Early to bed `can stop children from putting on weight`

Parents, please note -- sending your children to bed early may stop them from putting on weight and thus help them stay slim, says a new study.

Researchers recorded the bed and waking times of 2,200 youngsters, aged nine to 16, and found that those who went to bed late and got up later were 1.5 times more likely to become obese than early risers, the `Daily Express` reported.

Night-owl children are almost twice as likely to be physically inactive and 2.9 times more inclined to spend hours in front of a TV or computer, according to the study.
"The children who went to bed late and woke up late and the children who went to bed early and woke up early got virtually the same amount of sleep in total," lead author Dr
Carol Maher at the University of South Australia said.

She added: "Scientists have realised in recent years that children who get less sleep tend to do worse on a variety of health outcomes. Our study suggests that the timing of sleep
is even more important."

The findings have been published in the `Sleep` journal.

Washing hands can save 400 children everyday

Diarrhoea kills nearly 1,000 children below the age of five everyday in India, but washing hands with soap and water can save the lives of at least 400 of these kids, a UN agency said on Thursday on the occasion of Global Handwashing Day.

"In India, diarrhoea is a major killer with about 1,000 children below 5 years dying every day due to diarrhoea alone. Handwashing with soap can reduce diarrhoeal deaths in children by 40 percent and is one of the most inexpensive ways to prevent diarrhoeal disease," the Unicef said.

The agency said that proper handling and safe storage of water reduces incidences of diarrhoea by nearly half.

"Toilet use can reduce presence of diarrhoea causing agents but toilet usage in India is still very low. In 2006, toilet usage in India was 28 percent but this is showing an upward trend because of the government of India's flagship programme - Total Sanitation Campaign. Nirmal Gram Purashkar has led to more than 18,020 Panchayats being declared free of open defecation," Unicef said.

"Yet, despite its life-saving potential, handwashing with soap is seldom practised and is not always easy to promote," the agency added.

The UN agency said every one can make a difference in the "Clean hands save lives" campaign. Each year, diarrhoeal diseases and acute respiratory infections are responsible for the deaths of more than 3.5 million children under the age of five.

The second annual Global Handwashing Day, being celebrated Thursday, puts the spotlight on the importance of washing hands with soap and water as one of the most effective and affordable health interventions.

Indian village where children as young as two are taught to be snake charmers

It’s the one classroom where everyone’s paying attention at the back.

Being a few feet away from a poisonous snake has a wonderful way of concentrating the mind.

Six-year-old Rekha Bae – like all children in the 600-strong nomadic Vadi tribe in western India – will have first been introduced to cobras at the age of two.

All Vadi children complete a ten-year initiation ritual that culminates in the boys becoming fully-fledged performing snake charmers.

Divided between the sexes, the act of snake charming with traditional flute is the role of the men, while the Vadi women care for the snakes and handle them when their husbands or brothers are not around.

'The training begins at two, the children then are then taught the ancient ways of snake charming until they are ready to take up their roles in our community,' said chief snake charmer Babanath Mithunath Madari, 60.

'At twelve the children will know everything that they can know about snakes.

'They are then ready to continue the traditions of the Vadi tribe which can be stretched back over one thousands years to India's great Raja's (kings).'

The nomadic Vadi tribe, which lives in the south of the Indian state of Gujarat take great pride in their association with the areas deadly snakes.

Never staying in one place for more than six months, the Vadi have an almost mythical attachment to snakes and especially cobras.

'At night, as we sit around our huts in the open desert and explain to the pact that our descendants made with Naga, the snake god,' Madari said.
Enlarge Babanath Mithunat Madari

Master charmer: Babanath Mithunat Madari shows off the tricks of his trade

'We explain to the children how we only take a snake away from its natural habitat for a maximum of seven months.

'Any more is disrespectful to the snake and especially after the charmer and snake have worked together so closely and so intimately.

'Both are trusting their lives to the other one.'

The cobras are fed a herbal mixture which Madari says renders the snake's deadly poison useless.

'We do not cut the fangs off the snakes as that would be cruel,' the tribal chief said.

'We do not harm the them because they are like children to us.

'In all my years with snakes, from my childhood to now, I have only heard of one man to have been bitten.

'This was because he kept the snake longer than seven months.'

