May 19, 2017
Medical X-Press – Staff Writer
“New research presented at this year’s European Congress on Obesity suggests that being overweight, especially from a young age, may substantially increase the lifetime risk of major depression. The study by Deborah Gibson-Smith from VU University Medical Center in the Netherlands and colleagues found that being overweight at age 8 or 13 was associated with more than triple the risk of developing major depression at some point in their lives, whilst carrying excess weight over a lifetime (both as a child and as an adult) quadrupled the chance of developing depression compared to only being overweight as an adult.”(more)
May 18, 2017
The Irish Times – Emilie Goldstein Mikulla
“There is nothing quite like the moment a baby cuts his first tooth. That little gummy smile punctuated by his first pearly whites just couldn’t get any cuter. But despite their teeth being a gleaming shade of white upon first sight, an alarming number of young children and babies are developing cavities and decay at a very early age. According to a report from the Royal College of Surgeons in the UK, extractions among children under the age of five have risen by almost 2,000 a year in the past decade. Experts say a combination of poor diet and too much sugar is to blame.”(more)
May 18, 2017
The National – Emilie Goldstein Mikulla
“Obesity rates have doubled since 1980. More than 600 million people are classified as obese, and 41 million of them are children under the age of 5, according to the World Health Organization. In the UAE, almost 40 per cent of children are obese, prompting some experts to warn of an epidemic. This rise in childhood obesity – and the related diseases it causes that can affect people throughout their lives, including diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular conditions – are the result of an increasingly sedentary lifestyle and poor eating habits, in particular too much sugar.”(more)
May 17, 2017
The L.A. Daily News – LeeAnn Weintraub
“Emotional eating — the habit of eating to cope with stress, boredom or negative feelings rather than to satisfy true hunger — is a behavior that can often lead to overeating and weight gain. The feeding styles of parents and other caregivers play a significant role in the relationship young children develop with eating. Emotional feeding or the giving of food or beverages to children to help soothe or calm them down can encourage emotional eating in children. A recent study published in the journal Child Development found that children fed food for comfort at ages 4 and 6 were more likely to show signs of emotional eating at ages 8 and 10. This suggests that emotional eating is a learned behavior and not necessarily due to the common perception that emotional eating is caused by a lack of self-discipline.”(more)
May 17, 2017
The Seattle Times – The Seattle Times Editorial Board
“NEW research on how young athletes should be treated for concussions on and off the field is welcome news for both parents and coaches. But a Seattle doctor who was on the international research panel that created the 2017 Consensus Statement on Concussion in Sports hopes parents won’t use this information as a reason why their children shouldn’t be playing sports. Dr. Stanley Herring, director of the University of Washington Sports Health and Safety Institute, says exercise is essential to a child’s longterm health. The concussion protocols published last month in the British Journal of Sports Medicine are designed to keep athletes as safe as possible and all youth sports programs should adopt them. But parents also need to keep their kids active.”(more)
