Posts Tagged ‘Nutrition’

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Healthy Eating May Help ADHD Kids: Don’t Tell the Doctors

January 10, 2012

I find the ADHD trends highly frustrating. I am not a doctor or medical professional of any kind so it’s not for me to speculate whether or not ADHD exists. What bothers me, is the rapid increases in children being diagnosed (and more importantly, medicated) with the syndrome. To me Ritalin and other types of ADHD medication must be the last resort. It’s side-effects are often quite pronounced and sometimes quite sad to experience. Kids with larger than life personalities and great bursts of creativity can often be left following their own shadows (I have personally witnessed this!)

When I first entered into the profession I was given medical forms to fill out about a particular student. A previous teacher must have recommended that this student be assessed due to the belief that she may have some ADHD symptoms. In my view she was just a child with poor self-esteem who lacked concentration. In my assessment of her I made it clear that I felt that beyond her concentration being poor there was no other reason to suspect that she may have ADHD.

It didn’t help. Unfortunately, within weeks of being presented with this patient, the doctor prescribed her with Ritalin. No suggestions of a change of diet, no therapy to examine if there is any cause for her low self-esteem and no evidence that she was sent to have her language skills tested. Just the “go to” method, the “one pill fits all” strategy – the blasted pill!

I am proud to say that this child is now off the medication. Her parents decided it was not something they wanted her to be on permanently so they eased her off it. Doctors would be shaking their heads right now and accusing the parents of being irresponsible. But the parents were right. She is now a happy, focussed, non-medicated young teenager.

Doctors can be far too quick to diagnose and prescribe. In my view, they do this out of self-interest. If they were more considerate they would seriously look at diet before prescribing Ritalin.

SIMPLY eating healthier may improve the behaviour of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) if therapy and medication fail, says a study published in the journal Pediatrics.

Nutritional interventions should therefore be considered an alternative or secondary approach to treating ADHD, not a first-line attack, said the review by doctors at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, published on Monday.

What they mean by that is first pop the pills and then consider your sugar intake. This is ridiculous. What is the big deal about investigating diet and other possible causes before, as a last resort, prescribing the medication?

Click on the link to read Who Needs Quality Teaching or Parenting When You Have Medications?

Click on the link to read Get Your Kids on Ritalin Before Their Grades Suffer

Click on the link to read It is Doctors Not Teachers Who Are Helping Children Get Good Grades

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Posted in Children and Medication | 9 Comments »

Does Obesity Equate to Child Abuse?

July 17, 2011

Last week Harvard obesity specialist David Ludwig advocated putting children in temporary foster care when the child is found to be obese.   The obvious conclusion being, that in his opinion, allowing your child to get to the stage of obesity equates to a form of child abuse.

I don’t agree with this statement or the measures advocated by Mr. Ludwig.  And more importantly I think the debate will distract rather than positively influence what is a very important issue.  I appreciate the words of Dr. Arthur Caplan, the director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania who wrote:

“I am not letting parents off the hook,” he wrote in response to the article, “but putting the blame for childhood obesity on the home and then arguing that moving kids out of homes where obesity reigns is the answer is short-sighted and doomed to fail. We need the nation to go on a diet together and the most important places to start are the grocery store, schools and media.”

My only query on the above quote is why he omitted “home”.  Surely “home” is the most important place to start a change of habits.  Not just in what is eaten, but how food is eaten.  It is sad to hear of the demise of family dinners.  Surely the television and computers can be switched off for half-an-hour every evening.

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Posted in Nutrition, Parenting | 3 Comments »

Kids and Obesity: We Have Reached Crisis Point

July 4, 2011

The figures being released about the rate of childhood obesity is quite alarming.  To read that half a million British children have liver disease makes me worry very much about what a difficult state we are in and how far we have to go to reverse this unfortunate trend.

Doctors say obesity levels are now so high that children are commonly suffering signs of disease more commonly associated with alcohol abuse, meaning many will go on to develop cirrhosis, with some requiring liver transplants.

Government estimates say around 500,000 children below the age of 15 are suffering from “non alcoholic liver disease” which is caused by a build-up of fat within liver cells, which stops the organ functioning properly.

