Archive for the ‘Children’ Category

The Impact of a Name

August 5th, 2010

Baby Names, Children, Unusual Names

Apparently, Shakespeare got it wrong in Romeo and Juliet when he had Juliet utter those famous lines: "What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." It seems that if you give a rose the wrong name, it just might turn out to be a real stinker. According to an article in LiveScience, there’s plenty of research to show that the name you choose for your little bundle of joy can have a profound impact on the course of his or her life. And the ramifications of having chosen the wrong name may affect your life, as well.

The article reports on a study released in May, 2010, by Bounty.com. The study surveyed 3000 UK parents and found that one out of five parents regretted the names they gave their children, especially if those names had odd or unusual spellings. Many parents who did NOT regret the names they gave their kids still felt wistful about other options, confessing that after they had named their children, they became aware of plenty of better names that they wish they had chosen.

Names have an undeniable impact on kids, the study found. The researchers looked at boys who had "girly" names like Ashley or Shannon, and found that those kids misbehaved far more than their pals who had more traditionally "masculine" names.  According to Dr. David Figlio of Northwestern University in Illinois, the girly-named boys didn’t necessarily manifest behavior problems throughout elementary school, but once the teens years approached, trouble began. "Once these kids hit sixth grade, all of a sudden the rates of disciplinary problems skyrocketed," Dr. Figlio reported, "and it was much more the case if there happened to be a girl in the grade with that same name."

Figlio also did a study in 2005 on the impact of girls’ names on the "fairer sex." Through a statistical process, he assigned various names linguistic femininity scores. According to his calculations, Anna, Emma, and Elizabeth ranked high on the femininity scale, while names like Alexis, Ashley and Lauren have rather masculine associations. In following 1000 pairs of sisters in the US, he showed that after the age or 16, the girls with the more "feminine" names steered away from traditionally "masculine" subjects like physics and math. Conversely, girls with more masculine names were twice as likely to pursue these subjects. 

If that’s not enough to warn you off naming your sons Shelley and your daughters Michael, Figlio also showed that names perceived as "lower status" resulted in the children scoring three to five percent lower on exams than their brothers and sisters with more traditional names. According to his research, names considered lower status have unusual spellings or pronunciations. Figlio theorized that the oddly named kids didn’t do as well as other children because their names encouraged teachers to have lower expectations of them. One teacher cited in his study, the oddly-named Edyta Ballantyne, said, "I think most people get an image in their head when they hear a name. If you treat a child differently because of their name, then they will behave differently."

A study by UCLA psychology professor Albert Mehrabian provides corroboration. He conducted large surveys of how people react to names and produced a Baby Name Report Card. His study systematically demonstrated that people with unusual names were far more likely to be perceived negatively. In his survey, names like Robert, Rachel, and Christopher received very high scores on a 100-point scale. Christopher scored a perfect 100.  On the other hand, odd names did very poorly. "Breeze" scored only 16 out of 100. "Suzee" ranked near the bottom, as did "Mush" and "Weeza." Merabian also ranked names on parameters other than masculinity and femininity, including success, fun, ethics, caring, and overall attractiveness. Some names, like Madeline and Morgan, scored very high on the success scale, but low in fun. According to Mehrabian, "A name is part of an impression package. Parents who make up bizarre names for their children are ignorant, arrogant or just foolish." (That’s according to professor Mehrabian, not me.)

By the way, at this point I’m reminded of a cartoon I saw years ago.

  • In the first panel, we see a classroom with the students alphabetically going through roll call. One girl calls out her name, "Freedom MacArthur."
  • At which point, we see the second panel with the boy behind her breaking up in laughter. "Freedom? What kind of dumb name is that?"
  • In the third panel, the teacher explains that during the 60’s many parents named their children after the values that were important to them — thus the name Freedom.
  • And in the last panel, we see the boy announcing his name, "Megabucks McNulty."

Yet another study by David Figlio investigated the impact of unusual names in the African American community. In this study, Figlio compared the results for pairs of siblings. He found a strong correlation between names that connoted "low status" and poorer performance. Even within the same family, teachers were treating children differently based on the connotations of their names. According to Figlio, boys with names like Da’Quan or Damarcus were much more likely to score lower in reading and math and much less likely to be recommended to gifted programs than their siblings with more traditional names. Figlio said his study suggests, "that the names parents give their children play an important role in explaining why African-American families on average do worse, because African-American families are more inclined than whites or Hispanics to give their children names that are associated with low socio-economic status."

The bottom line, according to Dr. Figlio, is that parents need to be aware of the power of names. "In ways we are only beginning to understand, children with different names but the exact same upbringing grow up to have remarkably different life outcomes."

It may be that other’s expectations of a child based on his or her name influence the ability of that child to succeed. It may also be that humans are biologically hardwired to quickly determine whether to trust another person or to run away and names are subject to this impulse. Whatever the reasons, the impact of names is demonstrable. So if your last name is Newton, please think long and hard before naming your child Fig. (That’s not necessarily a joke. I went to school with a girl named Candice Kane. You can guess what her nickname was.)

On the other hand, if you already have a distinctive name, just remember that people with names like Zooey Deschanel, Leonardo Dicaprio, Dweezil Zappa, Ashton Kucher, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Barack Obama are doing just fine.

:hc

Selling Bad Diets to Kids

June 26th, 2010

Advertising To Children

Advertisers use movie stars and sports heroes to pitch their products — everything from Jimmy Dean Sausages to (Paul) Newman’s Own salad dressing. In fact, the Newman’s Own line bears the slogan, “Shameless exploitation in pursuit of the common good.” The strategy works. If we like the pitchman, we buy the product. Apparently the same phenomenon holds true for young children and food, except it’s not celebrities who make the food special to them. It’s cartoon characters. A new study by the Rudd Foundation at Yale University (which supports the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity) showed that kids between four and six years of age actually think that food packaged with images of popular cartoon characters tastes better.

The food industry spends $1.6 billion per year advertising directly to children. The bulk of that money goes to tout sugary cereals, fatty foods, fast foods, and calorie- and salt-laden snacks. A 2009 study showed that children’s networks exposed their little viewers to 76 percent more food advertising per hour than “adult” networks. According to a Science Daily article about that study, “Only one nutrition-related public service announcement was found for every 63 food ads.”

