Archive for the ‘Health: kids’ Category

Horrifying photo: A 7-year-old’s weight-loss plan

Wednesday, March 6, 2013 by:moms@sfgate.com (Amy Graff)
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(Courtesy Amy Cheney / Mama Mia)

An Australian mom was horrified when she found a piece of scratch paper with the word “Diyet” scrawled across the top among the “Polly Pockets and friendship bracelets” on the floor of her 7-year-old daughter’s room.

The paper outlines her daughter’s weight-loss plan and reads:

17 pooshups 2 times a day

16 star jumps 2 time a day

2 yoget

3 appals

1 per

2 keewee froots

5 glases of water

Rid my bike 3 times a day

Rariry a meniy thing as you can find

Jog/run up and down the driv way 3 times

(Before you attack her spelling keep in mind that most schools initially encourage kids to spell phonetically.)

Amy Cheney, a writer and mother of three, shared the list on the Australian lifestyle site Mama Mia, where she writes with humor and emotion about the thoughts that ran through her mind when she found this upsetting piece of paper.

Diyet. Jesus.

Where did she learn the word diet? How does she even know what a freaking diet is?

Whose fault is this? Is it mine because I let her play with Barbies? Because sometimes she’s allowed to watch Total Drama Action? Is it because when I draw with her I can only draw stick figures?

She goes on:

How did this happen?

I am smart about this stuff. I have a degree in early childhood studies. Our family focuses on and promotes healthy eating and healthy bodies. Our attitudes are reasonable and balanced. Weight has never been an issue in our home – it is, for the most part, irrelevant.

Read the full post at Mama Mia.

I think that I’d be equally troubled if I found a similar list in the room of my skinny-as-a-rail 10-year-old who swims three times a week, plays basketball, goes to dance class and doesn’t have a single ounce of body fat on her even though she always finishes her cake at birthday parties. I’d like to think that my daughter will never have to worry about going on a serious diet because she learns to love her body, eat everything in moderation and remains active throughout her life.

But the reality is that in the industrialized world the media and the food industry send our children confusing and unhealthy messages around food and body image. You’ve got fast-food chains dishing up triple-patty burgers, coffee chains pushing sugary drinks that pack in almost half the calories you need in a day and food companies cramming addictive amounts of salt and artificial flavoring into their chips. These companies are helping drive a scary obesity epidemic that’s leaving young children with serious body weight issues. On the other side of things, the fashion mags are filled with images of gorgeous models who’ve been airbrushed and Photoshopped to have impossibly perfect skin and skinny waists. Hollywood and the music and fashion industries are telling our girls to be pretty and thin.

It’s no wonder that a survey conducted by the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) found between 40 to 60 percent of children age 6 to 12 are worried about how much they weigh, and 70 percent would like to be skinnier. A survey by the Keep It Real campaign found that 80 percent of 10 years olds have already been on a diet.

Suddenly the fact that this Australian mom found a diet plan in her daughter’s room isn’t so surprising. And the fact that my own daughter recently told me about her friend who was on a diet isn’t so surprising either. Yet as parents we want to keep our kids away from that world of obsessing over every little crumb and looking into the mirror and feeling fat for as long as possible. Seven year olds shouldn’t be worrying about fitting in their push-ups every day. Rather they should be playing tag on the front lawn, chasing little brothers, shooting hoops at the playground. And they shouldn’t be counting calories. Instead they should be freely eating healthy foods and occasionally indulging in treats without any guilt.

Many thanks to Amy Cheney over at Mama Mia for sharing her daughter’s note because it’s a great reminder to us all to talk to our kids about feeling good about their bodies, and these conversations might need to start earlier than you ever imagined.

Inspiring 9-year-old loses 66 pounds

Wednesday, December 12, 2012 by:moms@sfgate.com (Amy Graff)
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The story of Breanna Bond is quite remarkable and inspiring.

The 10-year-old California girl went from 186 to 120 pounds in less than a year. With her parents cheering her on, Breanna dramatically changed her diet, hopped on the treadmill for over an hour and 15 minutes every day and joined swim and basketball teams.

A year ago, Breanna couldn’t imagine swimming laps or shooting hoops. At age 9, the girl from Clovis, Calif., was uncomfortably overweight. She was slow and sluggish and moving around was difficult because she couldn’t breathe easily. Kids teased her at school.

