5 reasons why crying is actually good for your baby!

Often you don’t know why your little one is in tears and disturbed to the core. But the good thing about crying is that baby’s indication about his needs and mother’s instincts work together. ‘It’s through crying that a newborn expresses his needs while the mother responds, this also helps in the mother baby bonding,’ says Dr Geetanjali Shah, consultant pediatrician attached to Ashwini Hospital, Mumbai. A crying baby needs soothing and we all know that. But while you whack your brains how to calm your baby know that it’s a healthy sign indicating his overall well-being. Wondering how?

Importance of first cry: This is the sound you had been waiting to hear all the while. It not only marks your baby’s arrival but blows trumpets for you as you enter a new phase of life. ‘This helps the baby to breathe in and the lungs to open up to take in air. Though many parents believe that crying would every time help the lungs to grow stronger but it’s only the first cry that does the trick. Other times look for signs that are distressing the baby,’ says Dr Shah. When your baby breaks into his first cry you know that all is well within and you can sigh in relief.

Helps in communicating: In the absence of crying, you would never be able to know what your baby needs. ‘Crying can be because of various reasons and in varied pitches. Each pitch indicates the level of discomfort or attention needed. Over the period of time each mother learns to read between the cries,’ says Dr Shah. So when your baby cries look for the obvious, is he hungry, needs a diaper change, feeling hot or cold, needs comforting or is crying for attention. ‘Only his cries will tell you that you need to check on his well-being as it serves to be a medium of communication, a kind of language for the baby,’ explains Dr Shah.

Helps in psychological well-being: When you are taking care of or soothing your baby it gives out a message to him that he is not alone. ‘Many adults would advice to ignore a crying baby in order to discipline them, but newborns need more attention than discipline in the initial months of life. This helps the baby to feel secure and safe; a child growing in such care and love develops into a better individual than the one who is not. A baby ignored every time would land being quiet and this would pose a challenge for the baby’s physiological well-being. In fact unusually quite babies can be psychologically disturbed within,’ cautions Dr Shah.

Helps to stretch muscle: If you take a closer look at a crying baby, you would see the many muscles, the limbs or the entire body that’s been twisted and turned while the child whines. Gosh, that’s an exercise in itself! ’But it’s not like babies do not stretch themselves often. So be sure that the cry is not due to any medical reason or colic. Do not leave a child crying for too long,’ says Dr Shah.

Helps shed excess emotional baggage: Now this isn’t surprise that tears are a way of shedding the excess emotional baggage even for babies. Know when they have tantrums and you chose to not obey your little master, the obvious thing for him to do is break into a cry. Don’t panic, this allowing of emotions to come out is also good. ‘Listen to your baby while he cries and explains his needs or desire, especially the toddlers, and then talk it out and distract them. This works to break the tantrum and balance the emotions as well,’ says Dr Shah.

Source: Health India

 

New Child Car Seats May Protect Kids In Side Collisions

The Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for the first time ever, has announced its proposal on upgrading children’s car seats to survive a side collision, or “T-bone” crash. Under the new rules, child car seats sold in the United States, designed for kids weighing up to 40 lbs., would have to go through a rigorous side-impact test before they are authorized for vehicle use.

“Car seats are an essential tool for keeping young children safe in vehicles and have a proven track record of saving lives,” said NHTSA Acting Administrator David Friedman in the press release. “Today we continue to build on our extensive child seat safety program by adding side-impact crash protection for the first time.”

An NHTSA study has shown that many child death and injuries commonly occur in side-impact crashes. Typically, in these crashes, the car carrying children is stopped at an intersection — usually at a light or stop sign — and when the car begins to go through the intersection, it is struck in the side by a vehicle traveling at a greater speed on the cross street. Unrestrained children are found to be eight times more likely to sustain incapacitating injuries than children restrained in child safety seats. However, the agency believes designing child car seats to withstand side collisions will greatly reduce the number of deaths and injuries per year.

The feds’ proposed test will aim to simulate a T-bone crash where the front of a vehicle traveling 30 mph will strike the side of a small passenger vehicle traveling at 15 mph. The NHTSA chose these speeds because they are known to cover over 90 percent of side collisions seen not only in the U.S., but around the world.

