Oct. 31, 2011 -- It's no surprise that many sodas have a lot of sugar. What may be more surprising is that many fruit drinks, often billed as healthier alternatives, are often loaded with close to the same amount of sugar and calories.
That is one of the findings of a new report from Yale University.
The report, being presented today at the American Public Health association annual meeting in Washington, D.C., also finds that many beverage companies are marketing their drinks to kids and teens despite a promise to stop.
The American Beverage Association, an industry trade group, takes issue with the new findings. It says the beverage companies have taken many positive steps to protect children's health, including advertising only certain types of drinks on programming to children 12 and under.
Researchers from Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity looked at the contents of close to 600 drinks made by 14 companies. They included sugary sodas, energy and sports drinks, fruit drinks, flavored waters, and iced teas as well as diet energy drinks and diet children's fruit drinks.
They found that an 8-ounce serving of a full-calorie, non-diet fruit drink has on average 110 calories and 7 teaspoons of sugar. This is?equal to the amount that is found in an 8-ounce serving of sugary soda or energy drink.
"The companies have pledged not to advertise to children or if they do, it will just be for certain better-for-you products," says study researcher Jennifer Harris, PhD. She is director of marketing initiatives at the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.
Unfortunately, their idea of "better-for-you" drinks is water, sugar, and a tiny amount of juice, she says.
"Many fruit and energy drinks have as much added sugar and calories as sugary sodas," Harris says. Some of these drinks have as much sugar as an 8-year-old should consume in a day, she says.
Full-calorie iced teas, sports drinks, and flavored waters typically contain 3 to 5 teaspoons of sugar per 8-ounce serving, the report states.
The stakes are high, Harris says.
Drinking just one 8-ounce sugar-sweetened drink everyday increases a child's odds for becoming obese by 60%. Sugary drinks are the No. 1 source of added sugar in our diets and the No. 1 source of calories for teens, the report states.
"Parents believe that drinks like Capri Sun, Sunny D, Gatorade, and Vitamin Water are healthy choices for their kids, but they are not," Harris says.
"We were surprised by how little juice there was in children's fruit drinks. And a lot of diet drinks have artificial sweeteners. But unless you know the chemical name, you wouldn't realize it," she says.
Harris says that the only appropriate drinks for children are water, low-fat milk, and 100% fruit juices.
Nutritionist Dana Greene, RD, agrees. "Don't be fooled by healthy-looking labels," she says. "Read the fine print and if you can't pronounce it, you probably don't need or want it in your child's body."
May 3, 2011 -- More than two-thirds of child care centers surveyed near a major metropolitan area have televisions and computers, and most don’t follow recommended limits on their use, a new study shows.
Experts say that’s concerning since excessive screen time has been tied to a host of physical and mental problems in children.
“TV viewing is associated with obesity, but it’s also associated with learning problems and delays, vocabulary growth, attention problems -- there are a lot of things linked to excessive TV exposure,” says study researcher Kristen Copeland, MD, an assistant professor at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, in Ohio.
Copeland’s study, which was presented at the 2011 annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Denver, found that 59% of 255 licensed child care centers responding to a telephone survey did not follow suggested limits on screen time.
In child care settings, the American Academy of Pediatrics and other groups recommend that children under age 2 not watch any TV, and that TV be limited to once-weekly, half-hour viewing sessions in older children.
“The thought in these guidelines for child care is that children are probably already being exposed to a substantial amount of media in the home,” Copeland says.
But her study found that about one in five day care centers allowed children under the age of 2 to watch TV.
About one-third of child care facilities reported allowing children older than age 2 to watch TV more than once a week.
About half of centers let kids watch TV for more than 30 minutes at a time.
What’s more, Copeland found that nearly two-thirds of centers allowed kids to be on the computer every day, though 88% said they limited how long kids could be on.
Copeland’s study is one of the first to look at computers in day care, a phenomenon which appears to be becoming more common, she says, as centers try to wow parents with technology.
“There’s really very little that we know about what a 3- or 4- year old learns on a computer, how it affects their brain to work on the computer, and whether they are any better off, or more ready for school if they’ve worked with a computer from age 3 to 5,” Copeland says.
Her findings confirm previous research, which has shown that children can get a substantial part of their daily media during day care.
“We know that 75% of children in the United States are cared for outside the home during the day,” says Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, MPH, director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior, and Development at the Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute.
