Babies at Risk from Exposure to Bisphenol A in Plastic Feeding Bottles

The hormonally active substance bisphenol A is contained in many synthetic and packaging materials and can disrupt the body’s endocrine system. It can find its way into the food chain and the human organism and a new study appears to show that babies who are fed with polycarbonate bottles are especially at risk.

Bisphenol A (BPA) is the key element in polycarbonate synthetics and epoxy resins and you will find it in most plastic everyday objects from baby bottles and food packaging to the coating used in food and drink cans and to seal drinking water pipelines and can be harmful even in small doses

BPA acts like the natural hormone estrogen and as an anti-androgen and it can affect sexual development, especially in boys. Based on toxicological studies, the European Food Safety Authority has established a limit for the acceptable daily intake of BPA: currently 50 micrograms per kilogram of body weight. “However, the limit doesn’t include the studies on the hormonal impact of bisphenol A, which are often difficult to interpret,” says Natalie von Götz, a scientist from the Institute of Chemistry and Bioengineering.

Her studies indicated that babies and infants absorb the most BPA and that those fed using PC bottles are the worst affected. On average they were taking in 0.8 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight via bottles and although this amount is well below the statutory minimum, von Götz says that the latest studies on rats have shown that even low doses can have a harmful impact on their development.

The exposure declines with age, although the study also shows that it depends on the kind of diet or lifestyle you have. If your diet includes a lot of canned food, or ready meals in PC containers reheated n the microwave then you are being exposed to a comparatively higher dosage of BPA.

There is no need to panic, as more research is certainly needed in the packaging field, but keeping an eye on your personal intake would be a good move and if bottle feeding a baby then old fashioned glass and heating milk outside the microwave would seem to be a safer option.

Acupuncture Helps Young Patients with Chronic Illness

There is plenty of evidence to support acupuncture for pain relief, and I personally am a big fan of it after it cured me of pain from a trapped sciatic nerve in my hip, and now doctors at Rush University Medical Center in Illinois but little has been studied for its effects on children.

Rush Children’s Hospital offers both Chinese and Western medicine to patients and this has prompted this new study to analyze and document how acupuncture might help in reducing pain in children and increase quality of life. The children have been diagnosed with chronic illnesses and they are testing acupuncture therapy to help ease the pain and negative side effects like nausea, fatigue, and vomiting caused by such conditions and intensive treatments such as chemotherapy.

Dr. Paul Kent is an oncology expert at the hospital and it is the lack of options for pain management in children that has prompted the study. Research indicates that up to 70 percent of paediatric patients experience pain and those with chronic illnesses often do not have adequate relief or prevention of pain. This is because as many of the solutions for adults such as narcotics and other serious pain medications carry too many risks of serious side effects in children. Dr Kent has no doubt it will be useful from his own experience at the hospital, he said that many children with chronic or acute health issues turn to complementary or integrative approaches after all other conventional treatment options are exhausted and that integrative therapies like acupuncture can be helpful from the onset of disease and can have a tremendously positive influence on a child’s quality of life.

The National Institute of Health (NIH) in the United States has published a statement concluding that acupuncture is effective for treating adults for nausea following chemotherapy and for pain after dental surgery. In children, both they and their parents have stated that acupuncture treatments were both helpful and relaxing so the therapy is being offered to patients between the ages of 5-20 years of age.

Those children in the study will receive eight acupuncture treatments at no charge.

The Real Differences Between Teenage Boys and Girls

One of most commonly quoted facts about the differences between boys and girls is that the girls do better academically. What’s not so well known is that boys have higher rates of suicide, conduct disorders, emotional disturbance, premature death and juvenile delinquency than girls of their age.

This startling conclusion came from a paper on the “The State of American Boyhood,” published in the Journal ‘Gender’ and based on work done at the University of Alaska. They acknowledged that depression, suicide attempts and eating disorders are common in teenage girls but that the boys problems are more serious.