Rather than using actual vehicles, the tests will include sleds because “the aim isn’t to test the crash worthiness of specific vehicles,” NHTSA officials said. The car seat will be positioned on the sled, with another sled ramming the side of the sled with the seat. The tests will use a to-be-developed side-impact 3-year-old child dummy, along with the NHTSA-approved 12-month-old dummy to accurately reflect the age groups of child car seat users.

“As a father of two, I know the peace of mind this proposed test will give parents,” said Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, NBC News reported. “We all want to make sure our children’s car seats are as safe as possible, and today’s proposal will give parents and car-seat makers important new data on how car seats perform in side crashes.”

Installation and proper use of safety seats are vital in protecting children in motor vehicles. The NHTSA fact sheet says they can reduce up to 71 percent of fatalities for infants and 54 percent for toddlers. Acknowledging the importance of child vehicle safety, manufacturers like the Dorel Juvenile Group — the world’s largest car-seat maker — has begun to incorporate small, already-inflated air bags.

Some manufacturers are already taking steps to improve the protection afforded by their car seats in side-impact crashes. The Dorel Juvenile Group, the world’s largest car-seat maker, has been incorporating small, already-inflated air bags into some of their models to protect children’s heads from injury in side-impact crashes since 2009, Julie Vallese, a spokeswoman for the Columbus, Ind., company told The Associated Press. “Dorel is committed to side-impact protection,” she said.

The NHTSA proposed regulations will be open for the public to comment on for 90 days after they are published this week. These regulations will not be final until the agency reviews comments and answers any important issues that may arise upon discussions. The agency acknowledges this can take months and sometimes years, but they are hopeful the process will move quickly.

Car-seat makers would be given a three-year time frame to make any design changes necessary to pass the side-crash tests and abide to regulations if and when they are passed. The new child car seats could save five lives and prevent 64 injuries each year, the NHTSA estimates.

The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests infants and toddlers ride in a rear-facing car seat until age 2 and then moved to a front-facing seat with a harness until at least age 4. They will then have to be placed into a “seatbelt-positioning booster seat until they’ve reached 4 feet, 9 inches tall and are at least 8 years old.” Children who outgrow their booster seats are recommended to continue to ride the back seat until they’re at least 13 years old.

Source: Medical daily

Rare surgery saves newborn girl

rare surgery2

A baby girl, who was diagnosed with a life threatening congenital heart disease in the womb, got a new lease of life as doctors at a city hospital performed a corrective surgery on her two hours after she was born.

Doctors at Care Hospital said the girl was suffering from a rare disorder wherein the oxygen-rich blood returned from the pulmonary veins was abnormally getting diverted to the liver instead of heart.

“A foetus is dependent on mother’s blood and hence the baby was normal in the womb. But after birth, babies suffering from this rare malformation, referred as Total Anomalous Pulmonary Venous Return (TAPVR), die without a reconstructive surgery,” said Dr K Nageshwar Rao, paediatric cardiologist, Care Hospital, and part of the team that performed the first-of-its-kind surgery.

Source: Healcon

GSK’s diabetes drug set for European approval

GlaxoSmithKline said on Friday European regulators had given the green light to its once-weekly diabetes drug albiglutide, which it is marketing as Eperzan.

Albiglutide belongs to the same class of injectable GLP-1 drugs as Victoza, from Novo Nordisk, and Byetta and Bydureon, from Bristol-Myers Squibb and AstraZeneca.

A positive recommendation for a drug by the European Medicines Agency is generally followed by a marketing authorization by the European Commission. GSK said a final decision was anticipated later this quarter.

Last year regulators in the United States pushed back an approval decision on the drug until April 15.

Source: Reuters

World’s Oldest Cancer Arose in a Dog 11,000 Years Ago

One cancer outlived the dog in which it emerged by spreading its abnormal cells on to other dogs during mating. Now, researchers have named this sexually transmitted canine cancer the oldest known line of cancer cells, at 11,000 years old.

This type of contagious cancer is extremely rare. Canine transmissible venereal tumor (CTVT) is one of only two known diseases in which cancerous cells from one animal infect another. The researchers compare CTVT to a millennia-old “parasitic life form.”

“The cancer cells in all the dogs around the world today are derived from the original dog,” said Elizabeth Murchison, a study researcher and cancer geneticist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge, both in the United Kingdom.