Christakis published a study in 2009 in the journal Pediatrics, which found that TV viewing during day care essentially doubled the average amount of time many young children were thought to spend in front of a screen each day.
“When you put it together, what you find is that particularly kids in home-based child care watch about another hour-and-a-half,” he says.
Children in day care centers that were based outside the home watched less, an average of about 20 minutes daily.
“Parents should be concerned,” Christakis tells WebMD. “It’s not something that is regulated. It’s not something that’s part of licensing in most states -- that there be some restrictions on the amount of children television watch.”
He says the new findings, on the prevalence of computers in day care, deserve a harder look.
“We know for example that kids under the age of 3 don’t learn as well from any screen as they do from a real live person,” he says.
Until more is known, being aware and inquisitive can help.
“Parents could at least be asking, ‘Are they watching TV and how much are they watching?’” Copeland says.
“If parents start asking, and parents are concerned,” she says, “it’s likely this will change.”
April 20, 2011 -- The eyes are said to be windows to the soul, but a new study suggests they may also provide a glimpse into a child’s future risk for heart disease.
Researchers in Australia found that 6- and 7-year-olds who spent the most time in front of TVs or computer screens had narrower eye arteries in the back of their eyes than those children who spent less time.
Also, children who spent the most time in outdoor sporting activities had wider eye arteries compared to those who participated in outdoor sports the least.
Studies in adults suggest that narrowed blood vessels in the eyes indicate increased cardiovascular risk since they are part of the brain’s vascular system and respond as other vessels do to stress and disease.
By analyzing digital pictures of the blood vessels of the retina, researcher Tien Wong, PhD, and colleagues from the University of Melbourne were able to predict whether adults would develop high blood pressure or heart disease.
In the new study, which appears today in the American Heart Association journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, Wong and researchers from the University of Sydney report a link between total screen time and retinal artery width in children.
The study included close to 1,500 6- and 7-year-olds living in Sydney, Australia.
The children’s parents completed questionnaires designed to assess how much time the kids spent watching TV or using other electronic equipment and how much time they spent engaging in physical pursuits.
Digital photographs were taken in the back of each child’s eyes to determine the width of the retinal blood vessels.
On average, the children spent just under two hours each day watching TV or in front of a computer or gaming device and just 36 minutes engaged in physical activity.
Kids who spent the most time in front of a screen had the narrowest retinal arteries. Those who engaged in the most outdoor physical activity had significantly wider retinal arteries than those who were the least active.
The association remained even after the researchers considered known risk factors for narrowed arteries, including obesity and high blood pressure.
Study researcher Bamini Gopinath, PhD, of the University of Sydney, says a sedentary lifestyle even very early in life appears to affect blood vessel health and increase cardiovascular disease risk.
She adds that the findings are preliminary and further research is needed to confirm them.
“We don’t really know what this means, from a clinical standpoint,” she tells WebMD. “Certainly it is suggestive of future cardiovascular risk, but we can’t say that with certainty.”
Pediatric cardiologist and American Heart Association spokeswoman Dianne L. Atkins, MD, says the preliminary findings add to the evidence suggesting that lifestyle can influence cardiovascular risk even early in childhood.
Atkins is a professor of pediatrics at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine in Iowa City.
“This is another opportunity to send the message to parents that they need to limit the time their children spend in front of a screen, whether it is a TV, computer, or video game,” she tells WebMD.?
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the average child and teen in the U.S. spends seven hours a day watching television or using computers, phones, and other electronic devices.
That’s four more hours than the average time children spent watching TV each day in 1999, and five hours more than the two-hour limit recommended by the AAP for children over age 2 (younger children should not watch TV at all, the group says).
“Kids should be encouraged to be more active, and the best way to do that is for parents to lead by example,” Atkins says.
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If your 4-year-old gets sassy at the dinner table, do you wash her mouth out with soap, give her a time-out, or take away a prized position? What about your fifth grader who is not doing well in school and refuses to do his homework -- do you take away his television or video privileges? And what do you do when your teen starts missing curfew?
Discipline dilemmas plague all parents. How can you tell if you are taking your discipline techniques too far or not far enough?
That classic parenting dilemma is at the heart of controversy about Amy Chua's memoir, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.
In the book, Chua calls her eldest daughter “garbage” for being disrespectful in front of guests, throws away a homemade birthday card because it wasn’t up to snuff, bans sleepovers, and refuses to except anything other than straight A’s from her two daughters.
