Introduction

Welcome. Doc Smo here, your pedcast host. I had an amazingly gratifying experience recently that I want to share with you, especially if your child is struggling in school. In today's pedcast, we are going to talk about some simple parenting task that is bound to help your children. Curious about what those tasks could be?  Then stay tuned to learn more in today's installment of Portable Practical Pediatrics. 

Musical Introduction

A Routine Talk Turns Extraordinary

Recently, I was asked to speak to a group of parents of “at risk children” who had come to a family education evening to talk about how to maximize their children’s performance in school. We talked about the research that has been discussed on this blog many times. Specifically, I wanted to stress the factors that parents have control of that have been shown to improve a child's academic achievement;

-Keeping TV’s out of a child’s bedroom and limiting screen time

-Getting an adequate amount of physical activity and unstructured play

-Having a diet rich with unprocessed foods

-Getting an adequate amount of sleep.

Well, the night this event occurred was actually the second time I had spoken at this church and talked about this topic.

A Testimonial

I thought my first talk with this group of parents had gone pretty well but I had no idea of how well.  At the onset of my next visit with these parents, an amazing thing happened.  Before we got into the talk, an older gentleman raised his hand and told me he had a testimonial to share. That's what he called it, a "Testimonial". He told the audience and me that he and his wife were raising their grandson who was currently in 4th grade and not doing very well academically. He said that he and his wife had decided, after hearing my first talk, to try getting their grandson a structured regular bedtime, free of screens and junk food to see what would happen. Specifically, they wanted to get him to bed early enough for him to get up the next morning without a fight. That was their goal. To do this, they completely restructured his bedtime: they removed the TV from his room and cut off screen time after 7pm. they insisted that he was to eat all of his food at dinner and was to get nothing no more after that. Bedtime was set at 8pm and enforced. Lights out and time to sleep.

 

After doing all of this, they said the transition was nothing short of miraculous. He almost immediately stopped fighting about getting ready for school in the morning and actually woke up in the morning on his own. He also stopped fighting about going to sleep.  And the best thing is that his grades showed an immediate improvement. Whereas he had been struggling to keep up in school, now he was getting good grades! They said even his personality was more pleasant. They attributed all of this great stuff to him having a regular bedtime and adequate sleep. They had no idea that not having a structured bedtime, letting him play video games late into the evening, eating junk food at night, and falling asleep in front of screens was so detrimental to him.

 

An Amazing Statistic

Some of you may have read the book Nurture Shock. I wrote a book review about it a few years ago.  Listen to this shocking statistic that the authors of Nurture Shock discovered: a school aged child who has a one hour sleep deprivation on a chronic basis will, on average, perform 2 years younger than their chronologic age cognitively. That means that a 6th grader will perform like a 4th grader academically if they get 1 hour less sleep at night on a chronic basis.  Clearly, sleep deprivation is having a major impact on a young child's brain. Case closed and the young man in this story was probably a good example of sleep deprivation that was cognitively impairing. Whatever it was,

Introduction

Hello and welcome, I am your host, Dr. Paul Smolen, a board certified pediatrician with 37 years of practice. The other day, I was having a conversation with a mother about fever seizures. Her child had had one of these seizures and she found it extremely frightening. That's understandable. Anyone who has seen a child have a generalized convulsion can understand this mom's dread. During a seizure, it looks like the child is dying right in front of you.  I was explaining to this mom that fever seizures are almost always benign, are almost never harmful to the child, require no treatment, and are not even considered epilepsy. That led us into a discussion of a whole host of illnesses and symptoms that just 40 years ago were felt to "require” treatment but that was then and today is now! Today many symptoms and conditions don't require treatment and are recognized as temporary states that will resolve with time.  In today's pedcast, I thought it might be fun to go over some of the conditions and symptoms that pediatricians no longer recommend treatment for. Oh, what a difference a few decades can make. Stay tuned for about 10 minutes and I will show you just how much change there has been.