Since snake charming was made illegal in 1991, the Vadi have come under huge pressure from the state and national governments of India.

'The police routinely search us strip us of our snakes whenever we cross their paths,' Madari said.

'We live 25km away from the town of Rajkot at the moment, and every time we try to enter the village for food or even bottle of water, the villagers chase us away.

'This upsets me greatly because this village is the birthplace of the father of our nation Gandhi.

'Would he stop us from continuing our traditions? The rich of India have no time for the poor.'

Simple ways to protect your child from swine flu

As swine flu continues to infect school kids, parental anxieties have stirred up with each one trying to be cautious enough to avoid the spread of HINI virus that has caused severe illness and deaths worldwide.

Dr Galit Holzmann-Pazgal assistant professor of pediatrics at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston suggest parents can ease their anxieties by arming themselves with facts about H1N1 and using some commonsense tips.

*Wash your hands after you touch...and Twitter

Washing your hands is the single-most important step to prevent the spread of H1N1. The virus is spread by droplets from coughs and sneezes as well as touching hands and objects contaminated with these droplets such as each other''s phones, computer keyboards, iPods and video games.
Main symptoms of swine flu are fatigue and fever. Others include body aches, runny or stuffy nose, cough, sore throat and fever, headache, chills, diarrhea and vomiting

*Know when it is an emergency

Call your doctor if your child has symptoms including rapid breathing, not drinking enough, fussiness or if symptoms improve and then return with fever and worsened cough.

*With mild cases, call your doctor first

If your child just feels lousy, and doesn''t have a high fever or trouble breathing, call your pediatrician instead of heading to the hospital.

*Keep the kids home

Keep your sick child at home for at least 24 hours after his fever is gone (without the use of a fever-reducing medicine) except to get medical care or for other necessities, according to the CDC.

Encourage her to cover her mouth and nose with a tissue when coughing or sneezing, throw away used tissue in the waste basket, and to clean her hands every time she coughs or sneezes.

*Start the vaccinations

Federal officials expect release of the H1N1 vaccine in October. The vaccine may require a second shot given three weeks after the first. It may take another two weeks before the vaccine fully protects the body against the flu. Recent studies showed that one shot may protect against H1N1, stretching the supply of the vaccine.

Until the H1N1 shot is ready, Pazgal advises families to go ahead and get the "regular" flu shot, which protects against the seasonal flu and is already available. That way, your children won''t get the flu twice in one season.

Cough syrups act little more than placebo in children: Study

Administering cough syrups to children with acute cough might be a fairly common practice in every household, but the effect of medicinal administration might be little more than placebo, a study says.

Published in the latest edition of the Indian Pediatrics Journal, the study which analyses the clinical outcome of cough syrups on children in terms of symptom relief, concluded that there was no difference between various pharmacological agents compared to placebo or non-medicated administrations.

Moreover, the study says cough syrups can also have the risk of adverse effects, suggesting their use should be "discouraged".

"... the symptomatic relief with cough syrups observed in uncontrolled settings is likely to be nothing more than placebo effect," it concluded.

A placebo effect occurs when a treatment or medication with no therapeutic value (placebo) is administered to a patient and the symptoms improve. According to medical experts, the patient's belief sometimes has therapeutic effect.

The study was based on Cochrane Library reviews, which include eight randomised controlled trials with 616 people having cough associated with upper respiratory infection being treated with various pharmacological agents singly or in combination.

The reviewers measured several outcomes that quantified improvement in terms of change in severity or frequency of cough, comfort to the child in terms of impact on sleep, and also included parental assessment of improvement as a measure, the study says.

The study also analysed an additional trial evaluating a mixture of four pharmacologically active products in children and assessing a composite score of symptom relief of runny nose, congestion, pain and cough.

"The trials showed that relief with cough syrups was not only comparable to placebo, but both were of a fairly high magnitude, suggesting significant placebo effect.

"In addition, sleep induced by cough syrups may be mistakenly attributed as a therapeutic rather than side effect, in some cases," the study says.

Besides, another trial that was analysed in the study, showed that dextromethorphan, an anti-tussive drug which is one of the active ingredients in many over-the-counter cold and cough medicines, was "no better than placebo for the treatment of cough".

