Statins – Children next?

Last week I raised concerns about the routine prescribing of statins, and now from the USA comes news that the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee has recommended routine screening of children, from 2 years old, for “high cholesterol”. Given the deterioration in children’s’ diets you may think that a good idea, but not when it is accompanied by the news that they are also recommending giving children as young as eight years old statin drugs. These drugs have never even been tested on children, never mind approved for their use – in fact not one single safety test has ever been conducted with children taking these powerful chemicals.

I am not going to repeat the side effects that I gave last week, but if they have such an impact on adults, can you imagine what they will do to children? Schools are having enough disciplinary problems as it is, without adding in children on drugs that can cause homicidal impulses and mental confusion. No one denies that more children are now presenting with high cholesterol levels, but surely the answer lies in controlling their diet and ensuring enough exercise? The main ‘culprits’ if a child is diagnosed with high cholesterol at the age of eight are the consumption of too great a quantity of these:

* Milk and dairy products
* Fried foods and trans fatty acids
* Processed meats and animal products

Nutritionists believe that virtually any child can be cured of high cholesterol in a matter of weeks by being fed a 100% plant-based diet, comprised entirely of non-processed foods, and including fresh, raw vegetable and fruit juices along with numerous superfoods such as apples, broccoli, wholemeal bread, salmon, bananas and brazil nuts. Simple, yes, and certainly better than putting a child on a drug regime that they could be kept on for years.

Natural baby products

As you saw in last week’s item about shampoo, products for babies and children are not always as pure as we imagine them to be. If you do want to have an entirely natural, organic range of products then specialist online company Bebeco would be a good place to look.

They produce a nappy balm that is super sensitive on baby’s skin and contains only organic sunflower oil, cocoa butter, carrot oil, coconut oil, olive oil, and local beeswax. If your baby has a real problem with dry skin and eczema, then their problem skin cream helps soothe it with all-natural ingredients of organic sunflower oil, organic calendula petals, local beeswax, and lavender essential oil. If cradle cap is the problem then try their treatment oil with organic jojoba oil, organic calendula, marshmallow root, and almond oil. It also makes a lovely massage oil for baby, and presumably Mum too. www.bebeco.co.uk for details.

Oh, and by the way, on the subject of babies, it has always been know that breastfeeding gives much greater protection against infection and helps build the immune system, but now it turns out there is another good reason to keep off the bottle where possible.

A massive survey carried out by doctors of 13,889 children and their mothers has revealed that breastfed babies are more intelligent than those weaned on formula milk.

Of those mothers, around half had attended clinics promoting breastfeeding and 43% of them fed their babies only on breast milk until the age of three months, compared with 6.4% of women at other clinics that didn’t promote breastfeeding. At the age of six and a half, children who had been exclusively breastfed scored 7.5 points higher in verbal intelligence tests and 5.9 points higher in overall IQ tests.

As a significant number of babies are actually allergic to cow’s milk, this is another reason to add to the file of pluses for breastfeeding, where that is possible for mother and baby.

Cola companies under pressure worldwide

The UK has led the way for a group of consumer organisations from 20 different countries to issue a public call for soft drink giants Coca-Cola and Pepsi to stop marketing directly to children. With 24% of the US population now defined as obese, this is clearly a problem and sugared, carbonated drinks add sweet fuel to the fire.

Letters pointing out the dangers of products containing high amounts of sugar or caffeine to children under the age of 16 have been sent out worldwide to the drinks giants and their subsidiaries. The products being targeted include not just colas but also sweetened juices, sports drinks and teas and they want them also removed from being offered or sold in schools.

In addition, they want the companies to prominently label the front of all such products with the number of calories per serving, and to limit their sponsorship of sports and health programmes.

New regulations in the UK have banned the advertising of junk food on television to children under the age of 16, and there is agreement on a voluntary pledge by major food companies to stop advertising those foods to children under the age of 12. Ten companies have signed up to this so far,including Coke and Pepsi,in an effort to avoid being faced with potentially stricter compulsory regulations.