Musical Introduction

Less is More

"Less is more." Have you ever heard people say that? Well, it is very true, especially, when it comes to treating the most common medical conditions children present to their parents. Take cough for instance. Yes, cough is a sign that something is wrong with the child and yes, it can be associated with very serious medical conditions but most of the time, it is simply the child's way of keeping their lungs clean during a viral respiratory illness; a useful but annoying way to prevent the child from contracting pneumonia.  Stopping this reflex is exactly the opposite of what parents should want to do but... I can't tell you how much cough syrup I prescribed at the onset of my career to stop this very useful reflex. After taking cough syrup, maybe the children who took it slept better when they were sick, but it certainly wasn't curing anything. It may have actually been doing some harm. In today's world of pediatrics, treating a cough is considered poor practice and even dangerous as we have talked about in many pedcasts in the past.

And how about fever, the great buggy man for parents. Again, fever almost always means something is wrong, usually an infection, and certainly should not be ignored but not panicked over either. It turns out that fever accelerates healing and reducing a child's temperature can prolong the illness! I know this is a radical concept but fever actually helps a child get well! For most children, no fever medicine is needed at all unless the fever is extreme or the child is very uncomfortable. How refreshing is that!  In the era of almost no invasive bacterial illnesses thanks to vaccines, parents can simply "back away from the Tylenol bottle and take a more relaxed attitude about fever".

And how about diarrhea, is that a useful thing for sick children as well? Of course it is! How else is your child's body going to get rid of germs and toxins that they have inadvertently put in their mouth? Creating a tsunami of fluid hosing down the inside of their intestines is a very effective way of ridding them of germs that can cause disease. We don't want to stop that and as you might expect, doing so with diarrhea medicine, prolongs the illness just like with fever meds. Again, mom, "back away from the diarrhea meds".

This minimalist approach as I like to call it has now spread to the treatment of many of the classic pediatric disease: bronchiolitis previously treated with steroids and bronchodilators, bronchitis previously treated with antibiotics, fever seizures previously treated with strong anticonvulsants, gastro-esophageal reflux in babies previously treated with very potent antacids and anti-reflux med...

Introduction

Hello and welcome, I am your host, Dr. Paul Smolen, a board certified pediatrician with 37 years of practice. The other day, I was having a conversation with a mother about fever seizures. Her child had had one of these seizures and she found it extremely frightening. That's understandable. Anyone who has seen a child have a generalized convulsion can understand this mom's dread. During a seizure, it looks like the child is dying right in front of you.  I was explaining to this mom that fever seizures are almost always benign, are almost never harmful to the child, require no treatment, and are not even considered epilepsy. That led us into a discussion of a whole host of illnesses and symptoms that just 40 years ago were felt to "require” treatment but that was then and today is now! Today many symptoms and conditions don't require treatment and are recognized as temporary states that will resolve with time.  In today's pedcast, I thought it might be fun to go over some of the conditions and symptoms that pediatricians no longer recommend treatment for. Oh, what a difference a few decades can make. Stay tuned for about 10 minutes and I will show you just how much change there has been.

Musical Introduction

Less is More

"Less is more." Have you ever heard people say that? Well, it is very true, especially, when it comes to treating the most common medical conditions children present to their parents. Take cough for instance. Yes, cough is a sign that something is wrong with the child and yes, it can be associated with very serious medical conditions but most of the time, it is simply the child's way of keeping their lungs clean during a viral respiratory illness; a useful but annoying way to prevent the child from contracting pneumonia.  Stopping this reflex is exactly the opposite of what parents should want to do but... I can't tell you how much cough syrup I prescribed at the onset of my career to stop this very useful reflex. After taking cough syrup, maybe the children who took it slept better when they were sick, but it certainly wasn't curing anything. It may have actually been doing some harm. In today's world of pediatrics, treating a cough is considered poor practice and even dangerous as we have talked about in many pedcasts in the past.

And how about fever, the great buggy man for parents. Again, fever almost always means something is wrong, usually an infection, and certainly should not be ignored but not panicked over either. It turns out that fever accelerates healing and reducing a child's temperature can prolong the illness! I know this is a radical concept but fever actually helps a child get well! For most children, no fever medicine is needed at all unless the fever is extreme or the child is very uncomfortable. How refreshing is that!  In the era of almost no invasive bacterial illnesses thanks to vaccines, parents can simply "back away from the Tylenol bottle and take a more relaxed attitude about fever".

And how about diarrhea, is that a useful thing for sick children as well? Of course it is! How else is your child's body going to get rid of germs and toxins that they have inadvertently put in their mouth? Creating a tsunami of fluid hosing down the inside of their intestines is a very effective way of ridding them of germs that can cause disease. We don't want to stop that and as you might expect, doing so with diarrhea medicine, prolongs the illness just like with fever meds. Again, mom, "back away from the diarrhea meds".

