4 months old. About half the accidents occurred at home, and 8 percent of the infants had to be hospitalized, said Parikh, who based his findings on data from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

“Babies older than 2 months are capable of real movement,” said Richel, who was not part of the study. “We as physicians and health-care providers have to be aware of these kinds of accidents when we advise parents.”

To prevent harm, Richel and Parikh recommended that car seats be used only in cars and only when the infants are properly restrained.

“The best thing is for babies to come out [of the car seat] when you come home,” Richel said. “Barring any danger to the child, such as an aggressive dog, put the car seat directly on the floor.”

Parikh also recommended that car-seat manufacturers do a better job of informing consumers about the danger of misusing their products, including offering explicit printed instructions. Car seat companies should also strive to engineer more stable seats, he added.

In related news, researchers confirmed earlier reports that booster seats significantly reduce the risk of crash injury in children ages 4 through 8.

According to the study, reported online Monday in the journal Pediatrics, children in belt-positioning booster seats were 45 percent less likely to sustain injuries than similarly aged children in standard vehicle seat belts. Booster seats with and without backs provided similar protection.

The University of Michigan Health System lists these warning signs that your new baby may be in pain:

• A more insistent cry that lasts longer than usual, or a cry that’s higher in pitch.
• Silence doesn’t always mean baby is fine. Very sick or premature babies may not have the energy to cry.
• Making unusual faces, such as wrinkling the brow, squeezing eyes closed, getting deep creases around the nose, grimacing or holding the mouth open.
• Stiff or tense posture, with limbs completely stretched out or pulled tight into the body. Babies may also wiggle or squirm, or be “floppy” as if they’ve lost muscle tone.
• Fussiness or irritability that can’t be soothed or comforted.
• Not eating or not sleeping.

Source : Yahoo Health

How is bad breath caused? Well, the congregation of excess bacteria in your mouth can trigger a bad odour in your mouth so when you take care of your mouth, your aim should be getting rid of all of that bacteria. These tips below stream out the things you can do to avoid bad breath.
1) Brush twice a day

Once as soon as you wake up and once before you go to bed. This way you are clearing your mouth of any bacteria especially at night, after your meal. At night, your mouth can hold amazing amounts of bacteria so brushing reduces the amount. Use a soft tooth brush so that your gums don’t recede or you won’t hurt yourself.

2) Use a tongue scraper or a tongue cleaner and a floss

A lot of bacteria stays on your tongue which can cause a lot of bad breath so to clear out all of that bacteria, use a tongue scraper or a tongue cleaner to take off the yellow gunk that may stay on your tongue at times and will get rid of the bacteria. Using a floss every now and then will make sure that bacteria doesn’t stick in corners too.

3) Avoid the spice and pick the mints

Spicy food, onions and garlic are the lords of leaving bad odour in your mouth so you can easily combat this by finishing a good Indian takeaway with parsley, mint or the best is fennel seeds. This way your mouth is temporarily masked of any smell and then you can go home and brush up.

4) Saliva stops smell

Saliva is really good because it flushes out the bacteria out of your mouth throughout the day. A dry mouth means that there is no saliva to push out all of those bacteria so your mouth can smell. This is why sometimes in the morning after a good night’s sleep, your mouth can smell because there is not a lot of saliva being produced when you are asleep. Water is a good way you can constantly keep flushing out the bacteria and the other benefit is that you can keep your saliva flowing to clean out your mouth of any bacteria. But watch out, alcohol and coffee won’t do you any favours because all they do is dry out your mouth further and probably accentuate the smell.

5) Chewing gum is good

The main point of chewing gum isn’t to get the fresh minty smell but even though it does cover up bad breath with minty smells, it is temporary. What chewing gum does is that it stimulates saliva to fight the bacteria.

6) Choose the right mouthwash

Buy those mouthwashes that fight bacteria, not just the ones that mask the smell caused by bad bacteria in your mouth. You can get these by looking carefully in the right shops or by contacting your dentist to give you the mouthwash that specifically says it combats bacteria.

7) The dentist is there to help

If you have any issues, contact your dentist and don’t forget visiting your dentist at least twice a year. Bad breath can be caused by gum diseases or other mouth problems so it might not be able to go away that easily. Your dentist is always ready to help you.

Young adults with a history of low birth weight (less than 5.5 pounds at birth) have an increased risk of hospitalization for respiratory illness, they found.

“Our findings suggest that not only are [low birth weight] survivors at increased risk for long-term respiratory disorders, but that these disorders are clinically significant and associated with increased health care utilization,” wrote lead researcher Dr. Eric C. Walter, of the pulmonary and critical care division at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Walter and his colleagues analyzed data on adults aged 18 and older who were hospitalized with respiratory problems in Washington between Jan. 1, 1998, and Dec. 31, 2007. They compared that information with the patients’ birth weights.