“Everybody at school would call me names,” Breanna of Clovis, Calif., told Good Morning America. “They would call me fatty, they would call me fat head.”

Breanna was chubby from the start and when she was a baby pediatricians told her parents, Heidi and Dan, “that she’d grow into her body.” By kindergarten, Breanna weighed 100 pounds. She became one of the millions of American kids struggling with obesity.

“After a while, we went and got other doctors’ opinions,” Heidi told Good Morning America. “We had her tested for everything from thyroid to diabetes – her endocrinology got tested – allergies, and everything came out fine so we knew at that point we had to step things up.”

And step up they did. Breanna went on a strict diet and exercise regime. “There was nothing that stopped us,” Heidi said. “We went at night, in the rain, in the hail, in the fog, nothing. We had a zero-tolerance policy. We’re doing the walk, no matter what.”

Breanna’s story made national news the same week a new report revealed that childhood obesity rates are slightly decreasing in a handful of cities. New York City saw a 5.5 percent decline, according to The New York Times, Philadelphia 5 percent and Los Angeles 3 percent in recent years. The decreases are small but, Dr. Thomas Farley, the health commissioner in New York City, told The New York Times, “It’s been nothing but bad news for 30 years, so the fact that we have any good news is a big story.”

For many years, American kids were only getting fatter and fatter, and Breanna’s story and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation are small signs that the trend could be starting to change.

Today, roughly 1 in 3 children (ages 2 to 19) are overweight. These children are all at an increased risk for developing such diseases as diabetes and hypertension.

But in recent years, state and city campaigns, education leaders, Michelle Obama and even the Sesame Street gang have fought hard to fight the obesity epidemic. Big sugary drinks and lazy days in front of the television have been widely deemed unhealthy. Could the efforts finally be starting to pay off?

Breanna Bond is just one girl who has demonstrated that kids can win the obesity battle—but hopefully more will follow in her tracks.

“She is an inspiration to the world and all children who are having weight issues across America, that you can do it with a pair of tennis shoes and motivation,” Heidi told Good Morning America.

The popular children’s toy that’s injuring thousands

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 by:moms@sfgate.com (Amy Graff)
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Nearly 100,000 kids were injured on trampolines in 2009. The most common injuries include sprains, strains and contusions. (Shutterstock / Sonya Etchison)

In the backyards of family homes across America, kids are jumping up and down and doing flips and other fancy gymnastics moves. Trampolines are now one of the hottest toys for kids and they’re at the top of many children’s holiday and birthday wish lists.

But now the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is saying that kids shouldn’t be bouncing around on backyard trampolines and they’re asking pediatricians to help them spread the word about their dangers.

In the past the AAP has published guidelines for safe trampoline use but yesterday the organization released revised guidelines stating that the play equipment should be entirely avoided because too many children are getting injured.

Trampoline injury rates skyrocketed in the 1990s, according to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission’s
(USCPSC) National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), and peaked in 2004. Rates have decreased ever since, yet a statement published in the Pediatrics journal cited nearly 100,000 trampoline injuries in 2009, with 3,100 of those kids going to the hospital.

Dr. Michele LaBotz, leading author of the new AAP statement and a sports medicine physician at Intermed Sports Medicine in Portland, Me., told NBC News:

I think parents see the soft springy mat and they think it’s safe, like water,” LaBotz said. “What they don’t realize is that once you get it to bouncing, especially if there are multiple users, it can be dangerous. Bigger kids and adults like to rocket propel up the little kids, getting them to bounce higher than they would otherwise and if the kid comes down wrong, it is the same as falling 9 or 10 feet onto a hard surface.

Pediatricians need to actively discourage recreational trampoline use,” said LaBotz, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics executive council on sports medicine and fitness. “This is not a toy. It’s a piece of equipment. We recommend that you not provide it for your family or your neighbors to use. But if you do use one, you need to be aware of the risks.

Most trampoline accidents occur when more than one person is jumping and smaller younger kids are at a greater risk. The most common injuries include sprains, strains and contusions, and cervical spine injuries can occur when a child attempts somersaults or flips or falls off the trampoline. Trampolines now typically come with a safety net that surrounds the trampoline to prevent falls but the AAP report indicates that these are often ineffective.