Young people themselves have negative stereotypes as to why boys do less well, and centre on three themes: young men are lazy, they don’t plan ahead and they are prone to peer pressure. The result is that they get little respect and so have even less enthusiasm for continuing education and low self esteem is made even worse.

Another difference between the sexes in the teens is that overweight girls tend to enter puberty early but overweight boys may begin puberty later than thin boys. Being a bouncy chubby baby is one thing, but when it persists it is setting a pattern for health problems later in life. As rates of obesity among teenagers has nearly tripled since the 1960s, this late development of puberty in boys may well become a cause for concern as it can lead to loss of self esteem with peers and this can increase comfort eating, and obesity, still further.

Safe Headwear for Toddlers

It is a truly magical moment when a child starts to crawl, but when they start to toddle it can bring up major anxiety and fear as they keep falling down as part of the learning process. Weird name, but the Oopsie is a functional and easy to wear head guard that is designed to protect toddlers from their occasional bumps as they try to maintain their balance.

It was designed by a doting Dad who was concerned when his son took regular falls while learning to walk and couldn’t find anything suitable to protect his head. He produced the Oopsie with a non-toxic EVA foam filling to absorb shock and cushion impact to the forehead, temples and skull soft spots.

It is easy to put on and simple to fasten the Velcro attached to the 2 pieces and is adjustable for different head sizes – obviously! Research has proved that toddlers are happy to wear it and the polyester and cotton cover comes in various covers and can be hand or gentle machine washed.

It would be an ideal present for an adventurous youngster, or rather their parents, and it costs £19.99. Stockists, and more information, from Baby Bumper www.theoopsie.co.uk or call 01373 301220.

Helping Children to De-stress

I find it quite ‘dis-stressing’ that so many children are suffering in this way but, according to a recent survey by the NSPCC, 1 in 3 school children are stressed.

They are suffering from two main issues: school itself and loneliness with not enough close contact with friends and family. Kids lives today are full of noise, activity and, sadly, pressure from their parents, their school and their peers. Bullying is one factor, but simply being overwhelmed by the demands put on them is also to blame.

You can see the results physically with problems like poor sleep patterns, irritability and over sensitivity, bed wetting, headaches, stomach aches and more and more we are seeing mental and emotional problems such as depression, anxiety, nervousness, anger and temper tantrums.

That’s all very well, as one of my great teachers used to say – understanding is the booby prize, it‘s what you do to solve it that matters. These have to revolve around helping to develop greater confidence, self belief and a more positive attitude towards themselves. There are many ways to do it, and finding a hobby that engages them is one way forward and certainly physical activity like sports and games are very helpful. What parents may not have considered is trying something like a special CD aimed at helping children relax

Marneta Viegas is founder of Relax Kids and has written 2 books of children’s visualisations and produced a range of children’s relaxation CDs for concentration, anger management, anxiety and worry, self-esteem and bedtime and are set to relaxing music.

Relaxation is vital for children’s health and well being with just a few minutes a day helping young children feel calm and focused and ready to face their day. It can also help with sleep problems as it decreases muscle tension, slows the rate of breathing and reduces blood pressure. If your child is having problems concentrating then some relaxation techniques will help with that as it can improve their listening skills. This means they are able to listen and assimilate information, so giving them better problem-solving abilities.

Adults and children alike have their creativity and imagination blocked when they are stressed and by encouraging children to relax and take their minds away from their current situation and go on an imaginary journey they get a stronger sense of self-esteem and a feeling of self worth as they start to see their strengths and qualities in the quiet space of relaxation.

If you would like to try some of the relaxation tips out with children, or stressed adults, here are some simple ones to start with:

1 Lying on the back with hand on the stomach. Breathe in and feel the stomach rise, and breathe out and feel it fall back. Just concentrate on breathing in and out slowly to help let go and feel calm and quiet.

2 Again, lying on your back, or sitting in a chair, tense and relax the muscles of the body in groups, starting at the feet and moving up to the head to help feel calm and relaxed.