The researchers found that people with very low birth weight (less than 3.3 pounds) or moderately low birth weight (3.3 to 5.5 pounds) had an 83 and 34 percent increased risk of hospitalization, respectively, for respiratory illness. Those with a very low birth weight had twice the risk of being hospitalized for asthma or respiratory infection and an even greater risk of respiratory failure requiring mechanical ventilation.

“In our study the percentage of respiratory disease attributable to moderately or very low birth weight was estimated to be 1.8 percent. If this were extrapolated to the 1.2 million U.S. hospitalizations for respiratory illness per year for ages 18 to 44, low birth weight may account for over 22,000 adult hospitalizations per year, with charges in excess of $225 million per year,” Walter said.

The study will appear in the July 15 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

The findings hint at a looming public health issue. Since the mid-1980s, the rate of low and very low birth weight births in the United States has increased by more than 20 percent. In 2005, there were 330,000 low and very low birth weight births in the United States.

Earlier studies of bathtub injuries concentrated on burns from hot water and drowning and near-drowning. This is the first study that looked at injuries caused by slips and falls, according to the report published in the July 13 online edition of Pediatrics.

“What caught our attention was the frequency of the slips and falls,” said lead researcher Dr. Gary A. Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

There are about 120 kids a day injured by slips and falls in bathtubs and showers, and that number is constant over the 18 years the researchers looked at, Smith said. “That is really telling me that we have a problem that needs to be addressed,” he noted.

There are things that can be done to prevent these injuries, Smith said. “Parents need to use slip-resistant mats in and outside of bathtubs to prevent slips and falls,” he said.

But, Smith also wants manufacturers to make safer tubs and showers. “Manufacturers need to go back and look at the current standard for slip resistance and strengthen that criteria,” he said.

For the study, Smith’s team used data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission from 1990 to 2007. The researchers looked at some 791,200 bathtub- and shower-related injuries in children aged 18 and younger treated in emergency departments.

The study found that the greatest number of injuries were in children aged 2 years. In all, children aged 4 and younger accounted for 54.3 percent of the injuries. Most injuries (71.3 percent) happened in the bathtub, and 97.1 percent happened at home, the researchers noted.

The most common injuries were cuts, which accounted for 59.5 percent of the injuries. Fall, slips and trips were the most common reason for injuries, accounting for 81 percent of all injuries, according to the report.

Most injuries were to the face (48 percent), followed by the head and neck (15 percent). Some 2.8 percent of the children were admitted to the hospital, transferred to another hospital, or held for observation, Smith’s team noted.

Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine, said it’s “alarming that more than 40,000 children are injured badly enough each year in bath and shower tumbles to warrant a trip to the emergency room.”

If these injuries were unavoidable, that would be one thing, Katz said. “But they are extremely, if not completely, preventable, and by simple means,” Katz noted.

“Bath and shower surfaces can be engineered to provide more friction, and surfaces in tubs and showers can be designed to pose less menace should a fall occur,” he said.

For now, parents are forewarned that tub and shower tumbles in young children are a common cause of injury, Katz said. “So the first line of defense is parental vigilance. But the more definitive response is to re-engineer tubs and showers,” he said.

For More Information on Bath Tub Accidents Injure 43 000 US Kids Each year

A study, published in Social Science and Medicine, examined the dietary intake and patterns of U.S. families and found a weak resemblance between the eating habits of parents and children.

“Our findings indicate that factors other than family and parental eating behaviors may play an important role in affecting American children’s dietary intakes,” Youfa Wang, senior author of the study and associate professor with the Bloomberg School’s Center for Human Nutrition, says in a written statement.

Researchers used data from 7,331 adults who participated in the U.S. Department of Agriculture Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals, a nationally representative survey of people between 1994 and 1996. Children of the adult participants were also included in this study.

Diets were evaluated after participants answered two questionnaires about what they had consumed during the past 24 hours. Each participant was assigned a healthy diet score, figured out based on the USDA 2005 Health Eating Index and other measures.

Correlations between parents and children were weak. Parental education and household income did not have much of an effect on dietary resemblance.

“We suspect that the child-parent resemblance in dietary intake may have become weaker over time, due to the growing influence of other factors outside of the family,” Wang says in a written statement.

The public health takeaway is that interventions targeting solely parents might not be as useful as previously thought for improving children’s diets.

Source:  Web MD

The best part is, snacks are good thing and you are not required to cut them out of your child’s diet totally. It is significant for children to have something after every few hours to energize themselves. Sometimes it is better to eat is a simple food substitute that your kids will never notice.

Here are few Healthy Snacks for Kids

1.    Kids love to dip things. Take advantage of this by offering carrots with ranch dip, celery with peanut butter or fruit with yogurt dip. This will help them to gain nutrition.