The study followed 40 children aged four to six in New Haven, Connecticut.  First, the researchers queried the children’s parents about how much TV the kids watched. Then, they gave the kids two packages containing identical snacks. The only difference was that one of the packages had a sticker with a picture of one of three cartoon characters: Scoobie Doo, Dora the Explorer, or Shrek. The experiment was repeated three times with a different snack each time — first Gummi Fruit, then graham cracker sticks, and finally baby organic carrots. The kids were to tell the experimenters whether the snacks tasted the same or different, and if different, which one tasted better. They were asked to rate the snack telling whether they loved it, liked it, disliked it, hated it.

According to the kids, Scoobie Doo graham crackers taste way better than plain ones. In each case, more kids preferred the taste of the cartoon-character-bearing snacks.  This was even true with the organic baby carrots, although less so than with the sugary treats.

Clearly if you’re concerned about the obesity epidemic among today’s children, this should be a major concern. The study proved that the advertising really works (of course, that’s no surprise to the food companies) and encourages kids to eat junk, which combined with inactivity and other factors, contributes to obesity and sets kids up to have heart problems diabetes, and other adult diseases increasingly common among children. The Rudd research verified for the general public that all that advertising money aimed at our kids is no fluke and plays an important role in this terrible cycle.

For years, consumer groups have been clamoring to regulate or restrict advertising aimed at children.  In 2008, a study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) concluded that banning advertising aimed at kids could reduce obesity by 18 percent among children aged three to 11 years of age, and by 14 percent among tweens and teens, aged 12 to 18. Interestingly, the study pointed out that the advertising costs are tax deductible for the companies that push their products at kids — which, unless you sit on the board of Kellogg’s, seems to stretch the bounds of reason. These deductions act as a sort of subsidy for that advertising, because if those costs were not tax deductible, food companies’ advertising to children would decrease by over 50 percent based on the same budget.

But the commercial assault does not end with what kids see on TV. Another Yale study showed that cross promotions in supermarkets aimed at kids and teens — in other words, associating movies, cartoon characters, sports and movie stars and the like with a product to the mutual benefit of both — increased by 78 percent from 2006 to 2008. Of the products investigated, only 18 percent met anything like nutritious food standards for kids.

What’s interesting about this is that in 2006, the Council of the Better Business Bureaus launched the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative.  The initiative set voluntary advertising guidelines to help companies that advertise self regulate and shift “the mix of advertising messaging directed to children under 12 to encourage healthier dietary choices and healthy lifestyles.” The initiative called for 50 percent of advertisements aimed at kids under 12 to promote better dietary choices. Companies that signed on included “Burger King Corp.; Cadbury Adams, USA, LLC; Campbell Soup Company; The Coca-Cola Company; ConAgra Foods, Inc.; The Dannon Company; General Mills, Inc.; The Hershey Company; Kellogg Company; Kraft Foods Inc.; Mars, Inc.; McDonald’s USA; Nestlé USA; PepsiCo, Inc.; and Unilever United States.” The initiative largely focused on TV and internet advertising, but also covered advertising in elementary schools (yes, companies have even found ways to make elementary schools complicit) and in interactive games. And we can all see how effective that initiative has been over the last four years!!

The increased emphasis on supermarket promotions may simply have been the result of these companies moving their advertising clout from TV to store floor, perhaps because the Children’s Food And Beverage Advertising Initiative neglected to regulate stores as stringently. According to Jennifer L. Harris, PhD, Director of Marketing Initiatives at the Rudd Center, “The marketing of foods with low nutritional value to children in grocery stores should raise as much concern as it does on television or the internet. Foods with promotions targeted at children contained significantly more sugar than foods targeted at other age groups, and companies who have pledged to reduce unhealthy marketing to kids are the biggest offenders.”

As the old ExLax TV ad said, “What’s a mother to do?” Here’s an idea: if you can’t beat them, join them. Try buying kids’ dinnerware with their favorite cartoon characters imprinted on them.

:hc

TV is Not a Toddler’s Best Friend: Health Blog

June 3rd, 2010

Child Development, Television

When your two-year old fusses, whines, screams, throws food at the wall, and otherwise acts like Godzilla rampaging through Tokyo, the television may seem to you like the greatest invention since band-aids. Plunk most kids in front of a TV and they go zombie-quiet in a flash. But alas — as a parenting tool, TV doesn’t measure up, according to a study of 1,300 children by Michigan and Montreal universities. In fact, the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development concluded that you might be doing your child a huge disservice by allowing your kid too much TV time.

The study followed kids from infancy to the age of 10. Researchers asked the parents of the children how much TV the kids watched at 29 months (two years and five months) and 53 months (four years and five months).  It revealed that, on average, the two-year-olds watched just under nine hours of TV per week and four-year-olds watched just under 15 hours.  Although experts recommend that such young children limit viewing time to two hours daily, among the children studied, 11% of two-year olds and 23% of four-year-olds averaged more than that per day.

The children were revisited at 10-years of age. Their BMI (body mass index) was taken, and their teachers were asked to assess their performance in school. You don’t need a Stanford PhD to guess the outcome. Summarizing the results, research leader Dr. Linda Pagani, of the University of Montreal said,  “We found every additional hour of TV exposure among toddlers corresponded to a future decrease in classroom engagement and success at math, increased victimization by classmates, a more sedentary lifestyle, higher consumption of junk food and, ultimately, higher body mass index.”

The study’s specific list of impacts is impressive.  It includes a seven percent decrease in classroom engagement among the children who exceeded the recommended daily TV viewing time, a six percent decrease in math achievement, a 10 percent increase in victimization by classmates (peer rejection, being teased, assaulted or insulted by other students), a 13 percent decrease in weekend physical activity, a nine percent decrease in general physical activity, a 10 percent jump in eating snacks, and a five percent increase in BMI.  Dr. Pagani says that researchers had expected these negative impacts to disappear by the time the children turned seven, but that didn’t happen. She concludes that the findings “…make a compelling public health argument against excessive TV viewing in early childhood and [an argument] for parents to heed guidelines on TV exposure from the American Academy of Pediatrics.”

Of course there are other compelling arguments. A 2007 study showed that toddlers between 15 and 24 months learn new words more readily from having an adult in the room interacting with them than from TV characters like the Teletubbies. The study showed that exposure to language via television is not adequate to help toddlers learn language. It’s actually rather disturbing to discover that there are enough parents who expect kids to learn to speak and communicate via the TV to even warrant such commentary, but in any event, the study showed that children do require the presence of responsive, living teachers. Clearly, talking to your toddlers and working with them as they learn to use language is indispensable for full development. On the other hand, television may be useful for learning a language when you’re older. Just ask Charlize Theron, the South African actress who learned English (she grew up speaking Afrikaans) from watching TV as a teenager while living on the family farm. Then again, it should be noted that her acquisition of English did not come from casual viewing. She watched soap operas methodically to learn English when an agent told her he’d take her on as a client if she learned the language. It should also be noted that Charlize is not your average language student; she speaks 28 languages, including a number of African dialects.