That's left many parents wondering if they are too strict, or perhaps too lenient, with their own children -- and what effect it will have on their children when they grow up.
“In America, we tend not to be strict enough and everyone wants to be friends with kids,” says Elizabeth J. Short, PhD, a psychology professor and the associate director of the Schubert Center at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
But being too strict is risky because it could undermine the kids.
“They are eager to please and worried about parental approval, so you end up with kids that are anxious and indecisive,” Short says. “Or sometimes they know there is no way they can hit the bar you have set, so they don’t even try.”
Here are 16 signs that you are too strict with your kids, and what you can do about it.
“It is a sign that you are too strict for everyone’s good if you set so many rules that you can’t possibly enforce them all,” says Nancy Darling, PhD, a psychology professor at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. Instead, set fewer rules and reinforce them very consistently. “Follow-through is really important," Darling says.
“Saying ‘I am going to destroy all your toys’ or ‘throw you out of the house’ won’t work because if your kid says ‘fine’, all you can do is back down,” Darling says. “What you have done is make an empty threat, and taught your child to misbehave,” she says. “It’s a problem when you can’t back down and know that you have made a mistake because you don’t even believe in what you are doing anymore.”
“Parents can and should set rules about how a child does in school, treats other people, and safety issues,” Darling says. Rules about safety and moral issues are OK, but rules about personal issues (for example, what instrument the child should take up) may not be appropriate, she says.
It is not always so black and white, because parents and kids don't always agree about which issues are personal and which are related to safety or morals. “Sometimes what the parents say is about safety or morality, kids say is personal,” Darling says. For instance, music with violent or demeaning lyrics may strike parents as something to set rules about to avoid bad influences, but their teens may say it's just their personal taste.
“Say, ‘I always love you, but I expect you to behave in this way' or, 'I know you can do better,'” Darling says. "Don’t say, ‘You are garbage if you don’t behave in this way.'" The latter is attacking your child’s core.
It’s not just how you say it; it is what you say. Even if your tone is measured, your words matter.
“Calm voices can say mean things,” Darling says. “Content is more important than the way it is said."
When you do ask your child to do something difficult, work alongside them instead of ordering them to do it. “Good parenting is about putting the time in,” Darling says.
If these are the mainstays of your relationship to the exclusion of many other things that one could and should do as a parent, you may be too strict,” says Ron Taffel, PhD, a New York-based child psychologist and the author of several books on parenting, including Childhood Unbound.
If your child talks to you less and less about the things that matter, this could be a sign that you are too strict,” Taffel says. “You can win the battle, but lose the war. ... You can get your child to do things that you like them to do, but they are not opening up to you about the things that make them anxious or uneasy.”
“Kids want rules and all kids will gravitate to a house with rules, but if you spend your time reminding children about the rules, criticizing your child in front of other kids, and asking too many probing questions, your kids may stop bringing their friends by,” Taffel says. “If children do ask for return play dates, and other kids talk to you and approach you, you have made your house a home that kids want to be in.”
"In the 21st century -- with kids Twittering, tweeting and Facebooking everything -- they expect to be heard,” Taffel says. “You are too strict if you don’t give kids two or three minutes in the spotlight a day to state their opinion,” he says. “You don’t have to agree with them or do what they are saying, but you should allow them the time to say it.”
“Kids need comfort time and downtime to synthesize what they have learned,” Taffel says. “If they are filled with skills, knowledge, and information that they can’t use and are just learning for the sake of learning, their brains end up like sponges absorbing things, but they have no idea what it all means."
“Find out what other parents are doing,” Taffel says. “When no other parents are doing the same exact thing as you such as not allowing your children to go online even with parental supervision, you may be too strict."
You don’t encourage something, but you also don’t forbid it,” Short says. "Say, ‘I'd rather you didn’t do this for these reasons, but if you choose to do it anyway, I may keep a closer watch on you because of my concerns.’”
“You have to have rules in place, so your children know they can be broken,” Short says. “There have to be clear, consistent rules because it helps with predictability and expectations, but there also needs to be some wiggle room in special situations.” For example, if your child has a midnight curfew but the designated driver is drunk, they need to feel comfortable phoning home to ask for leniency and a ride, she says.
There’s a difference, Short says. Authoritative parents set clear expectations and can be hard on their kids, but they do it out of warmness and concern for a child’s betterment whereas authoritarian parents say "It’s my way or the highway." Authoritarian parents are "controlling and not warm," Strong says. "An authoritative parent is age-appropriately controlling and also warm."
