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Common Cold May Cause Childhood Obesity
It seems that every day a new study suggests another possible explanation for the childhood obesity epidemic. Just recently, researchers found that lack of sleep could be a cause. Now a new study suggests that a common cold virus may be contributing to childhood obesity, MSNBC.com reports. Continue reading »
Genetic disorder speeds up aging process
Progeria is an extraordinarily rare fatal disease which makes children age ten times faster than normal.
Last Friday night, ABC News “20/20″ presented “Barbara Walters Special: Seven Going on Seventy,” which featured three of the 68 children in the world who currently have the condition.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and the film based on it were said to be inspired by progeria, but, the reality is not as romantic.
Kids with progeria are seemingly healthy at birth, but begin to age dramatically by the time they turn two. They lose their hair. Their skin wrinkles and they often develop diseases associated with old age — osteoporisis, cataracts and cardiovascular problems. On average, the life expectancy of kids with progeria is 13. Continue reading »
Here’s some relief for working parents, from the same paper that vilified us last week. Today USA today has a quick quiz to help parents and teachers figure out when a sick child needs to be sent home from daycare, based on guidelines from Pediatrics.
The answers are not what you think. And if your kids childcare is anything like the majority of centers and home daycares, you’ve been called to pick up a sick kid who could really have stayed put at school.
As parents in the information age, we have lots of tools at our disposal when it comes to doing what’s best for our kids. Before they are even born, we surf baby name sites to find one that will ensure they stand out but not too far out. We go online to research the best cribs and car seats before we choose one. And we are alerted instantly when they are recalled. We read what the experts and other parents think about the educational value of the books, toys and games we are considering purchasing for our kids.
Going online for parenting information has become so automatic that it’s no surprise that the first thing many of us do when our child shows symptoms of an illness is to turn to Dr. Google. But as Jennifer Gruden writes in an article titled “Anxiety in the Age of Google,” that is where information and insanity often meet. Continue reading »
In her new book, Saving Henry, Laurie Strongin talks about the struggle to save her first son from a fatal illness - by giving birth to the perfect genetic donor.
This technique has received a lot of press and criticism over the past decade, and been the topic of a sensational and popular novel. It’s a strategy that Laurie’s family and her son’s doctors pioneered. In an interview this week with ParentDish, she puts a human face on this controversial practice.
Does it seem like kids are getting unhealthier? According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association today, they are. Researchers from MassGeneral Hospital for Children found that the prevalence of chronic health conditions like obesity, asthma and behavior or learning problems rose from 12.8 percent in 1994 to 26.6 percent in 2006.
The reasearchers followed 3 consecutive cohorts of children from 1988 to 1994, 1994 to 2000, and 2000 to 2006. Children were ages 2 to 8 at the start of each study period, and the numbers in each cohort ranged from 2337 in the first group to 905 in the second. Continue reading »
Facebook is fun for lots of things — finding out your high school boyfriend has gained a paunch and lost hair, for example, or that your college floor-mate is pregnant. It’s even useful.
Besides keeping up with personal and public news, many of us use it as a parenting tool. Therese Walsh Giarusso, writing for the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s parenting blog, admits to using it for “vomit alerts”– aka, for tracking the latest stomach bug from her friends’ kids to hers so she can be forewarned and forearmed. Continue reading »
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Wendy Michaels 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
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