The condition increases the risks of heart disease, strokes and type 2 diabetes, and can lead to cirrhosis – scarring of the liver – which is often not detected until it is too late.

Britain’s most senior liver expert said the country was now facing a timebomb, with thousands of lives already at risk, and the numbers of children suffering from the disease projected to “rocket” further in line with rising obesity levels.

Prof Martin Lombard, the Department of Health’s national clinical director for liver disease warned that the disease was rarely detected until it had caused damage.

He said: “Liver disease is a silent killer, which is putting the lives of thousands of our children at risk. We do not want to see the next generation dying young from a condition that can be prevented.

“We know that with childhood obesity on the rise we can expect more children to be at risk of fatty liver disease in the near future.”

Government figures show 30 per cent of children aged between 2 and 15 are now overweight or obese – a figure which is projected to double by 2050.

Prof Lombard said he was concerned that children suffering from fatty liver disease were at particular risk if they started experimenting with alcohol in teenage years. He said even modest amounts of alcohol could worsen the condition.

There is no medical treatment for the disease, but the extent of it can be reduced by weightloss and improvements in diet.

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Posted in Childhood Obesity, Nutrition | Leave a Comment »

Introducing the Candy Diet!

June 30, 2011

Feeling guilty about the amount of candy you allow your children to eat?  Not anymore.  If anything, you aren’t feeding them enough!

Or, at least that’s what the research seems to suggest ….

Indulging a sweet tooth might not be anyone’s idea of a good weight-loss strategy. But in jaw-dropping new research, scientists say they’ve found something even more likely to be associated with unwanted weight gain in children and adolescents than eating candy:

Not eating candy.

For the study, published in Food & Nutrition Research, researchers at Louisiana State University tracked the health of more than 11,000 youngsters between the ages of two and 18 from 1999 to 2004. They found that children who ate sweets were 22 percent less likely to be overweight or obese than kids who shunned sweets. Adolescents? Those who ate candy were 26 percent less likely to be overweight or obese than their non-candy-eating counterparts.

And that wasn’t the only surprising finding. Researchers also found that the blood of candy-eating kids had lower levels of C-reactive protein. That’s a marker of inflammation in the body and a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and other chronic illnesses.

Who funds this research?  Could somebody please do a study that links the watching of televised sport to greater physical health?  I could do with some scientific evidence to persuade my wife that I’m not wasting my time

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Posted in Childhood Obesity, Nutrition | 3 Comments »

Breakfast Club a Huge Hit!

June 7, 2011

Breakfast is such a crucial meal.  I am a big supporter of the Breakfast Club program, and am delighted to here it is working well.

YEARS of public campaigns to persuade children to eat breakfast are paying off, with the number of children consuming a morning meal rising in the past decade. A national study by the University of Sydney has found primary and secondary school students are more likely to eat breakfast. Thousands of schoolchildren from years 2 to 12 were surveyed in 2000 and 2006. A follow-up study is planned for next year.

Researchers found high school students in particular were now more likely to eat breakfast.

University of Sydney nutritionist Jennifer O’Dea credited public campaigns and school ”breakfast clubs” for the improvement.

”It’s such a simple thing but it feeds the child’s brain, it improves their behaviour and reduces their risk of overweight and obesity,” she said.

The number of high school boys missing breakfast fell from 19.9 per cent to 12.1 per cent and the number of high school girls fell from 27.7 per cent to 18.7 per cent.

In primary school, the number of boys who did not eat breakfast fell from 9.4 per cent to 6 per cent, while the number of girls fell from 9.6 per cent to 6 per cent.

Dr O’Dea expects to see greater improvements when surveys are conducted again next year.

The nutritional quality of breakfast affects a child’s concentration and learning ability, Dr O’Dea found in separate research in 2008.

Congratulations to all schools that have invested their time and energy into Breakfast Club.  May it continue to assist students in desperate need of a nutritious meal.

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Posted in Child Welfare, Nutrition | Leave a Comment »

Our Kids Must Be More Active

May 4, 2011

I am not that old, yet I know that my experiences growing up in many ways are worlds apart from the current experiences of our youth.  When I was growing up we used to regularly ride our bike, play sporting games outside and sign up for after-school swimming or gymnastics classes.

I’m afraid those days are long gone:

One in six children cannot swim,  a survey has revealed.