What do you think? Is the AAP overreacting?

My kids recently bounced around on a trampoline with a pack of kids at a friend’s house. The fun ended with two kids colliding and knocking heads. I also hurt myself when I was climbing down the tramp’s ladder and fell and got my leg tangled up in the rungs. My leg was black and blue with a bruise that extended from my hip to my knee for several weeks. Nobody went to the hospital but I can understand why injuries are common. But then again kids get hurt climbing trees, riding bikes, jumping on beds, and simply running around. Are trampolines any more dangerous?

Boy has Lego piece removed from his nose after three years

Tuesday, August 7, 2012 by:moms@sfgate.com (Amy Graff)
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Isaak Lasson Lego nose

Isaak Lasson takes a look at the Lego piece that was lodged in his nose for three years. Doctors recently removed the large-size wheel and now the 6-year-old from Salt Lake City is breathing easier. (KSL.com)

Over the past three years the parents of 6-year-old Isaak Lasson have been taking their son to the doctor trying to figure out why their son struggles breathing. At night in bed the boy from Salt Lake City often gasped for air.

This Lego wheel was covered in fungus. (KSL.com)

Pediatricians repeatedly prescribed antibiotics to Isaak, and then one wise doctor figured out that something was stuck in the boy’s nose.

Lasson visited a specialist who pulled a Lego wheel from Isaak’s nostril. The large plastic piece was encased in fungus, according to KSL.com.

“We think he bent it in half — it’s pretty flexible — and that it opened up once it got into his sinuses,” Isaak’s father, Craig Lasson, told KSL.com.

Now, Isaak is a new kid. He’s breathing easier and sleeping more hours. He’s bounding with energy and has a ravenous appetite.

“You ask yourself, ‘Am I a bad parent because I didn’t catch it sooner?’ But the doctors just kept prescribing antibiotics,” Craig said to KSL.com. “We just didn’t know.”

Stuffy nose: Isaak isn’t the only kid to ever stick something up a nostril. Children do this all the time and San Francisco pediatrician and BabyCenter blogger Dr. Lisa Dana frequently sees these sorts of cases in her office. Dr. Dana offered up a rundown of the things kids most often stick up their noses and you’ll find them in the slide show below. Has anything ever gotten stuck in your kid’s nose?

[KSL.com]

School sunscreen ban leads girls to become severely sunburned

Wednesday, June 27, 2012 by:moms@sfgate.com (Amy Graff)
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After spending five hours outside at a school field day, these two girls had seared skin. (Jesse Michener)

The images of two girls from Tacoma, Wash., who became badly sunburned after spending an afternoon outside at a school field day are painful to look at.

Ouch! Why weren’t these girls wearing sunscreen?

Teachers weren’t allowed to provide the girls with sunscreen—even though their skin was obviously getting fried—due to a statewide policy. Huh?

Turns out that a state law in Washington forbids staff from applying or giving students sunscreen without a doctor’s note. What’s more, for liability reasons, students can only bring sunscreen to school and apply it themselves if they have a note from a physician. “The law exists because the additives in lotions and sunscreens can cause an allergic reaction in children, and sunscreens are regulated by the FDA as an over-the-counter drug,” according to MSNBC. Similar policies exist in 49 states; California is the only state to allow sunscreen in public schools without a doctor’s note.

Jesse Michener, the mother of the two girls with seared skin, is troubled by this law and she’s challenging it. She partnered with Project Backpack, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on changing state and local policies to allow sunscreen on school campuses. Together they plan to connect with national organizations and put more force behind the movement to put sunscreen back in the hands of children.

Michener posted the images of her badly burned girls on her blog, Life Photographed, and they quickly caught the attention of the world. The story was covered by news sites ranging from the British Daily Mail to CBS News, but Michener says, “This isn’t a story about us. I want this to be a part of the bigger picture and spark a grass roots movement to change these laws.”

Michener’s daughters, Violet, 11, and Zoe, 9, have fair skin but their mother didn’t apply sunscreen on the morning of the field day because it was raining. She figured the activities would be held inside. But the weather cleared and Violet and Zoe spent five hours in direct sun.

