With new pregnancy come new health story ideas! Indulge me for a minute: we've started a new segment called The Pregnancy Diaries. Let's talk health issues, questions and expectations when expecting!
First up: Ana Dolaskie's Top Five First Trimester Woes!
Parents & Kids
The Food and Drug Administration is cracking down on the use of opioid-containing drugs for children. Is this an overreaction? Maybe.
You've heard of being in a fog while pregnant, but is there science to back this up? A little bit. Watch our video to find out.
Plus, a bonus announcement from Ana Dolaskie.
A new University of Iowa study shows that before their teen years, children do not have the perceptual judgment to safely cross a road with traffic. This affirms common wisdom. It's also why we have school crossing guards for small children.
We want to hear what kids around the nation (and globe!) want to know about science and health. Kicking off our new segment, #KuriousKiddos, are Isaiah and Gabriel who ask us this: Our mom dilutes our juice with water because she says too much sugar is bad for us. Is it healthier to drink diluted juice or the real deal?
Watch the video to hear our answer!
If you'd like to submit a question to #KuriousKiddos, please e-mail us at: simovskaa@acsh.org
Another agenda-driven group is at it again, this time using our kids' school lunches for its own purposes. The vegetarian-centric Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is suing California schools. The group wants to have processed meats removed from students' lunches – a move that's less about health and more about pushing its agenda.
April is autism awareness month and the FDA isn't missing a beat, warning about fraudulent autism treatments – like chelation therapies and detoxifying clay baths. Not only are they expensive, they're completely ineffective. It's time to smoke out these snake oil salesmen who are preying on parents who just want to help their kids.
Babies are a little safer today as Hyland's homeopathic teething tablets have been recalled by their manufacturer, Standard Homeopathic Company. It's been a long road to get to this point, with pressure for the recall coming primarily from the FDA.
Here's a health question related to Sunday's Easter Egg Hunt: Once the kids have found the eggs that you've so carefully un-hidden, can they eat them? That's really an easy one — sure. But what you want to be careful about is cracked eggs. And here's why.
Over-the-top responses to peanuts are not uncommon. People are under the impression that the mere whiff of a peanut is enough to send some kids to the emergency room. But that's simply not true.
In infants, whooping cough is horrific. They are especially vulnerable during their first few months, before they can receive their first vaccinations. A new study strengthens the CDC's recommendation: expectant mothers should get the whooping cough vaccine in their third trimester, to transfer protective antibodies to their newborns.
A growing number of parents choose to opt out of giving children their daily dose of milk, and switching to alternatives like almond milk or cashew milk. Perhaps they may think the alternatives offer a bit more calcium than real milk — but this is misleading: Real milk contains both calcium and vitamin D (added in the 1930s due to Rickets — a vitamin D deficiency among children), and the presence of vitamin D helps absorb the calcium.