By looking at a particular type of mutation in the cancer cells from two dogs, an Aboriginal camp dog from Australia and an American cocker spaniel from Brazil, Murchison and colleagues estimated when this original dog — Patient Zero for the bleeding, ulcerated genital tumor-causing disease — lived. And since the cancer cells still contain genetic material from the original dog, the team was able to extract a few clues to its identity.

The original dog was likely medium to large in size. It showed genetic similarity to an Alaskan malamute or husky, and carried a mix of genetic variations associated with the domestication of dogs. Because one of the dog’s two sex chromosomes had disappeared in the cancerous cells, it was unclear whether this dog was male or female, and researchers have yet to determine in what part of the world it lived.

The other naturally occurring cancer spread by the transfer of cancerous cells is a facial cancer afflicting Tasmanian devils and transmitted they bite each other, and this disease puts the animals at risk for extinction. These cancers are extremely rare, because the immune system usually recognizes and attacks foreign cells.

In the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) of the dog cancer cells, researchers found what Murchison speculates is a clue to how this cancer established itself early on. Although the original dog lived about 11,000 years ago, its DNA showed a level of inbreeding similar to that of a modern dog breed, perhaps because it was part of an isolated population. It is possible the genetic similarity among the dogs it first encountered helped the cancer cells avoid recognition by their immune systems, allowing it to become established, Murchison said.

Likewise, the low genetic diversity among Tasmanian devils may have contributed to the emergence of the contagious facial cancer that threatens these animals, Murchison said. No similar cancer afflicts humans. However, some human cancers are associated with infection by viruses or other pathogens. For instance, human papillomavirus (HPV) is responsible for 26,000 cases of cancer annually in the United States, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported.

Source: Yahoo news

 

First-Time Cesarean Rates Dipped in 2012: CDC

Efforts to curb cesarean birth rates in the United States might be working, with health officials reporting a 2 percent decline in the number of first-time surgical deliveries between 2009 and 2012.

Cesarean delivery rates in 19 states reporting to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention averaged 21.9 percent in 2012, the CDC said in a report released Thursday. This represented a return to the rate last recorded for those states in 2006.

Report co-author Michelle Osterman, a statistician at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, said the turnaround was significant. “The rates had been going up every year, but in 2009 they either stabilized or started to come down,” she said.

The real impact might be felt in the overall cesarean rate, Osterman said.

“Because primary cesareans are starting to decline, the overall cesarean rate will be impacted because there is only a 10 percent chance that a woman who has had a cesarean is going to have a vaginal birth afterward,” she said. The overall rate has stabilized at about 33 percent of all births in the United States, Osterman said.

One expert said the report indicates slight progress.

“At least the rate stopped going up,” said Dr. Mitchell Maiman, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at Staten Island University Hospital in New York City. “After decades of climbing, there seems to be a hold to it. But we could do a lot better.”

The risks to the mother and baby are much higher in a cesarean birth than in a vaginal birth, Maiman said.

“Once you have the first cesarean, you’re overwhelmingly likely to have repeat cesareans,” he said, noting the odds for complications and death rise dramatically with each additional C-section. “It’s also worse for the baby as multiple studies have proven.”

Risks to the mother include infection, excessive bleeding and blood clots traveling to the legs or lungs. Risks to the baby include injury during delivery, breathing problems and the potential need for intensive care.

“Vaginal delivery is the preferred method for having a baby,” Maiman said. “Cesarean should only be resorted to when it’s absolutely necessary.”

Maiman said the cesarean rate is so high because doctors fear malpractice lawsuits.

“The pressure is on physician practices because it takes so much time and energy to stay with a patient for hours for a vaginal delivery, compared to the quickness of a cesarean,” he said. “Most of the lawsuits are for the failure to do a cesarean in a timely fashion.”

In a separate reporting region, the researchers found that in 28 states and New York City, the first-time cesarean rate dropped from 22.1 percent in 2009 to 21.5 percent in 2012.

Source: news.nom

Addicted to Sugar? Here’s How You Can Beat Your Cravings

sugar

A secret weapon that you may like to use in your own personal war against sugar. It stops cravings in their tracks but also deals with mid-afternoon energy slumps. Ready for it? It’s coconut oil.