It also found one in ten had not learnt to ride a bicycle and  almost a quarter had never run 400 metres.

The study found British children were more than twice as likely to spend their free time watching television (79 per cent) than playing sport (34 per cent).

Children were also more likely to surf the internet (56 per cent), chat on social-networking websites (45 per cent) and play video games (43 per cent) than take part in sports.

The study of 1,500 children aged six to 15 reveals a generation turning its back on sport.

‘This is another sad reflection on children today,’ said Tam Fry of the Child Growth Foundation.

A study found British children were more than twice as likely to spend their free time watching television

‘We have a generation of children being fed the wrong food, which makes them fat, and fewer and fewer get the exercise they need to burn it off. It becomes a vicious cycle.

‘We need to teach children from a young age that they have to exercise and take part in sport to stay a healthy weight.’

He added that there are often not enough places for children to play and ride their bikes because there are so many cars on the road.

The survey, which reveals a generation turning their backs on sport, was described as ‘staggering’ by the head of the British Triathlon.

Even for those who could swim and ride bikes, just a third (34 per cent) had swum the length of a pool and half (46 per cent) had ridden their bikes in the past week.

In contrast, nearly three quarters (73 per cent) had found the time to play a video game in the past week.

A further 15 per cent of the children polled said they had never played sport with their parents.

The study was commissioned as part of a series of mini-triathlon events being held this summer by Tata Steel in areas including steel regions such as Scunthorpe, Corby, Teesside, Rotherham, Swansea and Shotton in North Wales.

A third of those questioned (33 per cent) said they did not own a bike, compared with three quarters (77 per cent) who owned a games console.

Remember when the fad at school would fluctuate between down ball, 4 square, hop scotch, hula hooping and elastics?  Most girls growing up now would never have associated elastic with a game.  I find this so sad.  The future ramifications of bringing up a generation of couch potatoes is quite frightening.

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Posted in Child Development, Childhood Obesity, Nutrition | 2 Comments »

Poor Children Coming to School Tired and Hungry

April 15, 2011

This is a universal problem that requires a lot more attention.  Teachers are not given enough credit for their role in supporting kids that come to school with inadequate food or no lunch at all.  It is not widely known that teachers often spend out of their own pocket to ensure that their poorer students have what to eat.  But the problem still exists, and it must be addressed.

A concerted campaign from schools by working with charity groups to ensure that meals are provided for students of poor families should ensure that heartbreaking articles like this one will be a thing of the past:

Teachers are reporting a rise in pupils entering the classroom feeling tired, hungry and dressed in worn-out clothes.

A study by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers found almost eight-in-10 staff had pupils living below the poverty line and a quarter believed numbers had increased since the start of the recession.

One teacher from Nottingham told of a sixth-former who had not eaten for three days as her “mother had no money at all until pay day”.

A teaching assistant from a West Midlands comprehensive told researchers that some pupils had “infected toes due to feet squashed into shoes way too small”, while another member from Halifax reported a boy who was ridiculed in the PE changing room because his family could not afford to buy him any underpants.

Some teachers told how pupils were consistently late for lessons as parents could not cover the bus fare to school. Other children from middle to lower income families have been forced to cut out school tips because money is so tight, it was claimed.

The disclosure follows the publication of figures showing a rise in the number of pupils eligible for free school meals as families struggle to stay above the breadline in the recession.

Almost 1.2 million five- to 16-year-olds claimed free lunches last year – a rise of more than 83,000 in just 12 months.

Mary Bousted, ATL general secretary, claimed that problems would escalate further because of Government funding cuts – putting the Coalition’s social mobility drive in jeopardy.

“It is appalling that in 2011 so many children in the UK are severely disadvantaged by their circumstances and fail to achieve their potential,” she said.

“What message does this government think it is sending young people when it is cutting funding for Sure Start centres, cutting the Education Maintenance Allowance, raising tuition fees and making it harder for local authorities to provide health and social services.

“The Government should forget empty rhetoric about social mobility and concentrate on tackling the causes of deprivation and barriers to attainment that lock so many young people into a cycle of poverty.”