Another study published in November of 2009, linked greater exposure to TV with increased incidences of aggressive behavior in toddlers. Researchers theorized that this may be because households with higher rates of TV watching impose fewer restrictions on children’s viewing habits, so their exposure to television content is unregulated and thus they see more violence than other children. In addition, increased household television use may disturb normal daily routines such as eating and communication patterns and may decrease time spent on other activities, so the kids eat poorly and have fewer outlets for their energy. This study backed up an earlier study published in 2007 that showed that in children between 2.5 and 5.5 years of age, exposure to more than two hours of TV per day led to behavioral problems and poor social skills. On the bright side, heavy exposure that was subsequently reduced correspondingly reduced the risk for behavioral problems — but, unfortunately, not the developmental problems cited earlier.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, kids under two shouldn’t watch ANY television. For children over two, the AAP recommends limiting their use of TV, computers, movies, video, and computer games to no more than two hours a day. Certainly, this amount doesn’t square with the seven hours and 38 minutes daily that the average eight- to 18-year-old spends immersed in movies, social networking, TV, video games, and music/audio, as I’ve written before. Bridging that chasm between what’s good for kids and what kids actually do may be a huge challenge for parents. On the other hand, here’s one intervention that may have impact: parents can start by unplugging themselves first, so that they can pay attention to their kids and show them, by example, that life can be more interesting than the latest show.

:hc

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Infants Need More Vitamin D: Health Blog

April 22nd, 2010

Vitamin D Deficiency In Infants

Why anyone listens to doctors when it comes to anything related to diet and environment is beyond me. They’re always getting it wrong. They were wrong on fiber and diverticular disease for decades. They were wrong on the impact of pesticides and xenoestrogens released into the environment for years, too. And of course they were wrong on trans fatty acids until just a couple of years ago. Now it looks like they’ve been wrong on exposure to sunlight and the use of vitamin supplements. Hardly surprising! Ever since we all began covering up, on their advice, to avoid getting skin cancer, vitamin D shortage has become a serious problem among both kids and adults. The problem is that there are only two ways to get vitamin D — exposure to ultraviolet light and supplementation. Without either enough sun exposure or adequate supplementation, we all face vitamin D shortage and the concomitant problems of weak bones and vulnerability to disease. And thanks to your doctor’s advice, you’re short on both.

Now, a new study has found that most infants, whether bottle or breast-fed, get far too little vitamin D. The study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), surveyed nine groups of mothers of children aged one to 10.5 months old. Each group contained between 1,633 and 1,952 mothers. The results showed that only five to 13% of breastfed infants (you read that correctly) and 20% to 37% of formula-fed babies get enough vitamin D daily. Back in 2008, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that the minimum daily requirement of vitamin D be doubled because children now get far less sun now than in the past. Well, the medical community missed on that one too. The new study reflects shortages even at those higher levels.

The news came as a surprise to many physicians and patients, who assumed that formula, at least, provided the requisite amount of vitamin D. But in order to get the required amount of vitamin D from formula, babies would need to drink a full liter (34 ounces) a day, and most don’t come close to drinking that much. Baby formula does provide a richer source of vitamin D than does breast milk (more on this later) — but, as it turns out, richer doesn’t necessarily mean rich enough, given that about 2/3 of all formula-fed babies are vitamin-D deficient (again, compared to 95 percent of breast-fed infants). And babies can’t make up the shortfall from food sources like eggs and fish. In fact, it’s virtually impossible for anyone to meet minimum requirements of vitamin D through food. Sun is the best source, but again experts recommend against exposing infants to sun without protection, given the risks.

The risks of vitamin D shortage are also considerable, particularly for infants. Historically, the possibility of rickets was the biggest concern, causing bowing of the legs bone deformities, slow growth, swelling of wrists and ankles, and possibly breathing problems. But as Dr. Carrie Drazba, M.D., a pediatrician at Rush University Medical Center, in Chicago, points out, “We’re finding out that there are other risks associated with vitamin D deficiency besides rickets. A lot of cells in our body have receptors for vitamin D.”

In fact, studies have found that vitamin D bolsters the immune system and may protect against heart disease, certain cancers, schizophrenia, autoimmune disorders, respiratory ailments, and type 1 diabetes in children. Several studies last year found that vitamin D shortages in childhood may lead to a host of heart-risk factors, including high blood pressure, high blood glucose, and low HDL (or good cholesterol), later in life.

Adding fuel to the fire of the CDC study, simultaneous research from Boston Medical Center, just published in Pediatrics, also found high levels of vitamin D deficiency, this time in newborns and their moms. In this Boston study, 433 women and 376 newborns provided blood samples obtained within 72 hours of birth. Shockingly, 58 percent of the newborns had vitamin D deficiencies, as did 36 percent of mothers, with severe deficiencies showing up in about two-thirds of those cases. (More on this later.)

The solution, the experts contend, is to supplement. “We found that most infants, not just those who are breast-fed, may require an oral vitamin D supplement daily, beginning within their first few days of life, to meet the 2008 AAP recommendation that infants consume at least 400 IU/day of vitamin D,” said study director Dr. Cria G. Perrine. (More on this later.)

Apparently, most doctors still don’t recommend supplementation to their patients. In fact, as few as one percent of formula-fed babies and five-percent of breast-fed babies actually take vitamin D supplements. Frank R. Greer, MD, who headed the committee that came up with the new guidelines for vitamin D intake, says, “I am frankly surprised that more pediatricians are not recommending supplementation, especially to new moms who are breastfeeding.” (More on this later.) The study authors believe that many doctors are unaware that the recommendations have increased. They note, “Because physicians’ knowledge of the AAP [vitamin D] recommendations has been positively associated with the likelihood of their recommending vitamin D supplements, both healthcare providers and parents need to be educated about the AAP guidelines and the importance of vitamin D nutrition, including that infants should not be exposed to sunlight and, thus, need an alternate source of vitamin D.”