"There was no difference between various pharmacological agents compared to placebo or no treatment," the study concluded.

While suggesting that the effect of cough syrups was little better than no treatment, the study also says that the frequency and severity of adverse events reported with most pharmacological preparations "disallows exploiting even the placebo effect".

The adverse events "range from insignificant and transient clinical events to serious adverse events and even death in rare instances," it says.

Children with eating disorders on The rise: study

A new study has revealed more than 100 young children across Australia have been hospitalised with medical complications because of an eating disorder.

Last year, Australian doctors reported children as young as five being diagnosed with eating disorders in Australia.

Dr Sloane Madden specialises in treating children with eating disorders and he says this new research shows they are becoming more common.

"In the last 12 months there has been a 50 per cent increase in the number of young people presenting to our unit," he said.

Professor Phillipa Hay from the University Western Sydney says this is a significant study.

"This is a very important landmark study because for the first time it gives us national information on the nature and characteristics of children who suffer early onset eating disorders," she said.

More than 100 underweight children were admitted to hospitals across Australia.

Professor Hay says many were very sick with the effects of starvation.

"For example slowed heart rate, or very low blood pressure so they had become physically compromised and unwell as a consequence of food deprivation," she said.

One in four of the patients were boys.

"People are not expecting to see boys with eating disorders so they are picked up late with much more physical complications than we saw in young girls," Dr Sloane said.

"Specialists are concerned that some GPs are missing the signs of eating disorders.

"In one case, a doctor told a nine-year-old boy's family not to worry that he was losing weight.

"This young boy presented late on a Sunday night with a heart rate in the 30s which was really putting him at immediate risk of dying. He required resuscitation.

"If there starts to be a pattern of children not eating and becoming thinner and skipping lunch regularly, then parents should be concerned."

At first glance the prevalence of underweight children would seem at odds with the increase in childhood obesity but experts say both overweight and underweight children have what is known as disordered eating and the advice to parents is the same.

With early treatment, three-quarters of children make a complete recovery.

Are You Ready to Have children

Mess Test:

Smear peanut butter on the sofa and curtains. Place a fish stick behind the couch and leave it there all summer.


Toy Test:

Obtain a 55-gallon box of Legos. (If Legos are not available, you maysubstitute roofing tacks) Have a friend spread them all over the house. Put on a blindfold. Try to walk to the bathroom or kitchen. Do not scream. (This could wake a child at night.)

Grocery Store Test:

Borrow one or two small animals (goats are best) and take them with you as you shop at the grocery store. Always keep them in sight and pay for anything they eat or damage.


Dressing Test:

Obtain one large, unhappy, live octopus. Stuff into a small net bag, making sure that all arms stay inside.


Feeding Test:

Obtain a large plastic milk jug. Fill halfway with water. Suspend from the ceiling with a stout cord. Start the jug swinging. Try to insert spoonfuls of soggy cereal (such as Fruit Loops or Cheerios) into the mouth of the jug, while pretending to be an airplane. Now dump the contents of the jug on the floor.


Night Test:

Prepare by obtaining a small cloth bag and fill it with 8 - 12 pounds of sand. Soak it thoroughly in water. At 8:00 PM, begin to waltz and hum with the bag until 9:00 PM. Lay down your bag and set your alarm for 10: 00PM.Get up, pick up your bag, and sing every song you have ever heard. Make up about a dozen more and sing these too until 4:00 AM. Set alarm for 5:00 AM. Get up and make breakfast. Keep this up for 5 years. Look cheerful.


Physical Test (Women):

Obtain a large beanbag chair and attach it to the front of your clothes. Leave it there for 9 months. Now remove 10 of the beans.


Physical Test (Men):

Go to the nearest drug store. Set your wallet on the counter. Ask the clerk to help himself. Now proceed to the nearest food store. Go to the head office and arrange for your paycheck to be directly deposited to the store. Purchase a newspaper. Go home and read it quietly for the last time.


Final Assignment:

Find a couple who already has a small child. Lecture them on how they can improve their discipline, patience, tolerance, toilet training, and child's table manners. Suggest many ways they can improve. Emphasize to them that they should never allow their children to run riot. Enjoy this experience. It will be the last time you will have all the answers. "