“Teachers remarked that my daughters looked like they were burning but nobody did anything about it,” Michener told SFGate.

Because of the law nobody could have done anything about it. “The girls say they were forced to watch one teacher put on her own sunscreen and then explain to the burning students that it was ‘just for her’ when they begged her for some,” according to the Daily Mail.

What’s more, the school doesn’t allow children to wear hats.

The girls’ burns were so serious that Michener brought them to the doctor. The sisters’ skin blistered and they both had headaches, chills and pain. They stayed home from school for a day.

A week later, Michener says that Violet’s face is still pink but the skin on her shoulders is “alligator-y and leathery.”

“But I don’t want to make this a story about my girls’ bad sunburns,” Michener says. “We need to move on and look ahead and now it’s time to throw myself at trying to catalyze change.”

The school apologized to the family and said they would support a revision to the sunscreen policy.

Source and inspiration: MSNBC and Daily Mail

HPV vaccine: Fewer young women getting all three shots

Wednesday, May 9, 2012 by:moms@sfgate.com (Amy Graff)
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Has your daughter received the HPV vaccine? (Shutterstock/itsmejust)

The HPV vaccine offers protection against sexually transmitted human pappillomavirus and may be the most effective way to prevent cervical cancer, yet the number of women completing the required three shots is decreasing, according to a new study in the American Cancer Society journal Cancer.

The New York Times reports:

The rate at which the young women completed the series within a year dropped to less than 22 percent in 2009 from more than 50 percent in 2006. There was an increase in completion only among the 2 percent of women older than 27 who received the shots off-label, to 24 percent in 2009 from 15 percent in 2006.

HPV is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the United States. Up to 80 percent of females and males are infected at some point in their lives, and the highest rates of infection are found in sexually active adolescents and young adults.

Most HPV infections clear up but they sometimes lead to genital warts and cancers of the mouth and throat, cervix and genital organs. HPV infections cause some 15,000 cancers in women and 7,000 cancers in men each year, according to the NY Times, and HPV is responsible for nearly all cases of cervical cancer.

The HPV vaccine, which was introduced in 2006, offers protection against four strains of human pappillomavirus. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends the HPV vaccine for girls, ages 11 to 12, though it’s available for ages 9 to 26. The vaccine is most effective if administered before the onset of sexual activity, and antibody responses to the vaccine are highest at ages 9 through 15. (While the focus of the vaccine has been on girls, the AAP now also recommends the immunizations for boys, mainly to help curb the spread of the virus to girls. Although there’s growing evidence that HPV causes throat cancer in men, reports the NY Times.)

The vaccine requires three shots, sometimes painful, over the course of six months, and an increasing number of young people who show up for the first shot never get the second or third.

Dr. Charles Wibbelsman, chief of the teen clinic at Kaiser Permanente San Francisco, suspects fewer young women are getting their follow-up shots due to lack of access to healthcare and insurance. The shots are expensive, about $390 for a full series, and while Kaiser Permanente covers the full cost of the immunizations for its members not all health insurance plans do. Some parents are probably unwilling to pay for the shots themselves or they don’t put forth the effort to find a place that offers them at a reduced cost.

Also, Dr. Wibbelsman adds, “Families change their health insurance plans or they suddenly lose their insurance when their children are in the middle of the series of immunizations. There’s no way to follow up with these families and make sure their teens complete the shots.”

Some parents just forget. When your children are babies and toddlers, they have regular check-ups with their pediatricians who remind them to keep up with vaccines. But a teenager might only go to the doctor once a year and so the patient never receives that face-to-face reminder to get the follow-up shots.

“It really takes an integrated health system with email follow-up to make sure parents remember to bring their kids in to complete the series,” Dr. Wibbelsman says.

And what about those young people who don’t even get the first shot and refuse the vaccine all-together?  Many parents opt their children out of the vaccine because the disease it prevents is associated with having sex. “They fear that getting the vaccine will promote sexual activity,” Dr. Wibbelsman says. “Some parents can’t get past this.”

That’s when Dr. Wibbelsman reminds them that this vaccine can prevent a form of cancer.

Have your children received the HPV vaccine? Did they complete the full series?

