Dr. Elsie M. Taveras, an assistant professor of population medicine and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, feels that, while there is not yet any hard data from controlled studies to prove it, observational studies show that there are many risk factors in prenatal, infancy and early childhood that eventually steer children toward becoming obese adults.

Let’s start with the Mum-to-be.  A kid’s likelihood of obesity is raised when the mum is overweight.  Considering that almost half of pregnant Americans are either overweight or obese, this is strike one for many children.

Tack on to that the fact that gaining too much weight during pregnancy and/or contracting gestational diabetes can also influence kids to be overweight later in life.  Consider that strike two.

Once the baby is born, parents are urged to pay attention to the ratio of height vs. weight.  If the child’s poundage is high for his height, there’s a good change he could be obese by as early as age 3.  Excessive weight gain in the first year can be an indicator of future obesity.  Whether physical or psychological, the body is conditioned to expect more food.

Clearly there’s no such thing as starting too early.

Image: childpack.com

The video, which claims to teach babies new vocabulary words, was found to have absolutely no impact whatsoever on language acquisition.

The new study, which was published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, differed from the University of Washington study in that rather than just asking parents about their babies’ viewing habits, 96 babies were actually assigned to watch or avoid watching the Baby Wordsworth video for a period of six weeks.

During the study, the 12- to 14-month-old babies from both groups were tested for vocabulary acquisition every two weeks.  Psychologist Rebekah Richert, who led the study, says that while all the kids added new words to their repertoires during this period, the video-watching babies didn’t learn any more than the non-video-watching babies.

While this study may indeed be the last word on whether or not watching videos encourages early language development in young children, it doesn’t answer the question of whether or not these videos actually cause harm.  The University of Washington study concluded that young children who watch television are at higher risk of language delays and attention problems.  While this new study didn’t directly address that issue, the researchers say the results may indicate that unlike the interactive learning that takes place one-on-one with an adult, the passive viewing of overstimulating videos may be too much for baby to handle, effectively paralyzing the brain and preventing any learning from taking place.

Or perhaps, as the researchers also suggest, parents who buy into the claims of Baby Einstein and other so-called educational videos are relying on them to do the jobs they themselves should be doing.  Richert says that for children under the age of two, social interaction is key to learning.

But Richert doesn’t go as far as to say that parents should never let their young children watch these types of videos.  As with most everything else in life, moderation and common sense are key.  While it is unlikely that parking the kid in front of a video while you unload the dishwasher and get dinner started is going to negatively impact brain development, that time should not be considered a replacement for one-on-one interaction between parent and child.

Image: yoshimov/Flickr

Researchers at the Geneva School of Business analysed 1074 couples aged 19 to 75.

To increase the chances of a happy, long marriage, the researchers found a few key pointers.

The wife should be five years younger than her husband, the partners should be from the same cultural background and the woman should be more intelligent than her spouse. 27 percent more intelligent in fact, and have a degree, while the man should not.

”If people follow these guidelines in choosing their partners they can increase their chances of a happy, long marriage by up to 20 per cent,” said Nguyen Vi Cao, whose study is published in the European Journal of Operational Research.

Does this ring true for you? I got the five year age gap right, but should have married for brawn, not brains.

Source

The study by paediatric asthma specialists Robert C. Strunk and Leonard B. Bacharier aimed to see which of the three step-up theories recommended by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute was most effective for children whose asthma was not well-controlled. Those treatments are: double the dosage of the inhaled corticosteroid, add a long-acting beta antagonist (LABA), or add a leukotriene receptor antagonist (LTRA) to the inhaled corticosteroid treatment. Doctors find it difficult to predict which treatment will work best in a particular child, however, so the Washington University researchers used a triple-crossover, double blind approach to determine which treatments were most effective.

In the study, 168 children ages 6-18 were randomly given one of the step-up treatments for 16 weeks and their lung function, number of asthma attacks, and number of days their symptoms were under control were recorded at the end of the period. Then researchers would repeat the process with the next therapy.

Age, gender or allergies played no role in which treatment worked best, but ethnicity did. African-American children did equally as well on the LABA treatment or the increased inhaled corticosteroid, while they did not respond as well to the LTRA. Caucasian children did best on the LABA.

Overall, 40 per cent of patients showed the best response by adding the LABA, while nearly 30 per cent of patients showed the best response by adding the LTRA and about 28 per cent showed the best response by doubling the dose of inhaled corticosteroid. The LABA was more than 1.5 times as likely to produce the best response.

As a mum of a kid with asthma, I think even the relatively small study offers hope that those awful moments of watching our babies struggle to breathe could be lessened, if not ended entirely.

For boys, riding a bike increased their likelihood of being fit by 30 per cent.

Walking also increased fitness by 20 – 30 per cent. Unsurprisingly, children who were driven to school had the lowest levels of physical fitness.

The findings came from an analysis of physical tests and questionnaires given to 6000 children aged between 10 and 16 over a two-year period.

Study co-author Christine Voss said, “Children need to be active and stay fit in order to be healthy.”

“Encouraging them to walk or cycle to school is one great opportunity to help achieve this.”

How do you get to school?

Source

The Marriage and Cohabitation Study, which began in 2002, tracked the relationships of 12,571 men and women ages 15 to 44.  Of those, over 40 per cent were married and 9 per cent were living together.

Newly released data taken from this representative sample of US couples finds that of those who were married, 78 per cent remained so after five years. Of those who were cohabitating without the benefit of a legal union, only 30 per cent were still living together as an unmarried couple after five years. But those numbers are a little misleading. The reason about half of those cohabitations ended was because those couple got married within three years.