“Nobody cares if parents are tough as long as they are warm,” Short says. “It’s when you are tough and cold that is really the problem."
Jan. 12, 2011 -- We all know that regular exercise is good for our health and too much sitting isn’t ideal. Now a new study suggests it’s not just the length of time we spend sitting down but the number of times we get up during that time that can influence our health.
The study, published online in the European Heart Journal, examined the total length of time people spent sitting down and breaks taken in that time, together with various indicators of risk for heart disease, metabolic diseases such as diabetes, and inflammatory processes that can play a role in the blocking of arteries.
It suggests that plenty of breaks, even if they are as short as one minute, seem to be beneficial.
The Australian research found that long periods of sitting down, even in people who did a lot of exercise otherwise, were associated with worse indicators of cardio-metabolic function and inflammation, such as larger waist circumferences, lower levels of HDL ("good") cholesterol, and higher levels of C-reactive protein (an important marker of inflammation) and triglycerides (blood fats).
However, the study also found that even in people who spent a long time sitting down, the more breaks they took during this time, the smaller their waists and the lower the levels of C-reactive protein.
Genevieve Healy, MD, from the University of Queensland led the study.
“The most significant differences were observed for waist circumference," she says. "The top 25% of people who took the most breaks had, on average, a 4.1 cm smaller waist circumference than those in the lowest 25%."
The dangers of being too big around the middle are well-documented.
According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, high-risk waist circumferences are:
Healy and her colleagues analyzed earlier U.S. data from nearly 5,000 people aged 20 and over.
The participants wore a small device called an accelerometer, which monitored the amount and intensity of walking or running.
It gave researchers information on sedentary time and breaks in sedentary time.
"The potential adverse health impact of prolonged sitting (which is something that we do on average for more than half of our day), is only just being realized," Healy says. "Our research highlights the importance of considering prolonged sedentary time as a distinct health risk behavior that warrants explicit advice in future public health guidelines.”
The study suggests even small changes could help, like standing up to take phone calls, walking to see a colleague rather than phoning or emailing, and centralizing trash cans and printers so you have to walk to them.
Amy Thompson, Senior Cardiac Nurse at the British Heart Foundation, says in a statement, “This study was a very interesting read and adds to well established evidence that long periods of inactivity are not good for the heart.
“If you’re sitting for long periods it’s really important you take regular breaks by getting up on your feet. Regular physical activity is essential to protect cardiovascular health.”
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Jan. 10, 2011 -- Hours spent lounging in front of a computer or television may hurt the heart, a new study shows.
The study shows that adults who averaged more than two hours sitting in front of a television or computer screen that was not related to their job or schoolwork had roughly twice the risk of having heart attacks, heart surgeries, strokes, or other cardiovascular events, compared to those who logged less than two hours of daily screen time.
What’s more, the risk did not drop appreciably when researchers factored in other variables, like a history of diabetes or high blood pressure, smoking, body weight, socioeconomic or marital status, or even a regular exercise routine.
Public health experts and cardiologists say the study offers more proof that people may need to shift their wellness goals slightly, beyond simply making sure they get a daily workout to also reducing the amount of time they are sedentary.
“It’s not even about the exercise. It’s about not sitting,” says Suzanne Steinbaum, DO, a preventive cardiologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. “I think that sort of points us in a little different direction. In order for you not to cause harm to yourself, you really need to focus on getting up and moving.”
For the study, which is due to be published in the Jan. 18 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, researchers at University College London and the University of Queensland in Australia followed more than 4,500 adults who took part in the Scottish Health Survey.
Participants were over age 34 and were followed for an average of 4.3 years.
To figure out how much leisure time was spent sitting, researchers asked: “Thinking of weekdays, how much time, on average, do you spend watching TV or another type of screen such as a computer or video game? (Please do not include any time spent in front of a screen while at school, college or work.)”
Researchers also asked about physical activity both at work and outside of work, including any heavy housework like scrubbing floors, heavy gardening like digging, walking, and leisure time exercise, such as cycling, swimming, aerobics, dancing, and football.
They then linked the survey results to hospital data on admissions and deaths in Scotland from 1981 through December 2007.