3 Visualisation can also help by closing the eyes and imagining floating on a cloud or lying on a boat and floating down the river or lying in warm sunshine and feeling the warmth in their body or imagine that they are sinking gently into soft sand.

If you would like to know more about this work, please visit www.relaxkids.com

Health Bite for Adults:

Just to remind you, that adults too can benefit from relaxation and meditation techniques. A $3.8 million study funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in the US has reported that ) patients with coronary heart disease who practiced meditation had a nearly 50 percent lower rate of heart attack, stroke, and death compared to a matched group that didn’t meditate.

We already knew that meditation has been proved to reduce blood pressure, psychological stress, and other risk factors for heart disease, but this is the first controlled clinical trial to show that long-term practice reduces the incidence of heart attacks, strokes and improves longevity.

Teenage Girls Obesity and MS Link

Teenage girls are often obsessed with weight, and a lot of emphasis naturally has been put on the fight against anorexia and false body image. However, the reverse is also flagging up a problem as recent research has shown that girls who were obese at age 18 faced double the risk of developing multiple sclerosis as adults.

The study is part of a very long running research project by the Nurses’ Health Study in the USA and found a much higher relative risk of MS among those girls who had a body mass index value of 30 or more at age 18. They have speculated that it could be related to inadequate levels of vitamin D or the systemic inflammation that is also associated with obesity. Those who are obese are often found to have very low levels of vitamin D.

Interestingly being overweight in childhood did not carry a similar risk, it was the weight as they reached 18-20 that was significant so it’s worth keeping an eye on teenage girls weight as they reach mid teens, if they will let you.

Home births as safe as hospital delivery

Women who give birth at home do not have any higher rate of complications or death than women who give birth in a hospital. This research was carried out in the Netherlands where one-third of women choose to give birth at home, due to a government encouragement of the policy.

Because the Netherlands has one of the highest rates in Europe of infant death during or just after birth, some researchers have suggested that home births might be unsafe, but when researchers examined data from 530,000 births attended by midwives, they found no difference in the risk of mother or infant death between home births and hospital births.

The study looked only at low-risk women, defined as those going into labour with no known complications, and did not include hospital births attended by a doctor rather than a midwife.

The researchers found that a full one-third of women who began their birth at home eventually had to be transferred to a hospital but in such cases neither the mother nor infant was at any higher risk of dying than in any of the other births in the study.

Childhood sweet tooth can trigger violence

I sometimes get a strong sense of déjà-vu as a story I reported on years ago resurfaces as ‘new’ in a slightly different guise. Those of you who have heard me speak on alternative health will have heard me tell of the prison experiment in the USA where they replaced the normal diet with whole foods and no sugary sweets or snacks. The result was a substantial drop in violence

Now new research shows that children who eat sweets and chocolate every day are more likely to be violent as adults, according to a study of almost 17,500 participants published in the October issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry. The study is the first to examine the long-term effects of childhood diet on adult violence and they found that 10-year-olds who ate sweets daily were significantly more likely to have been convicted for violence by the time they were 34 years of age.

Researchers from Cardiff University studied results from the 1970 British Cohort Study and they found that 69 per cent of the participants who were violent at the age of 34 had eaten sweets and chocolate nearly every day during childhood, compared to 42% who were non-violent.

Of course sweet eating is not only the only factor in violent behaviour, but the link between eating sweets and chocolate and violence remained after other factors were taken into account.

Nor, for once, can the blame be laid solely at the door of sugar consumption although it is certainly relevant. The researchers put forward several explanations for the link, but according to lead researcher Dr Simon Moore they believe that giving children sweets and chocolate regularly may stop them learning how to wait to obtain something they want. Not being able to defer gratification may push them towards more impulsive behaviour, which is strongly associated with delinquency.

Appeasement seems to be a parental strategy I see a lot of these days – probably because I travel more by bus. The use of sweets as a pacifier is certainly not a new tactic, but the link to the child’s belief that they are entitled to what they demand immediately may well be an important factor that sets up a pattern. If a belief that they are always going to be entitled to have what they want, when they want it, is not very social behaviour but is something we are seeing a lot more of. Wonder if it will affect the sales of selection boxes this Christmas?