The groups involved in issuing the new set of demands say that Coke and Pepsi’s marketing efforts contribute to increasing obesity levels, especially in children. The Mexican group, El Poder del Consumidor, are particularly concerned that many of the drink company ads are misleading. For instance, in Mexico a campaign was run for a Coca Cola-sponsored nutrition campaign that promoted drinking Coca-Cola as a good way to rehydrate after exercise.

How natural is your shampoo?

Over the last few years shampoos have strived to impress us with the naturalness of their ingredients. If you believe the ads they are all hand-harvested in the Amazonian rainforests and you are getting an amazing variety of herbs, flowers and probably a pounding waterfall or at least a fast flowing river to go along with it. What they don’t tell you is that you are also getting in there an amazing cocktail of chemicals – the word ‘natural’ is one of the most misleading in advertising.

It is estimated by the consumer watchdog group Proof that around 93 per cent of all shampoos currently on the market contain chemicals that are linked to cancer or other health problems. So just becasue your favourite brand contains herbs or is organic doesn’t necessarily mean it is innocent of chemicals. As ever, read the label and try to avoid the following ingredients:

- lauryl sulphates: are the most potentially carcinogenic compounds found in many personal care products

- PEG (polyethylene glycol): this is what gives you that nice foam that makes you think your shampoo is doing a good job. These ‘foaming agents’ often contain the carcinogens dioxane and ethylene oxide, which have been linked to leukaemia, and brain, uterine and breast cancers

- Propylene glycol: you find this chemical in your anti-freeze and in a shampoo it rapidly penetrates the skin. It’s been associated with liver and kidney damage, and central nervous system problems.

It is especially important to be vigilant when buying products for babies and children as a high concentration of lauryl sulphates has been found in a shampoo that’s specially marketed to children, and labelled as being ‘extra gentle’.

Simply Nature have a good PEG-free shampoo you can find on their website at www.simply-nature.co.uk or get your reading glasses out for that very small print on the bottles in the supermarket or your local chemist!

Risk of baby bottles – FDA keeps quiet

Information from the USA claims that plastics used in baby bottle feeders which contain the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) may cancer and diabetes. This is obviously a major concern but what is even more worrying is that America’s health regulator – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – has been suspected of sitting on the data and may be subpoenaed to release records about the safety of the bottles and infant formula liners.

The FDA has claimed the products are safe, but critics claim this is based on just two studies, which were both funded by the American Plastics Council – and you may be forgiven for thinking they would say that wouldn’t they? Only one of the studies was ever published and peer reviewed and many independent studies into BPA have linked the chemical to cancer, diabetes and obesity. Bart Stupak, a member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce that is considering the subpoena, said: “While many scientists have raised concerns about the safety of bisphenol A, the FDA seems to have relied only upon science paid for by the plastics industry’s lobbying group.”

Update on teenagers

Do you remember in a recent article, (yet another ‘would you believe it’), I reported on the ‘news’ that teenagers who lounge about watching television and undertake very little physical activity probably developed the habit when they were younger? Well I have an update on those teenage couch potatoes, this time from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Apparently, the common practice of putting a TV in your teenager’s bedroom actually increases the amount of television they watch.

Would you believe it? Their study, to be published in the May issue of Pediatrics Journal, was of nearly 800 teenagers and revealed that twice as many 15-18 year-olds who had a TV in their bedrooms said they watched at least five hours of TV a day, compared with those who did not have a television in their bedroom at all. And they are more likely to have unsatisfactory eating and study habits – and a tendency to weight gain and hypertension.A previous study found that having a television in the bedroom is a stronger predictor of obesity than the amount of time spent actually watching it. Perhaps it beams out fat rays, even when switched off – wonder if Dr Who would be interested in that as a storyline?

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents refrain from putting a television in a child’s room. But despite the recommendation, about two-thirds of children ages eight to 18 have a television in their bedroom, the study found, and good luck to any parent who tries to remove it is what I say.

Yet Another ‘would you believe it’

Let’s hear it for Robert McMurray, Ph.D., and colleagues at the University of North Carolina, who managed to get a grant to show that teenagers who lounge about watching television and undertake very little physical activity probably developed the habit when they were younger. I wish I had thought of applying for a grant to study that, who would have guessed that kids who were couch potatoes at age 7-10 were unlikely to turn into star athletes when they hit their teens?