2.    Utilize reduced-fat, fat-free and lighter versions of eatables. This especially works well with pre packaged food on the run like pudding, custards, and apple sauce cups.

3.    100-calorie snack packs are good choices for days when you are busy. While these suitable packs are costly, you can buy superior bags and divide them into small serving baggies.

4.    Read how many calories are there in a bag of chips. Your kid may consume 2-3 shares of calories without even recognizing it.

5.    A nutritious snack should have less than 3 grams of fat per 100 calories. Instruct your kid to observe the tags and decide whether the food products are vigorous decision or not.

6.    To get more vitamins and minerals, choose fresh foods instead of packed foods.

7.    Let your children take in healthy foods and give them the authority to choose.

Autism has a strong genetic basis, although the genetics of autism are complex and it is unclear whether ASD is explained more by multigene interactions or by rare mutations. In rare cases, autism is strongly associated with agents that cause birth defects. Other proposed causes, such as childhood vaccines, are controversial, and the vaccine hypotheses lack any convincing scientific evidence and are biologically implausible. The prevalence of ASD is about 6 per 1,000 people, with about four times as many males as females. The number of people known to have autism has increased dramatically since the 1980s, partly due to changes in diagnostic practice; the question of whether actual prevalence has increased is unresolved.

Autism affects many parts of the brain; how this occurs is not understood. Parents usually notice signs in the first two years of their child’s life. Although early behavioral or cognitive intervention can help children gain self-care, social, and communication skills, there is no known cure. Not many children with autism live independently after reaching adulthood, though some become successful, and an autistic culture has developed, with some seeking a cure and others believing autism should be tolerated as a difference and not treated as a disorder.

Symptoms

Autism symptoms can appear as early as infancy. However, most doctors will wait until a child is 2 to 3 years old before suggesting testing for Autism.

Early intervention for Autism has always been promoted by professionals as the best form of treatment. Then why do physicians wait before diagnosing Autism in children? The reasons vary from not wishing to scare parents with a wrong diagnosis to simply being unfamiliar with the signs of Autism.

The faster children with ASD can receive therapy, the better. A great deal of parents of Autistic children felt there was something different with their child’s development at an early stage. You may, as a parent, have to seek more then one physician’s opinion.

Here is a list of Autism symptoms that you should look for:
- Lack of interest in toys
- Spinning objects
- Placing objects in lines
- Content with being alone
- Flapping hands
- Excitement in unusual situations or with different objects
- Lack of affection
- Appear not to be aware of surroundings
- Does not respond to their name
- Unusual sleeping patterns
- Show distress for unexplained reasons
- If verbal, repetitive language (echolalia)
- Resisting change in routine (driving a different way home)
- Displaying outbursts
- Sensitive to textures (clothing, food, etc.)
- Show prolonged interest in one object

It is important to note that not all signs of Autism appear in all Autistic children. The degrees in which they appear may vary as well. As an example, some Autistic children will only eat bland foods while our son prefers foods with some flavor to them. He likes pepperoni on his pizza. As well, he will eat a sub sandwich that contains pepperoni, green peppers, onions and other smoked meats.

The one common thing is that most Autistic children will like only certain foods. A very limited range will occur as a result of it. This can be confused with a picky eater.

Sources: Wiki

1. Low-density lipoproteins (LDL) are the “bad” cholesterol. LDL is mostly fat with only a small amount of protein. It can clog your arteries. If you have high cholesterol, your doctor will want you to lower your LDL.
2. High-density lipoproteins (HDL) are the “good” cholesterol. HDL is more protein than fat. It helps clear the bad cholesterol from your blood so it does not clog your arteries. A high level of HDL can protect you from a heart attack.
3. Triglycerides are another type of fat in the blood that can affect your health. If you have high triglycerides and high LDL, your chances of having a heart attack are higher.

A child who is overweight, does not exercise much, and does not eat healthy foods may have a higher chance of having high cholesterol. High cholesterol can also run in families.

Cholesterol tests for children and teens

It is suggest that children and teens have their cholesterol levels checked if they have a family history of early coronary artery disease or have other risk factors.

Child’s risk of high cholesterol, based on a physical exam and family history, is checked at ages 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 years, and then every year through age 21. And also a cholesterol screening test is done between the ages of 18 and 21.

Cholesterol levels for children and teens

One of the Best Heart Association has issued the following guidelines on cholesterol in children and teens 2 to 19 years old:

The best HDL (good) cholesterol levels in children and teens 2 to 19 years old are 35 mg/dL and above. For the same age group, triglyceride levels are best below 150 mg/dL.

Treatment for high cholesterol

Treatment for high cholesterol in children and adolescents may include dietary and lifestyle changes or statins.