That’s all very interesting, but the most surprising statistic has to do with starting a family. Women who gave birth eight months or more after getting married were 79 per cent more likely to celebrate a 10-year anniversary. Those who had already conceived a child prior to getting married had a 54 per cent chance of making it to 10 years. And those who had a baby before marriage had a 55 per cent chance of lasting 10 years.

But what about couples who had no children at all?  According to the study, the marriages in which no children were born only had a 34 per cent chance of making it to 10 years.

There is a lot of information in the report that delves even deeper into marriage and cohabitation in America, but the upshot seems to be this: Married couples tend to stay together longer but living together leads to marriage about half the time.  And for couples who do marry, waiting until after the wedding to have children improves the odds of staying together.

Image: cliff1066/Flickr

As reported in the Daily Mail, Dr Kirsten Wisborg and colleagues at Aarhus University Hospital analysed data on women booked for delivery between August 1989 and October 2006.

Out of a total of 20,166 singleton, first-time pregnancies, 16,525 (82 per cent) were conceived spontaneously after less than 12 months, 2,020 (10 per cent) after more than a year of trying (classified as sub-fertile), 879 (4 per cent) conceived after non-IVF fertility treatment and 742 (4 per cent) conceived after IVF/ICSI.

There was a total of 86 stillbirths, giving an overall risk of stillbirth of 4.3 per thousand pregnancies, says the study published in the medical journal Human Reproduction.

The risk of stillbirth in women who conceived after IVF/ICSI was 16.2 per thousand.

Despite the alarming results, a Swedish doctor has urged caution, saying that his own study of 27,000 women found no increase in stillbirths amongst those who had used artificial reproductive technology.

Dr Karl Nygren, associate professor at the IVF and Fertility Clinic, Sofiahammet Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden, said

‘I don’t know why the two studies should have such different findings, but couples should be reassured that the risk of stillbirths is low.

‘One thing is for certain: a singleton pregnancy is much safer than a multiple pregnancy, and this is what we should all be striving to achieve every time we treat a woman.’

Source

Those at highest risk 60 percent higher — had given birth five or more times. It’s not a matter of “the fewer births, the better,” though. Giving birth once, three times, or never added a 10 percent higher risk of heart disease. Four births correlated with a 30 per cent increase in risk.

Pregnancy complications, such as high blood pressure and pregnancy-related diabetes, or birth-related complications did not explain the link between number of births and later heart disease and stroke risk.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm noted that pregnancy leads to significant changes in how blood flows in and through blood vessels. That can alter risk for heart disease and stroke. It’s hoped that studying these changes can lead to a greater understanding of heart disease in women.

This study is significant because of its size and the conclusive nature of its findings. Most other studies have been small and had conflicting results. Given that Sweden has generous health care and maternity leave granted to all citizens, I do wonder if the results would be the same here.

Researchers from NSW’s University of New England studied more than 4500 pre-schoolers, conducted face-to-face interviews with mothers and measured their child’s height and weight at ages four to five, and again two years later, at ages six to seven.

They found that overall, children of part-time working mums watched about an hour less television each week than both stay-at-home mums and full-time workers.

Their kids also ate fewer snack foods, had more time to exercise and were exposed to less junk-food advertising.

Researchers haven’t nailed the reasons behind their findings, but have a few theories. Co-author of the study and associate professor Jan Nicholson, principal research fellow at Melbourne’s Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, said: “When mothers work part-time, there’s obviously something about the way the house is run, and the way parents are looking after their children that is protective.”

The study concluded that mothers who worked part-time worked hard on making the right choices during the time they did have with their children.

Obviously it’s just a study based on averages, but it rings true for me. I find when I’m not working we fill in the time with trips to cafes and friends’ houses that inevitably involve treat foods. When I’m working too much, we eat convenience foods.

A big glaring ommission in this study (or the reporting of the study) seems to be the involvement of dads, but we already know that it’s all the mother’s fault, right?

A theory previously painted as extreme is starting to take a foothold within the mainstream medical community–that exposure to toxins in the womb can increase the likelihood of autism.

An upcoming article in a widely respected medical journal, Current Opinion in Pediatrics, argues that foetuses exposed to certain chemicals in the first trimester–even the first few days–of pregnancy can potentially develop neurodevelopmental disorders like autism.

Exactly what kind of toxins are we talking about?  Previous studies have shown that certain medications, such as the sedative thalidomide and misoprostol (an ulcer medicine), increase the instances of autism when taken by women in their first trimester.  (In the case of valproic acid, an anticonvulsant, autism rates rose to a whopping 11%…more than 10% over the national average.)

Other studies cite phthlatates, chemicals found in fragrances, shampoos, nail polish and cosmetics as a culprit.

Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, professor of pediatrics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and chairman of the school’s department of preventive medicine, author of the article, spoke to the NY Times’ Nicholas Kristof:

“The crux of this is brain development,” he said. “If babies are exposed in the womb or shortly after birth to chemicals that interfere with brain development, the consequences last a lifetime.”

Legislators are paying attention to these and other chemical-related health studies and getting into the act.  New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey is championing the strengthening of the Toxic Substances Control Act.

Apparently, of the 80,000 chemicals registered in the U.S., the EPA requires safety testing of only 200.  Excuse me?  Only 200?   Whether or not these autism theories are proven correct, why are only a fraction of the chemicals we expose ourselves and our kids to properly vetted?

Image: scarybulb