In fact, the Institute of Medicine is actively considering again raising its guidelines for vitamin D intake for adults as well as for children and will announce its decision in the coming months. I’ve written before that even with the higher levels of recommended intake, the guidelines for vitamin D are conservative, at best. Currently, the guidelines call for 400 IU a day for kids, but even a few minutes of sun exposure can generate 2000-4000 or more IU. Vitamin D toxicity does not usually develop below 10,000 units per day (for adults), so there’s plenty of room to increase the recommended dose.  The second study found that even among those mothers who took prenatal vitamin D supplements in the last trimester of pregnancy, 30 percent remained vitamin-D deficient at the time of birth, showing that at current recommended levels, supplementing isn’t sufficient. (More on this later.) 

“The most obvious way to correct deficiency is sensible sun exposure,” said the director of the second study, Dr. Anne Merewood. “While a sunburn should be avoided, even a small amount of time spent outdoors was protective against deficiency.” Most pediatricians insist that babies should not get sun exposure — period — unless they have on sunscreen and clothing that protects them, so this advice won’t help with doctor-abiding infants though it might help their moms.

Throughout this blog, I’ve been repeatedly saying, “More on this later.” And now we come to it. There is one simple reason that ties all of these problems together, that accounts for babies being born vitamin D deficient, for breast milk being deficient, and for infants being vitamin D deficient. Thanks to the medical community’s recommendations to avoid the sun and to restrict vitamin D supplementation to dangerously low levels, mothers themselves are vitamin D deficient. If mom is deficient, any baby is going to be born deficient by definition. The fetus can’t manufacture vitamin D from thin air. Likewise, if mom is deficient, then her breast milk will be deficient. Again, vitamin D can’t appear in the milk out of thin air. And finally, if vitamin D levels are insufficient in breast milk, then where is the infant going to get their vitamin D from — particularly if their doctor has banned them from the sun and is prescribing insufficient levels of supplementation.

The solution is for parents to supplement at higher levels (up to 2000 IU daily), enjoy short stints of 10 to 15 minutes in the sun (early morning or late afternoon), and lose weight to enhance vitamin D absorption. Doing these things should minimize the likelihood of passing on a deficiency to offspring. (Note: studies show that the dose required to achieve a healthy blood level of vitamin D is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000–4,000 IU per day — which is still less than that obtained through several minutes of sun exposure. Vitamin D toxicity does not usually develop below 10,000 units per day.) As for the babies, a few minutes of unprotected exposure to sunlight (again, early morning or late afternoon) is still your best bet. And keep in mind that the body’s production of vitamin D is self regulating. You cannot OD on vitamin D based on sun exposure alone. But if you feel more comfortable following your pediatrician’s advice to keep your baby out of the sun, then you’ll want to give your child up to a 1,000 IU a day of a high-quality vitamin D supplement.

:hc

Teens Spread Lack of Sleep: Health Blog

March 25th, 2010

Teenagers Lack of Sleep

Just recently I wrote about how lack of morning light keeps teens up at night. Now it turns out there may be something else to blame for the midnight escapades of your kid: his or her friends. The story is as old as Leave it to Beaver, that old television show where the rascal Eddie Haskell continually got his hapless friends Wally and Beaver Cleaver into trouble. In fact, parents of teens gone bad often blame it on “the influence” of bad friends, and now a new study adds some fuel to that argument.

It turns out that, according to research at the University of California, San Diego and Harvard University, lack of sleep is contagious among teens.  The researchers tracked the sleep habits of 8000 seventh to twelfth graders.  They found that a teen with a friend who sleeps fewer than seven hours is 11 times more likely to sleep fewer than seven hours.

To unravel the sleep and pot smoking habits of teens, the researchers mapped the tangled web of connections between each teen in the study and his or her friends.  At the center of these connections was a “gang of sleepless boys,” and the more centrally connected a teen was (in other words, the more “cool”), the more likely he or she also slept fewer than seven hours a night. Translated into the language of today’s youth, the less sleep you get, the more phat (pimpin’, off the heezy, chron, boom ting) you are.

Study leader James Fowler, political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, said that as sleep deprivation spreads throughout a “friend” network, so does drug use. The researchers found that teens with a friend who sleeps fewer than seven hours per night are 19% more likely to use marijuana. Having a friend who smokes pot makes a teen 42% more likely to use pot herself.  And the contagious effects of both lack of sleep and drug use have impact up to four degrees of separation away. Fowler and his team state that they do not know why this happens. (It seems they’re blissfully unaware of the “Eddie Haskell” factor.) So to “uncover” the reasons for the contagious effects, they want to access teens “directly” via Facebook.

But as I’ve written so recently, there are plenty of reasons kids stay up late and those reasons may go hand-in-hand with the contagion of other night owls. Perhaps Dr. Fowler should have looked at the 2006 survey by the National Sleep Foundation, which showed that only 20% of children were getting an optimal amount of sleep and that the more electronic devices a child has in his bedroom, the less sleep he tends to get.

Then there was the highly suggestive study published in Pediatrics in August of 2009.  The study looked at the correlations between technology use, caffeine use, and nocturnal sleep duration among 100 teens, 12 to 18 years-of-age, in a suburban medical practice in the Northeast. The teens came from families with a median income of $51,000 and were of mixed races.  Not surprisingly, the study showed that the majority of those teens regularly used some combination of electronic devices after 9 PM at night.  Eighty percent watched some TV, 24 percent played video games, and 55 percent used the Internet.  According to the study, the average teen used a combination of four forms of technology after 9 PM.

The study authors also created a “multitasking index” which correlated the number of technologies used and the duration of use after 9 PM.  Again, not surprisingly, the more multitasking a teen did after 9 PM the higher their caffeine use.  What was surprising was the fact that the correlation between multitasking and lack of sleep was higher than the correlation between caffeine use and lack of sleep.  So maybe Dr. Fowler’s answer is that kids who stay up doing their homework, while on Facebook, texting on their cell phones, and listening to their Ipods, are going to be sleepy during the daytime and will pass that sleepiness through their networks because ALL of the kids are doing roughly the same stuff, and in addition, they probably grabbed a vente Frappucino on the way home from school.  After all, who are they texting or playing video games with but their “stay awake” friends? Incidentally, they may also be smoking doobies in their bedrooms, and with the new vaporizing smoking devices you won’t ever smell it, making it more likely that their friends will be doing the same.  (Whatever happened to just sticking a towel under the door?)