This minimalist approach as I like to call it has now spread to the treatment of many of the classic pediatric disease: bronchiolitis previously treated with steroids and bronchodilators, bronchitis previously treated with antibiotics, fever seizures previously treated with strong anticonvulsants, gastro-esophageal reflux in babies previously treated with very potent antacids and anti-reflux med...

Introduction

I must say, that for the first half of my pediatric career, I was oblivious to the knowledge of how frequently and seriously bullying harms children. I just wasn't aware that bullying was at the root of a lot of the illness in school age children that I was seeing...until I began to ask. When I ask a child with a recurring stomachaches or headaches if anyone is bullying them and I see that tense facial expression form or possibly a little moistening of their eyes, then I know. I have learned in recent years to routinely ask about this important issue!  It is not surprising to me that I recently saw bullying on a list of the most frequent concerns of parents. In fact it was the number one worry among parents with school-aged children. Sounds pretty important and a topic that deserves an entire pedcast so in today's installment of Portable Practical Pediatrics, I’m going to bring you up to speed on some of the newest information about the important topic of childhood bullying.  Stay informed, stay engaged, and most importantly, stay tuned to hear this important edition of Portable Practical Pediatrics.

Musical introduction

Defining bullying

Let's begin this discussion by defining what constitutes bullying behavior. Of course, there is a line between bullying, teasing, or practical jokes.   More on that in a few minutes. First let's talk hard-core bullying. Behavior that everyone agrees crosses the line into bully land.  These behaviors have to have the following features, what I will call the core features of bullying.

Core Features:

-To qualify as bullying behavior it needs to be repetitive  and delivered over an extended period of time.

-Bullying behavior intends to inflict some type of harm to a victim. 

-And finally, the target of the bullying behavior pits the stronger against the weaker.

As it turns out that bullying is very very common among children, happening to 35% of children sometime between their school age years and their high school graduation. That means that one out of three children will be bullied during their primary school years. Given that as a backdrop, it is not surprising that 75% of school shootings are linked to bullying or harassment of the shooter and 15% of absenteeism from school on any given day is thought to be due to the bullied victims avoiding school. Mix together a bullied victim with some mental illness, and you may just get a school shooter.

As for the methods that bullies use, there are four primary methods that they deliver their control over their victims:

Method 1: Physical - This consists of hitting, slapping, pushing, pinching etc.

Method 2: Verbal - Demeaning talk, manipulating relationships, threats, and verbal abuse.

Method 3: Cyberbullying- Obviously a growing category of bullying behavior and one that parents need to be particularly aware of; things like using social media, a very public forum, to send cruel or threatening messages, posting lies about the victim or even embarrassing pictures.  Repeatedly sending threatening texts to a victim would also be an example of cyber bullying.

Method 4: Ostracism- Purposefully targeting a child victim to be excluded socially from their peers by spreading lies and rumors or encouraging others to ignore the victim would fall into this category, something that children seem particularly good at.

 

What is the difference between just being mean to someone and bullying?

Is teasing bullying?  Well, it depends. Most teasing is not bullying but yes if it rises to the level to meet the three essential ingredients of bullying (repetitive, intended to harm, and delivered by a stronger child to a weaker one).

Is saying something negative about someone behind their back bulling?- Well again, it depends.

Introduction

I must say, that for the first half of my pediatric career, I was oblivious to the knowledge of how frequently and seriously bullying harms children. I just wasn't aware that bullying was at the root of a lot of the illness in school age children that I was seeing...until I began to ask. When I ask a child with a recurring stomachaches or headaches if anyone is bullying them and I see that tense facial expression form or possibly a little moistening of their eyes, then I know. I have learned in recent years to routinely ask about this important issue!  It is not surprising to me that I recently saw bullying on a list of the most frequent concerns of parents. In fact it was the number one worry among parents with school-aged children. Sounds pretty important and a topic that deserves an entire pedcast so in today's installment of Portable Practical Pediatrics, I’m going to bring you up to speed on some of the newest information about the important topic of childhood bullying.  Stay informed, stay engaged, and most importantly, stay tuned to hear this important edition of Portable Practical Pediatrics.