It is time that we made the most crucial issues in education our first priority and main focus.  As important as debate over class size, ICT, male teacher numbers are for improved educational outcomes, such discussion often takes over.  We need to get back to basics.  The basic requirement for a school is to look after the welfare of its students.  That makes health and bullying among the most important priorities in my book.Here’s an opportunity for schools and charity groups to work together to tackle a problem that shouldn’t even exist in the forst place.

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Posted in Child Welfare, Nutrition | 2 Comments »

My Take on the “Lunchbox Wars”

December 22, 2010

It is my opinion that schools not only have a right but a duty to look after the welfare of their students.  Schools are well within their rights to impose sanctions on what foods are allowed and not allowed to be included in the children’s lunch boxes.  Yes, there are those who believe that being in a free country should give parents the freedom to do as they please.  I agree with that theory in part.  I think parents should be able to feed their kids whatever they want – in their own home.  At school, there is nothing wrong with imposing restrictions on sugary foods.  On the contrary, it’s commendable.

I am writing this in defense of Clifton Park Primary School, who are embroiled in a “Lunchbox War” with some parents over such a ruling:

A LOCAL school’s decision to monitor the contents of their students’ lunchboxes has sparked heated debate within the Bunbury community.

In last week’s edition of the Bunbury Mail, the mother of a Clifton Park Primary School student was outraged to learn her five-year-old son’s lunchbox snacks were being confiscated due to their sugar content.

The Bunbury Mail office was flooded with letters and Facebook posts from residents voicing their opinion.

Joy Whysall’s letter said it was an example of the world gone crazy.

“What gives others the right to choose what we eat?” she said.

“This is a disgraceful state of affairs when a teacher can go into a child’s lunchbox and take out what they feel is unsuitable for the child.”

I am sorry to disappoint the irate parents of Bunbury, but when they send their kids to a school, they are getting a lot more than a child minding service.  We teachers not only educate your kids, but we care for them and about them.  We educators strive to give your kids a safe, positive learning environment in which they can thrive.  Instead of seeing this as a violation of privacy, see this as a show of care and dedication.

I hope this exhibition of anger does not intimidate other schools from following Clifton Park’s fine example.

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Posted in Nutrition, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Breast-Feeding Benefits Academic Achievement

December 21, 2010

Findings from a recent study in the journal ‘Pediatrics’, show that breast-feeding infants for at least six months appears to give kids’ an advantage in school.

This is not a new finding in itself.  However, what was of particular interest, was that boys appeared to benefit the most.

The researchers, from the University of Western Australia in Perth, have followed 2,868 children since the early ’90s. The study showed that, at age 10, boys who were breast-fed for six months or longer scored higher in math, reading and spelling compared with boys who were breast-fed for less than six months. Girls who were breast-fed for at least six months showed a small improvement in reading. The researchers controlled for other factors that could influence school performance, such as family income and education and how often the child was read to.

There were two reasons given for the link between breast-fed babies and academic performance:

1.  Breast milk is rich in long-chain, polyunsaturated fatty acids that are critical to brain development. It’s not clear why boys showed the largest gains from being breast-fed, but the authors explain that male babies are known to be more vulnerable in infancy than females. They speculate that breast-feeding “accelerates the rate of maturation in boys.
2.  Boys may also benefit more from the mother-child relationship facilitated by breast-feeding. “A number of studies have revealed that male infants are more reliant than female infants on maternal attention and encouragement for the acquisition of cognitive and language skills,” the authors wrote.

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Posted in Child Development, Teaching boys | Leave a Comment »

A Quarter of 4-5 year-olds Obese!

December 19, 2010

Some very disturbing figures released recently in the UK show that 23.5% of four to five-year-olds are overweight or obese.

Unfortunately it only gets worse in the following years:

One in three (33.4 per cent) of children in their final year of primary school (aged 10 to 11).

In the 2009/10 reception year, 13.3 per cent of children were classed as overweight and 9.8 per cent as obese.

But in Year Six, the final year of primary school, 14.6 per cent were overweight and almost a fifth – 18.7 per cent – obese.

Slightly more boys than girls were either overweight or obese in both age groups.

It is easy to dismiss these figures as an outcome of poor parenting, but schools have the opportunity to become far more proactive.  Schools can intervene by educating both child and parent and offer healthy choices in cafeterias.

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Posted in Childhood Obesity | Leave a Comment »

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