Ramanisblog

Tag: Pediatrics

  • Energy Drinks are harmful to Health,especially for Children.

    Refreshing Energy Drink with Tourine. A bust o...
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    Read my Blogs under Health.

    Most of the Drinks in India are advertised as energy drinks and they promise the moon.

    ‘Boost; declares that  will increase Stamina by three times(or is it Complan?), while Stamina measuring parameters are yet to  be defined accurately.

    ‘Stamina may refer to:

    Energy drinks are a staple among college students and club kids, and they’re even becoming ubiquitous in many American households. But a new report, published Monday by the journal Pediatrics, suggests that energy drinks may be dangerous to children’s health.

    According to the report — a review of studies on drinks marketed to boost energy, endurance and performance — the health hazards may be especially worrisome for children with conditions such as ADHD, diabetes or heart conditions.

    Dr. Steven Lipshultz, chairman of the department of pediatrics at the University of Miami, and his colleagues collected all the existing studies on the health effects of energy drinks and found that not only do 30% to 50% of children use them, but that the drinks may do harm while not improving performance or energy levels substantially.

    Sales of products such as Red Bull, Full Throttle, Monster Energy and Rockstar are expected to reach about $9 billion in the U.S. this year, with children and young adults under 25 providing most of the revenue. Energy drinks, Lipshultz points out, are different from sports drinks, which are designed to replace electrolytes and nutrients that a body pushed to physical extremes may need.

    What worries pediatricians like Lipshultz is the fact that energy drinks, which are classified as dietary supplements, are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). That means they don’t have to follow the same strict limits that the FDA places on potentially harmful ingredients such as caffeine (a primary component of energy drinks) that soda makers must follow. Lipshultz became personally interested in the issue when children began coming to the hospital after getting sick from energy drinks.

    “As I started looking into it, I was very surprised by what I found,” he says.

    For one, many pediatricians and families are not aware of the differences between energy and sports drinks, and confuse the nutritional claims made for sports drinks with the primarily stimulant-based effects of energy beverages.

    Also, before 2010, U.S. poison control centers were not tracking adverse events related to energy drinks specifically; they monitored only problems arising from caffeine overdoses. When consumed in high enough amounts over a long enough period of time, caffeine can cause changes in blood flow and reduce insulin sensitivity, which affects the body’s ability to regulate sugars from food.

    Lipshultz was also surprised to find that energy drinks receive less scrutiny than sodas and over-the-counter medications, which allows energy drink manufacturers to include potentially concerning levels of ingredients in their products. Based on the labels on their cans, for example, some energy drinks contain as much as twice the caffeine as the stimulant NoDoz; most contain three times the caffeine found in caffeinated sodas.

    In Germany, where health officials have been tracking health effects of energy drinks since 2002, adverse events have included liver damage, seizures, racing heart rate, respiratory disorders and even death.

    Energy drinks typically contain other compounds that are also high in caffeine, such as guarana, yerba mate and cocoa. In general, says Lipshultz, caffeine can disturb children’s sleep, which can actually compound energy problems since sleep deprivation can make children even more listless and tired.

    While these health consequences of too much caffeine aren’t new, Lipshultz is hoping to alert pediatricians and parents to the growing popularity of the drinks, and the negative consequences of mixing them with, for example, medications to treat ADHD. Those treatments primarily act as stimulants, and adding additional stimulants in the form of energy drinks to those drugs “may not produce the desired effect in improving concentration,” he says.

    Children with diabetes should also be careful about drinking too many energy shots, since some of the beverages contain sugars and other ingredients that could cause imbalances in their sugar and insulin levels.

    http://healthland.time.com/2011/02/14/energy-drinks-may-harm-health/#ixzz1DwO5zQmY

  • Day care centers turn on TV for toddlers, study finds

    When you decide to have a baby, better be sure that you can take are of it.You must not delegate the responsibility of raising children to people who want to make money.Do not rue when your child turns out to asocial and anti social. , Children are also given sedatives to make them sleep.
    (CNN) — Think your children are getting hours of playtime, story readings and stimulating lessons at day care? Maybe they are, but they could also be spending a chunk of their day watching TV or DVDs.
    New research published in the December issue of the journal Pediatrics found that kids in child care settings could be watching as much as 2.4 hours of television on an average day.
    A study from the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute examined 168 child care programs and found that 70 percent of home-based and 36 percent of center-based programs showed television to preschool kids.
    “Most parents don’t know what happens at their children’s preschool,” said author Dr. Dimitri Christakis, who directs the Center for Child Health in Seattle, Washington. “They really want to believe that they leave their children there, it’s preparing them for school, it’s a stimulating, enriching environment. And I don’t know that they’re aware that in fact, a lot of time is spent watching TV.”
    Researchers surveyed licensed home-based and center-based day cares in Michigan, Florida, Washington and Massachusetts, that took care of children under the age of 5.
    Christakis and co-author Michelle Garrison reported that on an average day, home-based programs showed about 1.6 hours to toddlers, compared with 0.1 hours for center-based programs, and 2.4 hours to preschool children compared with 0.4 hours.
    Previous estimates that children spend about two to three hours a day watching television are inaccurate, because those numbers relied on parents to calculate the number, Christakis said. Many pre-school children spend their days away from their parents.
    “Prior studies quantify TV that children watch at home, but no one quantified the amount they watch at day care,” Christakis said.
    Since previous studies reported that children watch about two to three hours of TV at home, and this recent study indicated that some day care centers show about 2.4 hours of screen time, some American preschool children could be watching as much as five hours a day, Christakis said.
    “When you consider they’re only awake 12 hours a day, they’re spending almost half their waking hours in front of the screen,” he said. “At that level of viewing, it really begs the question of what are these children not doing? What are they missing out on during the five hours they’re passively watching TV?”
    Face-to-face interactions such as engaging with the children with toys or reading books are more stimulating, experts said. Extensive TV watching for young children has been associated with shorter attention span, childhood obesity and developmental issues such as knowing fewer words and being less prepared for school, doctors said.
    When you consider they’re only awake 12 hours a day, they’re spending almost half their waking hours in front of the screen.
    –Dr. Dimitri Christakis

    “In terms of rapid brain development, TV is a relatively impoverished environment for stimulating optimal brain development,” said Dr. Michael Rich, a pediatrician and director of Center on Media and Child Health at the Children’s Hospital Boston, who is not associated with the latest study. “The kids are never forced to stimulate or use their own imaginations. They’re used to pre-processed fictional worlds. They often don’t develop the habit of imaginary play.”
    Some day cares could be operating under the misconception that TV is beneficial, said Christakis, who is also a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Ninety percent of the surveyed centers reported that they used TV for educational or entertainment reasons.
    “We as a culture still believe that TV time is benign, that it’s OK,” said Rich, an associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. “I think it shows how much we as a society need to learn about the effects of TV.”
    Although it’s unclear why the home-based day cares showed more TV, possible factors include less staffing and lower education levels of owners who run home-based centers, Christakis said. The report found that 70 percent of center-based program owners had a college degree compared with 51 percent of home-based owners.
    Since home-based day care typically cost less than center-based programs, this disproportionately affects children from lower income households, experts said.
    While children could be watching educational programs like “Sesame Street,” pediatricians say TV viewing takes time away from more critical and interactive abilities that are more conducive to development.