Musical introduction

Defining bullying

Let's begin this discussion by defining what constitutes bullying behavior. Of course, there is a line between bullying, teasing, or practical jokes.   More on that in a few minutes. First let's talk hard-core bullying. Behavior that everyone agrees crosses the line into bully land.  These behaviors have to have the following features, what I will call the core features of bullying.

Core Features:

-To qualify as bullying behavior it needs to be repetitive  and delivered over an extended period of time.

-Bullying behavior intends to inflict some type of harm to a victim. 

-And finally, the target of the bullying behavior pits the stronger against the weaker.

As it turns out that bullying is very very common among children, happening to 35% of children sometime between their school age years and their high school graduation. That means that one out of three children will be bullied during their primary school years. Given that as a backdrop, it is not surprising that 75% of school shootings are linked to bullying or harassment of the shooter and 15% of absenteeism from school on any given day is thought to be due to the bullied victims avoiding school. Mix together a bullied victim with some mental illness, and you may just get a school shooter.

As for the methods that bullies use, there are four primary methods that they deliver their control over their victims:

Method 1: Physical - This consists of hitting, slapping, pushing, pinching etc.

Method 2: Verbal - Demeaning talk, manipulating relationships, threats, and verbal abuse.

Method 3: Cyberbullying- Obviously a growing category of bullying behavior and one that parents need to be particularly aware of; things like using social media, a very public forum, to send cruel or threatening messages, posting lies about the victim or even embarrassing pictures.  Repeatedly sending threatening texts to a victim would also be an example of cyber bullying.

Method 4: Ostracism- Purposefully targeting a child victim to be excluded socially from their peers by spreading lies and rumors or encouraging others to ignore the victim would fall into this category, something that children seem particularly good at.

 

What is the difference between just being mean to someone and bullying?

Is teasing bullying?  Well, it depends. Most teasing is not bullying but yes if it rises to the level to meet the three essential ingredients of bullying (repetitive, intended to harm, and delivered by a stronger child to a weaker one).

Is saying something negative about someone behind their back bulling?- Well again, it depends.

Introduction

Welcome. Doc Smo here, your pedcast host. I had an amazingly gratifying experience recently that I want to share with you, especially if your child is struggling in school. In today's pedcast, we are going to talk about some simple parenting task that is bound to help your children. Curious about what those tasks could be?  Then stay tuned to learn more in today's installment of Portable Practical Pediatrics. 

Musical Introduction

A Routine Talk Turns Extraordinary

Recently, I was asked to speak to a group of parents of “at risk children” who had come to a family education evening to talk about how to maximize their children’s performance in school. We talked about the research that has been discussed on this blog many times. Specifically, I wanted to stress the factors that parents have control of that have been shown to improve a child's academic achievement;

-Keeping TV’s out of a child’s bedroom and limiting screen time

-Getting an adequate amount of physical activity and unstructured play

-Having a diet rich with unprocessed foods

-Getting an adequate amount of sleep.

Well, the night this event occurred was actually the second time I had spoken at this church and talked about this topic.

A Testimonial

I thought my first talk with this group of parents had gone pretty well but I had no idea of how well.  At the onset of my next visit with these parents, an amazing thing happened.  Before we got into the talk, an older gentleman raised his hand and told me he had a testimonial to share. That's what he called it, a "Testimonial". He told the audience and me that he and his wife were raising their grandson who was currently in 4th grade and not doing very well academically. He said that he and his wife had decided, after hearing my first talk, to try getting their grandson a structured regular bedtime, free of screens and junk food to see what would happen. Specifically, they wanted to get him to bed early enough for him to get up the next morning without a fight. That was their goal. To do this, they completely restructured his bedtime: they removed the TV from his room and cut off screen time after 7pm. they insisted that he was to eat all of his food at dinner and was to get nothing no more after that. Bedtime was set at 8pm and enforced. Lights out and time to sleep.

 

After doing all of this, they said the transition was nothing short of miraculous. He almost immediately stopped fighting about getting ready for school in the morning and actually woke up in the morning on his own. He also stopped fighting about going to sleep.  And the best thing is that his grades showed an immediate improvement. Whereas he had been struggling to keep up in school, now he was getting good grades! They said even his personality was more pleasant. They attributed all of this great stuff to him having a regular bedtime and adequate sleep. They had no idea that not having a structured bedtime, letting him play video games late into the evening, eating junk food at night, and falling asleep in front of screens was so detrimental to him.