Also as I wrote recently,  lack of sleep may cause depression and suicidal thoughts in teens, as a recent study out of Columbia University attests. According to lead study author James Gangwisch, teens whose parents let them go to bed after midnight were 24% more likely to be depressed and 20% more likely to have contemplated suicide than their peers whose parents made them go to bed at or before 10 PM. Gangwisch argues, “Our results strengthen the argument that lack of sleep can cause depression as opposed to simply being a symptom of depression. Adequate quality sleep could therefore be a preventative measure against depression and a treatment for depression.”

Lack of sleep in teens has also been associated with poorer performance in school, increased incidence of ADHD and other psychopathologies, and increased incidence of automobile accidents and injury.  Other studies have shown a link between lack of sleep and obesity, and once again the study points the finger at the use of electronic technology as a culprit. 

On the bright side, now parents have something else to blame on the bad influence of friends instead of the genes they passed on to their own teens. If their kid gets caught smoking pot after midnight, they can now point to the influence of that Eddie Haskell reincarnation down the street.

:hc

Teens Increasingly Unstable: Health Blog

March 3rd, 2010

Teen Depression

“Adolescence is perhaps nature’s way of preparing parents to welcome the empty nest,” say Karen Savage and Patricia Adams in their book, The Good Stepmother. It’s certainly not news that teens tend to be difficult, moody, sulking, and generally not fun to be around. While parents of teens have wondered for decades if it could get any worse, a new study verifies that in fact, teens have more psychological problems today than they did years ago.  A new study of high school and college students has found that teens and young adults have become increasingly more depressed, unstable, and narcissistic today than they were 70 years ago.

The study, which involved researchers at five universities, analyzed psychological data compiled between 1938 and 2007 on over 77,000 high school and college students. The students all took the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), a personality test that diagnoses mental illness and personality structure. According to the results, kids today are far more troubled than they were back in 1938, during the great Depression. Six times as many youths today tested as clinically depressed compared to back then (six percent versus one percent), and six times as many registered as anxious (five percent in 1938, but a whopping 31 percent now). Another category with soaring rates was “psychopathic deviation.” This refers to a mild form of psychopathology in which individuals think rules don’t apply to them and so act accordingly. The percentage of youth currently in that category has risen to 24 percent from five percent in 1938. In fact, teens today surpassed their 1938 predecessors in virtually every mental illness category by an average of 500 percent, with 85 percent more youth today surpassing the average score for mental health problems compared to 1938.

The depression among youth contributes to the fact that suicide now ranks as the third leading cause of death among those aged 15 to 24, with the rate having tripled since 1970. The subjects reported feeling significantly more isolated, misunderstood, and emotionally sensitive or unstable than in the past. They also were more likely to report worry, sadness, and dissatisfaction with life, and to show signs of narcissism.

The experts say that the precipitous decline in mental health found by the study may seriously underestimate the true scope of the problem, because so many youth these days take antidepressants or anti-anxiety medication, which can mask symptoms.  “Those answering the survey might have had their mental state stabilized already by drugs,” the study authors write. Given that 10 percent of the population aged six and up now takes antidepressant medication, there might be something to that idea, except, as I’ve written before, half the studies on antidepressants have found that they do nothing to boost mood, and so their benefits are arguable. In fact, there’s evidence that antidepressants actually can increase depression and contribute to suicidal ideation among teens.

On or off of medication, it’s clear that teens these days aren’t feeling so good mentally. And to what do the experts attribute all of this degeneration? The lead researcher, Jean Twenge, of San Diego State University, took a hint from Michael Moore’s latest movie and blamed capitalism. “We have become a culture that focuses more on material things and less on relationships,” she writes. “These results suggest that as American culture has increasingly valued extrinsic and self-centered goals such as money and status, while increasingly devaluing community, affiliation, and finding meaning in life, the mental health of American youth has suffered.” In fact, UCLA’s annual survey of college freshmen found in 2008 that 77% of the respondents said it was “essential” or “very important” to be financially well off.

The authors also entertain the possibility that mental health suffers when the economy suffers, but in writing that, they clearly forgot that 1938 was the crest of the depression years, before the economy recovered. Clearly, young people were much happier then. In fact, I reported recently about studies showing that longevity and health actually improve when the economy slumps.

One theory blames parental stress, saying that parents are under so much pressure that they do a lousy job of bringing up kids. “They learn from those they love,” says Dr. Bruce Rabin of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “…if role models are short tempered [or] tell children to leave them alone because they are under a lot of stress…there will be an effect on the child’s mental health development.”

Certainly studies support the idea that community isn’t what it once was. I reported previously on a study that showed that in 1984, the average person had three close confidants, but by 2004, the average person had zero. In spite of creating Facebook communities of hundreds or even thousands subscribers, many teens simply don’t connect in person the way they did in generations past. The quality of friendship isn’t the same.

I also just reported that kids these days spend an average of 13 hours daily connected to media — excluding homework time. This doesn’t leave much time for hanging out with pals…live. And, research shows strong links between depression and time spent immersed in media. One study last year found that each extra hour daily spent watching television boosts the odds of being depressed by eight percent. Part of the problem with the media overload is that it keeps lots of kids up late at night, and studies also show that less sleep correlates to more depression, with teens who go to bed past midnight 24 percent more likely to be depressed and 20 percent more likely to commit suicide compared to kids tucked in by 10.

In fact, there are scores of other theories being bandied about — expectations too high, expectations too low, too much praise, too little praise, and so on. There’s also plenty of evidence showing that eating junk foods and sweets and getting fat compromises mental health. At least on one point, though, the experts concur. In the words of the authors of the study, “Whether this trend has topped out or will continue upward remains to be seen, but these results suggest that the demand for mental health services is likely to increase in the coming decade.” That most likely means big business for the antidepressant manufacturers, given that treatment for mental health seems to increasingly be defined as a prescription for a happy pill…even if it mostly doesn’t work. As I’ve written before, recent trends have led antidepressant prescriptions to triple since 1988 while the percent of depressed patients seeing psychotherapists has declined dramatically.

:hc

Kids Plugged In Non-Stop: Health Blog

February 27th, 2010

Growing Up Online

If you marvel at how kids these days know their way around technology better than you do, here’s something to dispel the mystery of their genius. Practice makes perfect, and kids probably are getting a whole lot more practice than you — and possibly more practice than you even thought possible.