Compared to people who spent less than two hours a day in front of a TV or computer, those who spent four hours a day on screen-based entertainment had a 48% risk of dying for any reason; those who spent more than two hours a day sitting in front of a screen had 125% greater risk of experiencing cardiovascular events like heart attacks and strokes.
Jan. 7, 2011 -- Many doctors who treat people with osteoarthritis are prescribing medications or choosing surgical options instead of recommending more conservative treatments such as weight loss and exercise programs.
That’s the main conclusion of a new analysis published in the January 2011 issue of Arthritis Care & Research.
Researchers who reviewed standard clinical practices say therapeutic options aimed mostly at reducing pain and improving joint function are still first-line treatments.
But such treatments do little to improve joint structure or point toward long-term improvement of disease symptoms, according to the analysis by David Hunter, MD, of the University of Sydney in Australia.
Hunter says in a news release that many doctors do not adhere to the latest evidence-based guidelines for treatment of osteoarthritis.
The study says doctors too often fail to try conservative, non-pharmacological treatments, which can lead to unnecessary diagnostic imaging and inappropriate referrals to orthopaedic specialists.
The study authors say they support recommendations of nondrug treatments, when possible, and point out that many people with osteoarthritis are overweight or obese.
“Weight management and exercise programs tend to be overlooked by clinicians,” Hunter says. “These conservative approaches are beneficial to patients who adhere to weight loss and exercise programs.”
In addition, the researchers say, surgery should be avoided as a way to treat pain when symptoms can be managed by other forms of treatment.
Typically, reasons for turning to surgery include debilitating pain and major limitations of everyday abilities, such as walking, working, or sleeping.
Some previous studies have shown that up to 30% of surgeries are inappropriate. The study team also reports an overuse of inappropriate diagnostic imaging instead of clinical diagnosis made on the basis of physical examinations and patient history.
According to current guidelines, imaging should be reserved for cases in which diagnosis is unclear, and when radiography could rule out other diseases that might be producing symptoms.
The study says 95 million CT, MRI, or PET scans are performed annually in the United States, at a cost of $100 billion. The researchers say 20% and possibly 50% of such scans are not necessary, and that results of many procedures failed to help doctors diagnose or treat patients’ symptoms.
“Eliminating unproven procedures and reducing needless costs is necessary to improve the quality and lower the cost of health care in the U.S.,” Hunter says. “The management of [osteoarthritis] should focus on a patient-centered and provider integrated approach that improves quality and reduces cost by following evidence-based recommendations.”
Knee osteoarthritis occurs in 13% of people 60 and older, the report says. The risk of mobility disability from knee osteoarthritis is greater than any other medical condition that occurs in people 65 and older.
The researchers conclude that new ways need to be found to guide and quantify treatment of osteoarthritis symptoms.
“Quality indicators can be developed from evidence-based clinical recommendations,” the authors write. “They are the next logical step in the clinical quality improvement cycle after guideline development.”
While 20 million American's are affected by osteoarthritis, we're concerned about your specific case. Get the treatment information you need from the health information provider you can trust.
Nov. 9, 2010 -- Teens who are excessive users of texting and social networking sites are much more likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors like smoking and binge drinking than their peers who are not excessive users, a new study says.
Researchers at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine surveyed 4,257 high school students from an urban county in the Midwest, addressing their use of communication technology and various health topics.
Teens who are considered “hyper-texters” -- defined as texting 120 or more messages in a school day, are:
“The startling results of this study suggest that when left unchecked, texting and other widely popular methods of staying connected can have dangerous health effects on teenagers,” Scott Frank, MD, of Case Western Reserve, says in a news release. “This should be a wake-up call for parents to not only help their children stay safe by not texting and driving, but by discouraging excessive use of the cell phone or social web sites in general.”
Frank and colleagues also report that youths who engage in hyper-networking, which they defined as spending three hours or more a day on social networking web sites, is also risky.
Of teens surveyed, 11.5% said they spend more than three hours a day on social networking sites.
The researchers say these teens are:
Frank presented the study in Denver at the 138th annual meeting and exposition of the American Public Health Association.
The researchers also say that too much texting time and excessive hours on social networks also are linked to obesity, eating disorders, school absenteeism due to illness, lack of adequate sleep, and feelings of being unsafe at school. These teens also are more likely to be stressed and to think about suicide.
This study was presented at a medical conference. The findings should be considered preliminary as they have not yet undergone the "peer review" process, in which outside experts scrutinize the data prior to publication in a medical journal.