 

An Amazing Statistic

Some of you may have read the book Nurture Shock. I wrote a book review about it a few years ago.  Listen to this shocking statistic that the authors of Nurture Shock discovered: a school aged child who has a one hour sleep deprivation on a chronic basis will, on average, perform 2 years younger than their chronologic age cognitively. That means that a 6th grader will perform like a 4th grader academically if they get 1 hour less sleep at night on a chronic basis.  Clearly, sleep deprivation is having a major impact on a young child's brain. Case closed and the young man in this story was probably a good example of sleep deprivation that was cognitively impairing. Whatever it was,

Introduction

Welcome. Doc Smo here, your pedcast host. I had an amazingly gratifying experience recently that I want to share with you, especially if your child is struggling in school. In today's pedcast, we are going to talk about some simple parenting task that is bound to help your children. Curious about what those tasks could be?  Then stay tuned to learn more in today's installment of Portable Practical Pediatrics. 

Musical Introduction

A Routine Talk Turns Extraordinary

Recently, I was asked to speak to a group of parents of “at risk children” who had come to a family education evening to talk about how to maximize their children’s performance in school. We talked about the research that has been discussed on this blog many times. Specifically, I wanted to stress the factors that parents have control of that have been shown to improve a child's academic achievement;

-Keeping TV’s out of a child’s bedroom and limiting screen time

-Getting an adequate amount of physical activity and unstructured play

-Having a diet rich with unprocessed foods

-Getting an adequate amount of sleep.

Well, the night this event occurred was actually the second time I had spoken at this church and talked about this topic.

A Testimonial

I thought my first talk with this group of parents had gone pretty well but I had no idea of how well.  At the onset of my next visit with these parents, an amazing thing happened.  Before we got into the talk, an older gentleman raised his hand and told me he had a testimonial to share. That's what he called it, a "Testimonial". He told the audience and me that he and his wife were raising their grandson who was currently in 4th grade and not doing very well academically. He said that he and his wife had decided, after hearing my first talk, to try getting their grandson a structured regular bedtime, free of screens and junk food to see what would happen. Specifically, they wanted to get him to bed early enough for him to get up the next morning without a fight. That was their goal. To do this, they completely restructured his bedtime: they removed the TV from his room and cut off screen time after 7pm. they insisted that he was to eat all of his food at dinner and was to get nothing no more after that. Bedtime was set at 8pm and enforced. Lights out and time to sleep.

 

After doing all of this, they said the transition was nothing short of miraculous. He almost immediately stopped fighting about getting ready for school in the morning and actually woke up in the morning on his own. He also stopped fighting about going to sleep.  And the best thing is that his grades showed an immediate improvement. Whereas he had been struggling to keep up in school, now he was getting good grades! They said even his personality was more pleasant. They attributed all of this great stuff to him having a regular bedtime and adequate sleep. They had no idea that not having a structured bedtime, letting him play video games late into the evening, eating junk food at night, and falling asleep in front of screens was so detrimental to him.

 

An Amazing Statistic

Some of you may have read the book Nurture Shock. I wrote a book review about it a few years ago.  Listen to this shocking statistic that the authors of Nurture Shock discovered: a school aged child who has a one hour sleep deprivation on a chronic basis will, on average, perform 2 years younger than their chronologic age cognitively. That means that a 6th grader will perform like a 4th grader academically if they get 1 hour less sleep at night on a chronic basis.  Clearly, sleep deprivation is having a major impact on a young child's brain. Case closed and the young man in this story was probably a good example of sleep deprivation that was cognitively impairing. Whatever it was,

Introduction

Welcome, I am Dr. Paul Smolen, also known as Doc Smo and this is Portable Practical Pediatrics. Every once in a while I like to give my listeners a glimpse of what is new in pediatric research that can translate into practical knowledge.  I'm not talking about new high tech treatments for exotic diseases but rather new information that most parents can use in their everyday parenting. So here goes with a conversation about four, high quality, peer reviewed articles that I think you will find interesting. Stay engaged, stay informed, and of course, stay tuned.  Today's pedcast is brought to you by audible, the new way to digest books. For me, Audible has become my preferred method of exploring books, whether I am cutting the grass or driving in the car. Expand your world today by subscribing to audible. Just hit the link that accompanies this podcast to get started.

