Breastfeed Your Baby’s Brain
May 30, 2008
If your kid drinks breast milk—and only breast milk—from birth to the first birthday, your kid could turn out smarter than kids who were not breast fed. That’s what Michael Kramer, MD, of McGill University and his colleagues report in a study called Breastfeeding and Child Cognitive Development. In general, Kramer and company found that breastfed kids out did non-breastfed kids on every measurement of smarts.
Why would this be true? No one knows for sure. It could be something in the breast milk. It could be something behavioral, like a kid getting some emotional benefit from being breastfed.
To learn about even more breastfeeding benefits, read Breast-Feeding Best Bet for Babies.
Get the Lead Out of Kids
May 29, 2008
Lead remains a problem for our kids. You might think that that kids with lead poisoning is a thing of the past, but it’s not. In the United States, about one-third of a million kids from the ages of 1 to 5 have more lead in their blood than is considered acceptable. Moreover, the “acceptable” level might still be dangerous. So even more of our kids could be at risk. In essence, this lead poisons a kids’ brain, reducing his mental abilities.
You probably think of toddlers—at that window-sill chewing age—as at the highest risk for lead poisoning, and they do tend to be the most likely to have high levels of lead in their blood. Nonetheless, Bruce Lanphear, MD, MPH, of Cincinnati Children’s Hopsital Medical Center and his colleagues recently showed that lead is even more evil on a kid’s IQ at the age of 6.
As Lanphear says:
We found that children may be particularly vulnerable to lead exposure just as the child approaches school age, during a period of rapid cognitive development.
To keep your kids safe from lead, learn more at the Mayo Clinic’s Lead Poisoning Prevention site.
Gardens Help Kids Grow
May 28, 2008
Give your kid a garden, and something beautiful might grow out of it. Maybe it will be the garden itself.
But it could also be how the garden impacts your child. The Garden-Based Learning project from Cornell University follows the philosophy that a garden makes a great place for kids to learn, and this group’s site even provides a range of activities to try. As Marcia Eames-Sheavly of Garden-Based Learning says:
In an era in which there is grave concern over a lack of young peoples’ engagement with nature, children’s gardens offer a way in which children and youth can interact with the natural world.
It worked for me. I had my first garden when I was 8-years-old. Just in front of my house, on the edge of one of my grandfather’s corn fields, he left a patch for me. He’d plowed the soil, so it was ready for planting, but it was completely up to me what I would plant. I also weeded it by hand all summer, carried buckets of water to my garden if the rain didn’t come, and picked the results. I even sold some of the extra vegetables. It was my first interactive experience with nature, and my first job. It all surely affected who I would become—a biologist who runs his own writing business.
Cats Cut Kid Allergies
May 27, 2008
To keep your kids asthma-free, consider getting a cat. Scientists at the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health recently reported that kids who grow up with a cat in the house are less likely to suffer asthmatic symptoms by the age of 5.
For kids who have asthma, though, and are allergic to cats, don’t think that getting a cat will be a cure. It won’t be. It will just make your poor kid wheeze and sneeze. This only seems to work for kids who grow up with cats, and get them before turning allergic or asthmatic.
Remember that dogs can help too (Dogs Decrease Childhood Allergies)!
Food Additives and Hyperactivity
May 26, 2008
For hyperactive kids, there’s more to try than drugs. Try removing the colorings and preservatives from a hyperactive kid’s diet before you try a medical treatment. It might sound guru to you, but a variety of studies show that cleaning out the dietary additives can help kids with ADHD.
In fact, the same colorings and preservatives can even make more-relaxed kids turn hyper. So maybe that’s what is pushing other kids from a little high-strung to clinically diagnosed as ADHD.
To learn more, visit Benefits of an Additive Free Diet.