Babies crawl away from danger

An interesting hypothesis has just come from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. Do infants only start to crawl once they are physically able to see danger coming or because they are more mobile, they develop the ability to sense looming danger?

This study suggests that an infants’ ability to see whether an object is approaching on a direct collision course, and when it is likely to collide, develops around the time they become more mobile. So they are not heading for the cookie jar, or mother’s milk, but are establishing the important neural networks that enable them to see objects and how dangerous they might be.

Those neural networks are in the process of being established from birth and by the age of eight to nine months are fully able to register an impending collision. Coincidentally, this is also the average age at which infants start crawling.

Scientists just can’t take anything on trust and go ‘aah’ like the rest of us can they?

Action on Eczema

Well in case you missed it, September held  National Eczema Week and I have a number of suggestions for anyone suffering from this distressing condition.

First you are definitely not alone as currently one in five children and one in twelve adults in the UK are affected. The National Eczema Society is offering a free booklet to help patients and carers cope with one of the most distressing symptoms of eczema – the itch. Normally there is a charge for this, unless you are a member, but until 31 October you can get your free copy by emailing helpline@eczema.org or call the very useful National Eczema Society helpline on 0800 089 1122.

Why me?

Bottom line is that skin affected by eczema releases chemicals which stimulate the nerves and the nerves pass the itch sensation to the brain, and so you scratch and make everything worse. But the itching drives you so mad you are prepared to put up with it for the temporary relief.

Much eczema is stress and environment related and for children in particular, tiredness can make it worse. Soaps and detergents, fragrances, temperature changes, sweating, some clothing , such as wool, and irritant substances such as paint and dyes can all add to the mix so finding out what triggers your eczema would be the first step.

Keeping the skin well moisturised is the next step and your doctor may prescribe a steroid cream as these are anti-inflammatory and work well in the short term for some people. However, nothing works for everyone, and steroids do have unpleasant side effects associated with them, particularly with long term use.

Whether your eczema is persistent, or intermittent, you might want to try one of these natural remedies that have proven to be effective.

Natural help

There are several ways you can help yourself with an outbreak of eczema. Essential oils have shown they have the potential to be very effective at clearing up or relieving the symptoms of eczema.

Peppermint is especially effective at relieving the itching that accompanies this skin disorder. To get the most relief simply rub a drop of diluted peppermint oil over the affected area.

Tea Tree Oil is very popular due to its ability to clear up eczema patches, relieve the accompanying itch, and reduce the redness and swelling that results from an outbreak. This oil can be applied topically to the skin, or it can be used as a cleanser, lotion, or cream when purchased as the active ingredient in these items.

Oatmeal can help relieve the constant itching, reduce some of the redness, and help soften the dry skin of eczema. Using it in a bath is quite effective; just tie a handful of natural oatmeal into a piece of cheesecloth and let it circulate in the warm bath water. Soak awhile and DO NOT add anything else, no soap or bath oils.

Aloe vera was used on the skin of burn victims at Hiroshima and has a great reputation as a healing balm for damaged skin. You can either break off a leaf from the plant and squeeze out the gel to put on your skin, and it is a good to use on the affected areas directly after an oatmeal bath.

Ayudara Natural Skin Balm is a new product that I have been trying out on a patch of eczema that has been quite persistent on the side of my nose. It is a non-steroid all natural treatment for dry skin and contains a combination of Chlorophyll-C and marine extract of golden sea cucumber These actively helps the skin’s cell rejuvenation process and can be an effective treatment for ailments like eczema, dermatitis or dry skin.

In Malaysia people have used golden sea cucumber in natural skin remedies for centuries and it certainly cleared up my small patch of irritated skin very fast.

For specialized information on eczema, do have a look at this website at www.eczema.org for helpful advice and the newest research.

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