Musical Introduction

Article #1- Every year, most parents are put in the position of deciding if their children should get a flu shot or not. Is that flu shot important for your kids?  Is it worth all the effort, hassle, and expense to arrange for them to get vaccinated? It's only the flu, right? Besides, many parents claim that flu shots can give the flu to their children (not) and worst of all, my little junior hates shots. Why do I have to deal with this every year you may be asking? Which brings us to a recent excellent article by Dr. Mei Shang et al at the CDC.  Dr. Shang analyzed all the known pediatric deaths from influenza in the U.S. between the years 2010 until 2016. He discovered that 70% of those children who died from flu had not been vaccinated and that 1/2 of the those deaths occurred in children who were perfectly healthy prior to the having the influenza infection with no sign of asthma, diabetes, neurologic disorders, immune deficiencies or any other underlying complicating factors. This is new information since previously; we thought that most pediatric deaths from the flu were in children with pre-existing medical conditions. No, fully 1/2 of the deaths occurred in previously healthy children, most of whom were not immunized. What a shame. You can't do much to prevent your children from heaven forbid coming down with leukemia but according to Dr. Shang, you can likely prevent them from having a severe life threatening case of influenza. Dr. Shang's study also revealed that the most vulnerable children were those infants less than six months of age, too young to be vaccinated. Protecting them depends on vaccinating those around them and especially mom during pregnancy. Again, according to Dr. Shang, we are not doing too well at getting pregnant moms vaccinated, with only a 50% success rate in his sample.  I want you to factor all this into your decision whether or not to get your children vaccinated this fall.

Take home message:  Is the flu vaccine perfect-no/ is the flu shot some seasons not very protective-yes/ but in most seasons, it is about 70% protective. If I knew that 7 out of 10 times I visited Las Vegas I would win money, I would go regularly. I'd be in. In the same way, you should plan on a seasonal flu shot for all your children since there is a very good chance, it will protect them from a severe influenza infection.

 

Article #2- There has been a lot of talk about the safety of cough and cold medicines in children. We have talked about it quite a few times in the past on Portable Practical Pediatrics.  Yes, there have been deaths from children taking these medications and the CDC is strongly opposed to their use in children but how dangerous are they really?  To answer that question, Dr. Green from The Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center, looked at 4202 "events", where a child or their family sought treatment and evaluation for a specific symptom or symptoms that was related to taking cough and cold medicines.

Introduction

Welcome, I am Dr. Paul Smolen, also known as Doc Smo and this is Portable Practical Pediatrics. Every once in a while I like to give my listeners a glimpse of what is new in pediatric research that can translate into practical knowledge.  I'm not talking about new high tech treatments for exotic diseases but rather new information that most parents can use in their everyday parenting. So here goes with a conversation about four, high quality, peer reviewed articles that I think you will find interesting. Stay engaged, stay informed, and of course, stay tuned.  Today's pedcast is brought to you by audible, the new way to digest books. For me, Audible has become my preferred method of exploring books, whether I am cutting the grass or driving in the car. Expand your world today by subscribing to audible. Just hit the link that accompanies this podcast to get started.

Musical Introduction

Article #1- Every year, most parents are put in the position of deciding if their children should get a flu shot or not. Is that flu shot important for your kids?  Is it worth all the effort, hassle, and expense to arrange for them to get vaccinated? It's only the flu, right? Besides, many parents claim that flu shots can give the flu to their children (not) and worst of all, my little junior hates shots. Why do I have to deal with this every year you may be asking? Which brings us to a recent excellent article by Dr. Mei Shang et al at the CDC.  Dr. Shang analyzed all the known pediatric deaths from influenza in the U.S. between the years 2010 until 2016. He discovered that 70% of those children who died from flu had not been vaccinated and that 1/2 of the those deaths occurred in children who were perfectly healthy prior to the having the influenza infection with no sign of asthma, diabetes, neurologic disorders, immune deficiencies or any other underlying complicating factors. This is new information since previously; we thought that most pediatric deaths from the flu were in children with pre-existing medical conditions. No, fully 1/2 of the deaths occurred in previously healthy children, most of whom were not immunized. What a shame. You can't do much to prevent your children from heaven forbid coming down with leukemia but according to Dr. Shang, you can likely prevent them from having a severe life threatening case of influenza. Dr. Shang's study also revealed that the most vulnerable children were those infants less than six months of age, too young to be vaccinated. Protecting them depends on vaccinating those around them and especially mom during pregnancy. Again, according to Dr. Shang, we are not doing too well at getting pregnant moms vaccinated, with only a 50% success rate in his sample.  I want you to factor all this into your decision whether or not to get your children vaccinated this fall.