Manhattan socialite shames fat daughter, writes about it in ‘Vogue’

Wednesday, March 28, 2012 by:moms@sfgate.com (Amy Graff)
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Dara-Lynn Weiss attracted national media attention by putting her obese 7-year-old daughter on a diet, writing about it in Vogue, and ultimately scoring a book deal. Her story is relevant in America, where 1 in 3 children are obese. There’s a need for information on how parents can help their overweight children—but Dara-Lynn, who fat-shamed her daughter in public, got it all wrong and only sets a bad example for other moms in similar situations. And as we all know, the last thing the world needs is yet another example of bad parenting.

Dara Lynn Weiss Bea Weiss Weight Watcher

Manhattan socialite Dara-Lynn Weiss and her daughter Bea posed for an article titled “Weight Watcher” that’s running in the April issue of “Vogue.”

When Bea Weiss was 6 years old a pediatrician diagnosed her as clinically obese. Bea was 4 ft. 4 in. and 93 pounds.

Bea’s mother, Dara-Lynn Weiss, sprang into action and put her daughter on a strict diet. The Manhattan socialite also fat-shamed Bea, humiliated her in public, and once she denied her daughter dinner because she consumed brie, filet mignon, baguette and chocolate at her school’s French Heritage Day. Another time she stopped her daughter from eating a salad because it was overly dressed.

Dara-Lynn, who is a chronic dieter herself, shares these details in a provocative tell-all article titled “Weight Watcher” running in the April “Shape” issue of Vogue. Fashion photos of the mother and now-slim daughter accompany the article.

You can’t find the article online but bloggers are sharing bits and pieces of it all over the Internet.

Here’s a bit about the salad incident:

I stepped between my daughter and a bowl of salad nicoise my friend was handing her, raising my palm like a traffic cop. “Thanks,” I said, “but she already ate dinner.”

“But she said she’s still hungry,” my friend replied, bewildered.

I forced a smile. “Yeah, but it’s got a lot of dressing on it and we’re trying–”

“Just olive oil!” my friend interrupted. “It’s superhealthy!”

My smile faded and my voice grew tense. “I know. She can’t.”

My friend’s eyes moved to my daughter, whose gaze held the dish in the crosshairs: a Frisbee-size bowl bursting with oil, tuna, eggs, potatoes, olives.

And here’s another disturbing excerpt:

Sometimes Bea’s after-school snack was a slice of pizza or a gyro from the snack vendor. Other days I forced her to choose a low-fat vegetable soup or a single hard-boiled egg. Occasionally I’d give in to her pleas for a square of coffee cake, mainly because I wanted to eat half of it. When she was given access to cupcakes at a party, I alternated between saying, “Let’s not eat that, it’s not good for you;” “Okay, fine, go ahead, but just one;” and “Bea, you have to stop eating crap like that, you’re getting too heavy,” depending on my mood. Then I’d secretly eat two when she wasn’t looking.

Dara-Lynn clearly handles her daughter’s weight problem in the wrong way, and she’s setting Bea up for a life ridden with body image issues and eating disorders.

“She did everything we recommend people don’t do,” Lynn Grefe, president of the National Eating Disorders Association, told Time. “To us, diet is a four-letter word.

Weight problems among America’s youth are real with 1 in 3 children being overweight. We all like to blame this sobering number on fast-food chains and the food industry but ultimately the responsibility lies with the parents of these children. And how can a parent help an overweight child?

Parents certainly can’t cull any advice from Dara-Lynn’s sensationalized article. She can only tell you how to destroy your child’s self image.

I only wish that Vogue ran an article about a parent who got it right. Putting a child on a diet is a delicate, complicated situation and parents could use an example of a parent who handles her child’s obesity with thoughtfulness, love and care. Parents don’t need yet another example of bad parenting, nor do we need another parent who’s exploiting their children and neurotic parenting style for media attention. Shame on Vogue for printing this article.

The sad thing is that bad parenting sells. Dara-Lynn has been written about by bloggers at media outlets ranging from the HuffingtonPost to BabyCenter. And MediaBistro’s GalleyCat just announced that Dara-Lynn scored a book deal with Random House’s Ballantine to write a memoir, tentatively titled “The Heavy.” Can we all agree to not buy a copy?