Take it a tablespoon at a time

Eat it directly after lunch. Or mix it with a little raw cacao powder to make the simplest chocolate snack

It kills sugar cravings, immediately.
How so? Coconut oil is made up of medium-chain fatty acids, or medium chain triglycerides (MCTs). Indeed, coconut oil is nature’s richest source of MCTs. These fatty acids produce a host of health benefits which you can read about here. But here’s the bit I like: your body sends medium-chain fatty acids straight to your liver to use as energy. This means coconut oil is a source of instant energy, much like sugar and other simple carbohydrates. But although both deliver quick energy to your body, unlike the carbohydrates, coconut oil does not produce an insulin spike in your bloodstream. This saves you from a slump, and is really good news for anyone struggling with insulin issues. Like me.

It fills you up, immediately.
After two tablespoons I’m not hungry for about four hours.

And bonus: it helps you lose weight!
Again, it’s the medium-chain fatty acids. Most plant oils are made up of longer chain fat triglycerides (LCTs). LCTs are typically stored in the body as fat; MCTs are transported directly to the liver, promoting “thermogenesis” which increases the body’s metabolism. There are a stack of studies that have shown this to be the case, like this one. This study shows eating two tablespoons of coconut oil with a meal caused body temperature to rise, boosting metabolism. Plus, MCTs are not easily converted into stored triglycerides and cannot be readily used by the body to make larger fat molecules.

Source: huffington post

Hormone Therapy & Joint Replacement in Women

Women who start hormone replacement therapy after having had hip or knee replacement surgery may cut their risk of needing another procedure in the same joint by nearly 40 percent, a new study suggests.

About 2 percent of those who have a hip or knee replacement need another surgery within three years. Most of these additional procedures are needed because of a complication known as osteolysis, which happens when tiny pieces of the implant seep into the tissue around the implant, causing inflammation that destroys the bone around the implant, the British researchers explained.

“There is evidence that drugs like hormone replacement therapy, used usually to prevent osteoporosis and fractures, might have a beneficial effect on implant survival in patients undergoing knee or hip replacement,” said lead researcher Dr. Nigel Arden, director of musculoskeletal epidemiology at the University of Oxford in England.

“These findings must be confirmed in further studies, but they are consistent with previous reports by our group showing an association between use of other drugs that have similar effects on bone and the risk of implant revision [surgery],” he said.

However, many women are nervous about taking hormone replacement therapy because of previously reported increased risks for heart disease and cancer. Since the risk of a second surgery is small, the question remains whether or not it’s worth starting hormone replacement therapy at all.

“Indeed, this is only a small added benefit of hormone replacement therapy. However, it is a relevant piece of information for women who have received a total knee or hip replacement and are considering hormone replacement therapy for menopausal symptoms,” Arden said.

The report was published online Jan. 22 in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.

For the study, Arden and his colleagues collected data on more than 21,000 women who had not used hormone replacement therapy after a hip or knee replacement. The investigators compared these women with more than 3,500 women who had taken hormone replacement therapy for at least six months after surgery.

The researchers found that women who had taken hormone replacement therapy for six months after surgery were 38 percent less likely to need another surgery than those who had not.

Moreover, women who took hormone replacement therapy for a year or more after surgery were more than 50 percent less likely to need another surgery over three years of follow-up.

Taking hormone replacement therapy before joint replacement, however, didn’t make a difference in the risk for a repeat procedure, the researchers noted.

Dr. Neil Roth, an orthopedic surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, thinks there may be a role for drugs that help build and strengthen bone after knee and hip replacement surgeries. Based on this study, hormone replacement therapy might also be helpful, he added.

Roth noted, however, that this study only showed an association, and not a cause-and-effect link, between hormone replacement therapy and a lowered risk for another surgery.

“Right now, I wouldn’t make any changes in the way I clinically treat things based on this study, but I think it deserves further investigation,” he added.

Source: web md

Consumer Reports: Too many sodas contain potential carcinogen

A chemical found in many sodas may be dangerous to your health, Consumer Reports says. And no, it’s not sugar (this time).

The golden-brown color of many soft drinks comes with a dose of the chemical 4-methylimidazole, or 4-MeI. On U.S. product labels it appears simply as “caramel coloring.”