According to a new study from Stanford University and Kaiser Permanente, most kids these days spend virtually all their free time online or plugged into entertainment media. The study, which followed a representative sample of 2,002 third through twelfth grade students, found that the average child aged eight to 18 spends seven hours and 38 minutes daily immersed in movies, social networking, video games, and music/audio. Since most kids multi-task — simultaneously watching television while communicating on the internet, for instance–the total entertainment media time registered for the average child was 10 hours and 45 minutes every day. Believe it or not, that does not include the time spent texting or talking on cell-phones, which adds an additional two hours daily, on average, for kids in grades seven through 12. That comes to a grand total of almost 13 hours daily plugged into entertainment media and technology, not including time spent online doing homework. In fact, it’s a wonder that kids have any time left for homework, assuming that they also spend time in school and sleeping.

These figures represent a big jump since 2004, when the average kid spent two fewer hours daily (if you count multitasking) enmeshed in entertainment media. The experts attribute the escalation to the fact that more kids now own cell phones and iPods, giving them easier access to media at all times. In 2004, 39 percent of all kids had cell phones compared to 66 percent now; only 18 percent had iPods and now 76 percent do.

The biggest allotment of media time for most kids goes to television. Most kids watch TV during meals (64 percent) and almost half report that the TV stays on at their home all the time. But the bulk of TV viewing for kids no longer happens in front of the traditional television set. Most kids report that at least half of their television viewing is on their iPods, their computers, or their cell-phones. In fact, the ready access to television via mobile devices has led to a big jump in viewing time. Five years ago, the average time spent viewing television was 3:51 hours daily and now it’s 4:29 hours.

The big question, of course, is what does all this media time do the developing brains of kids? Certainly, it doesn’t bolster academic performance.  Half of the kids who use media heavily got fair or poor grades (C’s or lower), as compared to only a quarter of those kids who view fewer than three hours of media daily. Kids do still read, in spite of the easy access to alternatives, but books take up an average of only 25 minutes a day (and we can only guess how much of that is on vampire romances), magazines get an amazing nine seconds and newspapers and mind boggling three seconds. Translated — if you own any stock in print media, it might be time to pull out.

In terms of social development, a huge percentage of the time kids spend plugged-in involves solitary activities or activities that avoid in-person contact. Talking on the cell-phone is a relatively minor activity for most kids. The subjects in the study spent an average of only about 30 minutes a day doing so.  They did spend time engaged in social activities like texting and cruising networking sites, but again, the contact in those arenas is certainly not face-to-face, nor even voice-to-voice. In fact, kids spend one and a half hours daily texting, a bit over an hour on social network sites or instant messaging, and only half an hour talking on the phone — and it doesn’t seem likely that the average kid would have a lot of time left over to get together with peers in person.

There’s evidence from numerous studies that all this media exposure impacts kids in unfortunate ways. A study in 2009 found a link between excess media exposure and depression in teens. A 2008 study linked pediatric sleep disorders with too much media time. Various studies have found that excessive media time leads to lower grades, behavioral problems, and obesity. In spite of these findings, most parents don’t intervene in the love affair their kids have with technology. The study found that only 28 percent of parents limit their children’s television time at all and only 36 percent restrict computer time.

The statistics shocked the researchers, as they shock many adults who grew up before cell phones came in designer colors. Rachel Dretzel, author and producer of the FRONTLINE special, Growing Up Online, says the Internet has created the greatest generation gap since rock ‘n’ roll. Her associate producer, Caitlin McNally, comments, “More than once, I’d be trying to follow up with a kid and I would discover pretty quickly that the only way I could elicit a response was through a text message or social networking site. I would place call after call, or send e-mail after e-mail — nothing. But with a text, or a message on Facebook, a response would ping back within minutes.” McNally says most kids consider email incredibly cumbersome, much like many adults now consider writing letters long-hand. Again, this is a fact that most adults, who may be still getting the hang of emailing, haven’t a clue about.

Certainly, though, marketing moguls have figured it out. According to a 2006 study, virtually every corner of the food industry has a web presence encouraging young kids to consume their wares. The study found 77 food products advertised on over 2,000 web pages targeted to children, replete with colorful games, activities and entertainment to push their products. In the three months of the study, such food-related websites had 12.2 million visits from children under age 11. And the smart marketers know that to reach kids, they need to hit the places the kids go, so, for instance, McDonalds had a text message campaign targeted to young users, Burger King has a MySpace profile, Wendy’s launched viral videos on You Tube, and Kraft launched a successful instant messaging campaign

Some experts insist that limits must be set on kid’s access to media, but others say it’s futile, the world has changed and parents had better get hip to it. Dr. Michael Rich of Boston’s Children’s Hospital, for instance, says media use has become so omnipresent that we must accept it as part of children’s environment, “like the air they breathe, the water they drink and the food they eat.” The fact is that the air they breathe and the food they eat increasingly is being influenced by new media, so if parents want to be on top of what their kids drink and eat, they’d better learn to navigate around the places their kids go so they can exert some influence. And as a bonus, imagine how much fun it will be to instantly tweet your 8,000 closest friends.

:hc

New Treatment Helps Autistic Kids: Health Blog

January 30th, 2010

Autistic Children

For parents of autistic children, non-responsiveness is part of the package. And because autistic kids often don’t respond to parental overtures, many parents stop trying to engage their children. But experts in the field say that in fact, interaction may be just what the doctor ordered. In fact, a new but limited study has found that intensive, controlled play with very young autistic toddlers can have a significant impact on their development.

The study, out of the University of Washington, followed 48 children aged 18 to 36 months. The children were divided into two groups. The first group received the currently endorsed community-based approach where parents received instructions about delivering standard interventions as well as referrals to community providers. The other group followed the Early Start Denver Model (ESDM), a more relationship-based approach. ESDM involves intensive intervention provided by both parents and trained therapists in the child’s home, focused around play, communication, social interaction, and family involvement.  The children in both groups received about 20 hours a week of intervention.

All the children improved after two years of treatment. That alone is significant, indicating that intervention started very early can make a difference. But the kids in the ESDM group made more progress than those in the standard group, increasing their IQs by an average of 18 points compared to a seven-point improvement in the standard-treatment group. In fact, seven children (30 percent) from the ESDM group improved enough to move from a diagnosis of autism to a less severe diagnosis. In the standard-treatment group, only one child moved to a lesser diagnosis. And the ESDM kids also improved in communication, motor skills, and daily living skills. Dr. Geraldine Dawson, one of the study authors, made clear that all of the subjects still had at least mild autistic symptoms, but commented, “Many of the children had virtually caught up to the typical kids their age.”

