Cell phones dangerous for child pedestrians

Children who talk on cell phones while crossing streets are at a higher risk for injuries or death in a pedestrian accident, said psychologists at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

“Cell phones clearly offer convenience and safeguards to families, but they also may pose risk,” they said, “particularly when children attempt to multitask while conversing on the cell phone and have reduced cognitive capacity to devote to potentially dangerous activities such as crossing streets.”…..Read on

Eating fast food cancels out benefits of breastfeeding in preventing asthma

Many studies have shown that breastfeeding appears to reduce the chance of children developing asthma.

But a newly published study led by a University of Alberta professor has found that eating fast food more than once or twice a week negated the beneficial effects that breastfeeding has in protecting children from the respiratory disease……….Read on

Statins’ Adverse Effects Documented

A paper co-authored by Beatrice Golomb, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine

and director of UC San Diego’s Statin Study group cites nearly 900 studies on the adverse effects of HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors (statins), a class of drugs widely used to treat high cholesterol. Read on

Fire Retardant Chemical Found in Children at Three Times the Level of Their Parents

Children’s bodies carry three times the levels of toxic fire retardant chemicals as their parents, according to a study conducted by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group Researchers tested the blood of 20 mothers and their children between the ages of 18 months and four years for levels of the flame retardant chemicals known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). In 19 of the families tested, children had PBDE levels roughly three times higher than their mothers; in the 20th, a child had blood levels six times higher than her mother’s.
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Discovery Of Brain’s Memory ‘Buffer’ In Single Cells

Individual nerve cells in the front part of the brain can hold traces of memories on their own for as long as a minute and possibly longer,researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found

The study, available online and appearing in the February issue of Nature Neuroscience, is the first to identify the specific signal that establishes nonpermanent cellular memory and reveals how the brain holds temporary information. It has implications for addiction, attention disorders and stress-related memory loss, said Dr. Don Cooper, assistant professor of psychiatry at UT Southwestern and senior author of the study conducted in mice. ..Read on

FDA Warns Consumers Against Dietary Supplement Containing Undeclared Drug

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers not to take Venom HYPERDRIVE 3.0,

a product sold as a dietary supplement and containing sibutramine. Sibutramine, a controlled substance with risks for abuse or addiction, is a potent drug that poses potential safety risks.”Sibutramine is the active ingredient in an FDA-approved prescription drug used as an appetite suppressant for weight loss,” said Janet Woodcock, M.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “But when present in a dietary supplement, it may harm unsuspecting consumers because sibutramine can substantially increase blood pressure and heart rate (pulse), and may present a significant risk for people with a history of heart disease, heart failure, irregular heart beats or stroke.” ………Read on

Musical babies – just days after they’re born

Scientists have discovered that newborn babies are able to pick up a beat days after birth

The Hungarian scientists say they have found that babies who are a mere 2 or 3 days old show the neural signs of detecting a rhythmic beat – this is thought to be critical for learning music.A new study from a team at Budapest’s Academy of Sciences say the brains of newborn babies recognize when a rhythmic drum sequence lacks its initial beat, or downbeat – the downbeat corresponds to the downstroke of a conductor’s baton at the beginning of a musical measure.  Read on

Children Being Drugged with Hallucinogenic ADHD Drugs by Psychiatrists

New research published in the journal Pediatrics reveals that the ADHD drugs prescribed to millions of children are causing them to experience frightening hallucinations.

Children on these drugs hallucinated that snakes and bugs were crawling all over them, says Reuters, and some kids taking the drugs experience other bizarre psychotic side effects such as thinking they ran into a wall and falling to the ground even when no wall was present…..Read on

Contraceptives Safe, But Questions Remain

Oral contraceptives are used by 80 percent of women at some point in their lives. The pills are generally safe, but experts warn some risks and benefits have yet to be examined.

A recent journal article by experts at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute provides insight into hormonal contraceptives. “As women use these therapies more frequently and for longer periods of time, there is an urgent need to better understand and minimize associated cardiovascular risks,” C. Noel Bairey Merz, M.D., senior author and director of the Women’s Heart Center and the Preventive and Rehabilitative Cardiac Center at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, was quoted as saying……Read on

Caution – Lose more than weight with imported diet pills

Americans who use illegal diet pills from South America are taking amphetamines without knowing it and seriously risking both their health and their jobs. Physicians need to be made aware of the range of serious side effects of these drugs to allow them to identify and treat those patients presenting with unexplained symptoms. These findings1, by Dr Pieter Cohen from the Department of Internal Medicine at the Cambridge Health Alliance in the US and Harvard Medical School, have recently been published online in Springer’s Journal of General Internal Medicine…..Read on