Take home message:  Is the flu vaccine perfect-no/ is the flu shot some seasons not very protective-yes/ but in most seasons, it is about 70% protective. If I knew that 7 out of 10 times I visited Las Vegas I would win money, I would go regularly. I'd be in. In the same way, you should plan on a seasonal flu shot for all your children since there is a very good chance, it will protect them from a severe influenza infection.

 

Article #2- There has been a lot of talk about the safety of cough and cold medicines in children. We have talked about it quite a few times in the past on Portable Practical Pediatrics.  Yes, there have been deaths from children taking these medications and the CDC is strongly opposed to their use in children but how dangerous are they really?  To answer that question, Dr. Green from The Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center, looked at 4202 "events", where a child or their family sought treatment and evaluation for a specific symptom or symptoms that was related to taking cough and cold medicines.

Introduction

Sometimes reality is so counter-intuitive, isn't it? If you had told me 20 years ago that some of the keys to raising healthy children would be whether a the child's family owned a dishwasher, whether they had a lot of people living in their home, whether there were pets living inside the house, or whether the children visited or lived near a farm, I would have thought you were a little crazy. It turns out that these factors, along with others, are super important to your children's ultimate good health. Interested in learning more? Then stay tuned for this fascinating edition of Portable Practical Pediatrics. But before we get started, I want to take a moment to thank today's sponsor, The TheChildrensTable.com, a food blog specifically designed for parents who have the important responsibility of feeding the little people in their lives. Take your food knowledge to the next level by following TheChildrensTable.com today.  I love it. I know you will too. Now onto today's post.

Musical introduction

Evidence for the Hygiene Hypothesis

Every once in a while, someone just nails a new idea that explains a lot of things that many other smart people just couldn't see or figure out. One of those people is David Strachan who first noticed the relationship between the lack of germ exposure in early childhood and a child's ultimate chance of developing allergic diseases like asthma, eczema, food allergy, and hay fever. Since he first proposed this idea in 1989, numerous epidemiological studies have confirmed his observations.  Here is some of the evidence that has led to the conclusion that he was right and that babies need a broad exposure to lots of microbes, early in life, maybe even before birth, to avoid suffering from allergic diseases:

Observation 1:  The more a young child is exposed to dust containing a diversity of fungus and bacteria in infancy, the smaller the chance they have of developing asthma

Observation 2: Children growing up on farms or with indoor pets, who presumably are exposed to more animal waste and danders, have a lower incidence of asthma and allergies than populations of children growing up in cleaner urban environments.

Observation 3: Children who are born by C-section and who are not exposed to as many microbes as children who come through the birth canal, are more likely to have allergic diseases. Many experts think this is due to the infant not getting inoculated with their mother’s microbes right from the moment of birth.

Observation 4: Children who eat off of dishes that are cleaned in a high temperature dishwasher regularly are more likely to have allergic diseases. Again, sterilizing dishes reduces the kinds and amount of microbes that a child is eating and therefore changing the kind of bacteria and fungi that the child will carry in their gut.

Observation 5: Children who get multiple courses of antibiotics or take a lot of antacids in the first six months of infancy, have a greater risk of becoming allergic, presumably because the diversity of germs is lessened by exposure to the antibiotic and antacids.

I think you will agree, that this is all compelling evidence that the germs that a child does or doesn't carry, has a strong impact on how their immune system reacts to the world, especially when that exposure occurs early in life. To me that only makes sense. For thousands of years children have adapted to their environment by learning to ignore countless things that are foreign to them; things that they eat, breathe, and touch.  Only in the past 100 years or so, has the diversity of that environment been drastically changed. It seems like for children's immune system to learn to become "tolerant" and non-reactive to a wide variety of plant pollens, foods, and molds. To do this a child needs to have exposure to them frequently, early,