What then made the difference? According to Dr. Sally Rogers, originator of ESDM and study lead, the standard interventions rely on adults attempting to teach skills and behaviors to autistic children. When the child performs well, he or she gets a reward. The reward system has limited effectiveness with these kids. The ESDM approach, in contrast, follows the child, watching to see what interests him or her — what makes him smile. Then, the parents and practitioners sit with the kids and engage them in structured play around that interest, persisting even when the response from the kid isn’t huge. “It’s a very pleasing kind of therapy, kids are happy. It is play, and it can happen everywhere,” says Dr. Rogers.

Dr. Rogers explains, “It’s not simple. Parents require a lot of coaching into how to position themselves so they’ve got children’s attention; how to get children to watch them; how to pull gestures out of the children so the child is communicating; how to choose activities so they have maximal pleasure so the child is motivated. We teach multiple different kinds of skills. Inside one particular play activity, you can get a lot of learning in.

Given the rising numbers of autistic children, finding effective interventions certainly is key. According to the organization Autism Speaks, one out of every 110 children has autism, and one out of every 70 boys. Those are startling figures, but even more startling is the fact that its prevalence is increasing by 10-17 percent annually. The lifetime cost of caring for autistic individuals runs between $3.5 million to $5 million, costing the United States about $90 billion annually.

Again, while interventions such as ESDM may offer hope for those families afflicted with autism, better yet would be to do something about the factors causing it. While the medical community points to heredity, genetics and medical problems as the factors causing autism, certainly heredity and genetics and even medical challenges existed in decades past when autism was extremely rare. And certainly nothing in the medical community’s list of factors would account for the astounding annual increase in prevalence. To account for that, it’s almost mandatory that you look to some environmental change as causing the spike.

I wrote before about a study that linked paternal age with autism in offspring — the older the father, the greater the chance he’ll father an autistic kid — and noted that toxic buildup over time in a father’s body might be responsible for compromised sperm. At that time, I urged adults (and particularly men) who wanted to have children to detox to reduce the chances of having autistic children. Studies have found links between autism and heavy metals (particularly mercury), as well as to numerous chemicals and pollutants. In fact, triclosan and triclocarban, common ingredients in those antibacterial soaps so popular as swine-flu preventives, recently have been implicated. And a study last year found a strong link between autism and a chemical commonly found in pet shampoos and insect sprays.

Once again, the message is clear: live as chemical-free as possible, protect your kids from exposure, and regularly detox to protect yourself and your future children. But if you already do have or know an autistic child, you might want to check out this ESDM link. But keep in mind it was a limited study, and it was conducted under the auspices of the originator of ESDM herself, which may have had an effect on the study’s objectivity…or not.

:hc

Bipolar in Diapers: Health Blog

January 21st, 2010

Bipolar Disorder in Children

Among the many so-called adult diseases now being diagnosed among the diaper-set, one of the most startling is bipolar disorder. In fact, according to a study just published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, the number of children between the ages of two and five diagnosed with the disease has doubled in the past 10 years. Although it’s almost inconceivable that kids might display manic-depressive symptoms before they even can talk, these very young children are being prescribed anti-psychotic medication, a fact that has stirred up plenty of concern.

“It is a worrisome trend, partly because very little is known about the short-term, let alone the long-term, safety of these drugs in this age group,” said the study director, Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University. The issue came to a head in the aftermath of the death of Rebecca Riley, age four, from an overdose of bipolar medication.  Though her psychiatrist had prescribed the drugs, her parents now face murder charges for administering them. The courts cleared the shrink, but contend that the parents overmedicated the kid to subdue her.

The fact is manic-depressive diagnoses have been spiking in all age groups, and as alarming as the swell is in the toddler set, the figures for older children are far more shocking. In the nine years between 1994 and 2003, the number of children under age 18 newly diagnosed as bipolar skyrocketed by 4000 percent. Put another way, between 1994 and 1995, the rate of diagnosis of bipolar disorder for kids under age 19 was approximately 25 per 100,000. By 2002-2003, the number of diagnoses increased to 1003 per 100,000 youth. Experts concur that the rate of diagnosis has continued to go up since 2003, bypassing even the 4000-percent marker, although exact figures aren’t available yet. In that same period of time, adult diagnoses doubled.

Most of the kids diagnosed as bipolar take two or more drugs for their supposed condition. Interestingly, the anti-psychotic drugs that control bipolar disorder typically cost three to five times the amount that drugs for other mental health or behavioral conditions, like depression or ADHD, cost. Only 40 percent of these kids also receive psychotherapy, and incredibly, less than half even had a mental health assessment before starting drug treatment. In other words, drug treatment is the sole remedy administered. While some professionals claim that the surge in diagnoses reflects new wisdom about what really makes Johnny so uncivilized, others suggest that the trend reflects aggressive marketing by drug companies, which have campaigned hard to sway medical opinion.

“We are just inundated with stuff from drug companies, publications, throwaways, that tell us six ways from Sunday that, Oh my God, we’re missing bipolar,” said Dr. Gabrielle Carlson, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Stony Brook University School of Medicine on Long Island. But in spite of the pressure from drug companies to recognize the disorder in the very young and prescribe accordingly, an article in The New York Times says that so-called pediatric bipolar disorder usually disappears magically as the child matures…without treatment.

What symptoms qualify a kid for the bipolar label and accompanying medications? The Times says, “Most children who qualify for the diagnosis do not proceed to develop the classic features of adult bipolar disorder like mania, researchers have found. They are far more likely to become depressed.” According to Dr. Mani Pavulari of the University of Illinois, “These are kids that have rage, anger, bubbling emotions that are just intolerable for them, and it is good that this is finally being recognized as part of a single disorder.” According to a report in Biological Psychiatry, symptoms include “impulsive, volatile, aggressive” behavior. Other sources site extreme irritability as a clear symptom. Dr. Manuel Mota-Castillo, author of the book Protecting Your Children From Bad Medicine, said that he watches for disrespectful behavior when interviewing kids.

The most common medication prescribed to “bipolar” kids is risperidone (Risperdal), an antipsychotic. Those kids most likely to get risperidone are males aged four to five. The side effects may include tremors, weight gain, respiratory problems, anxiety, lethargy, impaired motor control, joint pain, vomiting, diabetes, stroke, blood clots, and death. The drug has only been tested on adults, so the impact on kids, both short-term and long-term, still is unclear. In spite of these issues, sales of risperidone currently net $2.1 billion in global sales each year.