Those who say the chemical may possibly cause cancer include the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer and the state of California, which now limits manufacturers to 29 micrograms of exposure for the average consumer per day.

Foods exceeding that limit have to carry a warning label that reads: “WARNING: This product contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer.”

But when Consumer Reports purchased sodas in California and had them analyzed by a lab, it found that one 12-ounce serving of Pepsi One or Malta Goya exceeded the levels permitted without a warning label.
Ten other brands tested by the group did meet the California standard, which is estimated to limit the risk of cancer from 4-MeI to one case in every 100,000 lifetimes of daily exposure.

“We are concerned about both the levels of 4-MeI we found in many of the soft drinks tested and the variations observed among brands, especially given the widespread consumption of these types of beverages,” said Dr. Urvashi Rangan, a Consumer Reports toxicologist, in a statement.

“There is no reason why consumers need to be exposed to this avoidable and unnecessary risk that can stem from coloring food and beverages brown.”
The Food and Drug Administration does not set federal limits on 4-MeI in food, and the data gathered by Consumer Reports show that in some cases consumers outside California are drinking a slightly different ingredient. For example, Pepsi One purchased by the group in December in New York contains four times as much 4-MeI as the same product bought that same month in California.

What is clean eating?
Currently the FDA has no reason to believe that 4-Mel poses a health risk to consumers at the levels found in foods with caramel coloring, agency spokeswoman Juli Putnam told CNN in an e-mail. The government agency is testing a variety of food and beverages with the chemical and reviewing safety data to determine if any regulatory action needs to be taken, she said.

Consumers interested in more information on 4-Mel can check out the FDA’s FAQ page.
In a statement to Consumer Reports, PepsiCo Inc. said data indicate that the average person consumes less than one-third a can of diet soda per day; therefore, its product meets the California standard, even if a complete serving exceeds that limit.

In addition to new federal standards, Consumer Reports is calling on the FDA to “require labeling of specific caramel colors in the ingredient lists of food where it is added, so consumers can make informed choices.”

“First and foremost, consumers can rest assured that our industry’s beverages are safe,” the American Beverage Association said in a statement. “Contrary to the conclusions of Consumer Reports, FDA has noted there is no reason at all for any health concerns, a position supported by regulatory agencies around the world.

“However, the companies that make caramel coloring for our members’ soft drinks are now producing it to contain less 4-MeI, and nationwide use of this new caramel coloring is underway.”

Source: CNN

Shopping cart danger: 66 kids hurt a day, study finds

The combination of kids and shopping carts is never easy, as any parent of a squirmy toddler knows, but a new study confirms it’s also dangerous, with an estimated 66 children a day in the U.S. hurt in falls and spills.

That’s one child injured badly enough every 22 minutes to go to the emergency room, or more than 24,000 children a year, according to research from Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

And the problem hasn’t gotten better since voluntary shopping cart safety standards took effect in 2004. In fact, since then, the annual number of concussions tied to shopping carts in children younger than 15 jumped nearly 90 percent, according to a new analysis of data from 1990 to 2011 by Dr. Gary Smith, director of Nationwide’s Center for Injury Research and Policy.

“This is a setup for a major injury,” Smith said. “The major group we are concerned about are children under 5.” His study is published in the January issue of the journal Clinical Pediatrics.

Kids ages newborn to 4 accounted for nearly 85 percent of the injuries. More than 70 percent of the harm was caused by falls out of shopping carts, followed by running into a cart or carts tipping over.

It only takes a moment for a parent to look away for a shopping cart accident to happen, Smith said. A wiggly baby in an infant seat or a toddler reaching for a bright box of cereal can easily cause a fall that results in serious injury. Children’s center of gravity is high, their heads are heavy and they don’t have enough arm strength to break a fall, Smith explained.

Just last week, a 19-year-old worker at an Alaska Home Depot caught a baby in mid-air after she fell out of a shopping cart. Christopher Strickland of Anchorage rescued the girl seconds before her head would have hit the concrete floor.

Part of the problem is that the U.S. lacks stability standards for shopping carts that have been adopted in other countries, Smith said.

Parents should opt for carts that seat kids low to the ground, like those with toy cars or fire engines, he said. Otherwise, they should avoid carts, if possible, or remain vigilant while their children are using them.

Source: nbc news