Certainly, some parents of acting-out kids consider the drugs a boon. Previously bratty kids become subdued and manageable on the drugs, and in truth, some kids do need extra help. Still, throwing dangerous, untested drugs at kids as young as age two without even giving them a psychiatric work-up first simply doesn’t add up. As Dr. Peter Jensen, co-director of Child Psychiatry at the Mayo Clinic, says, “We have no doubt there are prescribing practices out there that are very, very worrisome.” Dr. Olfsun adds, “There might be a role for these drugs but only after you’ve tried other interventions, with the parents, or with the parents and child together, but that is not happening when you examine the billing records.”

I might add that looking at the kid’s diet should be a first step before resorting to any dramatic interventions.

:hc

Abuse Leads to Obesity: Health Blog

January 19th, 2010

Obesity, Abuse

You may have heard the childhood chant, “Nobody loves me, Everybody hates me, I’m gonna go eat worms.” While worms might not be the edible of choice for most, the ditty does point to a truth. Feeling bad leads many people straight to snacking. Now research shows that extreme trauma leads to eating a lot, which in turn leads to obesity.

In the late 1980’s, Dr. Vincent Felitti, head of Preventive Medicine at Kaiser Permanente, conducted research on the link between obesity and sexual abuse. In reviewing records of 286 obese patients, he found that half had been molested as children. That’s twice the rate in the population at large — a startling correlation. More recent research supports those findings. In 2007, a study of 11,000 California women published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that childhood abuse increased the risk of obesity in adulthood by 27 percent. A smaller study published in the journal Pediatrics that same year found that those who had been abused in childhood had more than twice the risk of obesity by age 24.

Then last year, a study of 15,000 male subjects found that those who had been abused as teens had a 66 percent greater chance of obesity in adulthood. Another 2009 study, this one out of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, found that physical abuse in childhood led to almost three times the risk of obesity in adulthood. Most recently, Kaiser Permanente’s Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study found strong links between negative childhood experiences and a wide array of conditions and diseases. That study included over 17,000 adult patients who indicated if in childhood they had been exposed to “negative conditions” such as neglect, emotional abuse, physical or sexual abuse, witnessing domestic violence, having a mentally ill, incarcerated or a drug-addicted parent, or living with just one parent instead of two or with someone other than a parent. 

Not surprisingly, the correlations were clear. Those subjects who had experienced four or more of the negative conditions in childhood had twice the risk not only of obesity, but also of heart attack and stroke, and four times the risk of emphysema compared to those who had experienced none of these conditions.

Scientists say it isn’t just eating in response to stress that causes weight gain and concomitant health problems, although that certainly plays a role. In fact, those who experienced early sexual abuse might unconsciously put on weight to make themselves unattractive so they don’t get abused again, while those who experienced physical or emotional abuse might want extra “padding” for protection, again, an unconscious choice.

But according to the experts, there’s also a psychological factor at play, because those who don’t overeat but had many negative conditions in childhood still have high rates of obesity, heart disease, depression and diabetes. Apparently, the body responds to extraordinary stress by storing fat, no matter the diet.  Dr. Jack Schonkoff of the Harvard Center of the Developing Child explains, “Early adverse experience can disrupt the body’s metabolic systems. One of the cornerstones of biology is that our body’s systems, when they are young, are reading the environment and establishing patterns to be maximally adaptive.”

According to this theory, when we experience trauma, the body interprets the stress signals it receives to mean that famine is coming, and so it stores fat in preparation. And so, the solution to obesity requires more than going on Atkins or even the Mediterranean diet. It means minimizing stress. Dr. Shonkoff says, “It’s not a secret that there is a growing epidemic of obesity and there’s no question that the way we eat and the way we exercise, or do not exercise, is contributing to it. Yet it’s a huge mistake to attribute it just to the need to close down fast-food restaurants and turn off the TV. There’s important biology here early in life that needs attention.”

But let’s get real here. Obesity rates have tripled since 1980 in much of North America, the United Kingdom, China, Eastern Europe, the Pacific Islands and Australasia. Surely, there hasn’t been a surge of abuse in the past 30 years in these places, a surge so severe as to triple the rate of trauma-related fat. Certainly, life wasn’t just so much easier in the far skinnier Middle Ages, what with plague and war and all. Consider that in the past 10 years in the US, obesity has gone up 50 percent. Does it make sense that parents have grown markedly meaner and more perverted in just a decade, causing a huge spurt in weight problems?

Clearly something else is going on, and I’m fairly certain it boils down to the same old formula: calories burned have to exceed calories consumed or else weight gain results. And where too much weight is gained, health problems begin. We’re eating more than ever, and eating more of the worst foods. As I’ve pointed out before, in 2003, the average person consumed 523 more calories on a daily basis than did the average person in 1970. The average fast-food burger today is five times larger than when McDonald’s first started putting burgers to buns. Likewise, the average pizza slice has almost doubled in size in the past 20 years. The old eight-ounce bottle of Coke has given way to 12-ounce cans and 20-ounce bottles.

In fact, everything food-related has gotten bigger in the past 20 years — from dinner plate sizes, which were typically 10 inches back then but now average 12 inches (yes, that’s right, dinner plates have gotten bigger) — to bagels, which have tripled in calories over the years from an average 120 calories 20 years ago to an average 350 calories today. (Oh, and don’t forget the cream cheese and butter you smear on that bagel.) What does this mean? Studies show that we tend to eat what’s put before us — so bigger plates lead to bigger meals. A recent analysis showed that the average American now pours 20 percent more breakfast cereal and 30 percent more milk than back 20 years ago. And another, 2008 study, found that serving sizes have increased not only at restaurants and fast-food places, but also at home. In fact, burgers cooked at home have increased in size even more in the past 20 years than have restaurant burgers.

I’m not saying early stress, or stress at any time in life for that matter, doesn’t play a role — it certainly does. But again, we’re eating more than we did in the past, plain and simple. If stress leads to eating and junk food is readily available and pushed by the media in commercial after commercial, those with a predisposition to overeating will almost certainly end up in trouble. Yes, it’s essential to find ways to stop childhood stress and abuse, and if these things are contained, obesity rates might dip. But to reverse the obesity epidemic, the food options that are showcased in commercials and on the shelves at supermarkets and convenience stores need to change, the formulas used in making processed foods need to change, restaurant menus have to change, and consumer demand needs to change to reflect increased education about what healthy eating means.

Oh, and buy smaller plates.

:hc

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