It is actually a serious subject as lack of physical activity and poor aerobic fitness is usually combined with poor eating habits to produce a child at risk of metabolic syndrome. That is a cluster of risk factors that in combination certainly appear to increase the risk of heart disease and other chronic illnesses later in life.

According to Dr Murray, “This is the first study to examine the importance of childhood fitness levels on your metabolism as a teenager. Previously we didn’t know if low fitness levels were an influence. It’s obvious now that there is a link and this is something which we need to pay attention to by encouraging our kids to keep fit, or suffer the consequences later in life.”

The study showed that the unfit kids already had a higher body mass index, higher blood pressure, and a greater total cholesterol level than the children who undertook more exercise and that second group would not go on to develop metabolic syndrome risk factors. In fact the unfit teenagers were six times more likely to have had poor aerobic fitness as children and five times more likely to have had overall low levels of physical activity.

I would guess that if you asked most adults if there was link between low physical activity in children and how they behaved as teenagers, then certainly most parents would not be surprised at the findings.

Anyone know the contact details for the National Lottery Research Funding Applications? I have a great idea for studying the health benefits of breathing on a daily basis, as opposed to only once a week, and I am sure I could show some benefit from it.

Asthma risk for young children

Two new studies on asthma make for interesting reading, particularly if you have young children. At a recent meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology it was reported that nearly 90% of children who wheezed when they had a cold as early as just one year old, went on to be diagnosed with asthma by the time they were six.

Daniel J. Jackson, M.D., of the University of Wisconsin had studied a group of children from birth to age six and his findings were based on this group, he was at pains to point out that as there is no treatment to prevent common cold infections or asthma, but it will be helpful for parents to be aware of the higher risk their for developing asthma and to be alert for the symptoms so they can take early action.

September and October, as well as March and April, are the primary months for such infections and it is suggested that if you have a child in the first year of life who is wheezing in these months then both the parents and the doctor need to keep a close eye on the child during those periods.

Of course this is not the only risk factor, other significant predictors of asthma included having a dog in the house at the child’s birth, other children in the family with asthma, and showing sensitivity to airborne allergens. Also, according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Science in the USA, the problem of asthma can be made worse if you have mice in the house. Almost 83% of the homes studied were found to have mouse allergens, principally from urine, and one third of those homes were found to have a 50% greater risk of having a family member with asthma.

Again prevention is the best plan, so if you have an asthmatic child or adult it is worth making sure that your home is mouse free to minimise potential allergens. Unfortunately it appears that having a cat is no deterrent as levels were just as high in households with cats as without. What are they doing to earn their daily bowl of Whiskas?

Junk food surprise?

Something that is a constant amazement to me is how keen researchers are to prove what we already know – somebody must be giving them grants but in this case I strongly suspect it wasn’t McDonalds or Burger King. This particular study has taken place in Sweden at Linkoping University and made the amazing discovery that just one month of too much junk food and too little exercise can significantly harm the body.

I know we could all have told them that, but they put their volunteers on a diet where they ate fast food twice a day for 30 days and not surprisingly gained 14lb on average, with one volunteer putting on two stones in two weeks.

As a believer in a varied diet, I don’t have a problem with the occasional junk food meal, but how many people eat it twice a day every day? If you know anyone then pass on to them that the biggest initial problem, besides putting on weight, being constipated and prone to spots, all of which are enough to put most people off, then they are also prone to suffer damage to their livers as most of the Swedish study did. Varuna Aluvihare, a consultant hepatologist at King’s College Hospital in London, said that for him the most startling thing about the study is how fast it (liver damage) happens.

Tape Measure Predictor

Identifying children most likely to have an early form of metabolic syndrome needs only a scale and a tape measure, researchers at the University of Verona in Italy have recently discovered during a long study of just under 1500 Italian children. Metabolic syndrome is the term they used to describe the combination of excess weight, hypertension, and high cholesterol and plasma glucose found in children and adolescents.

We know that childhood obesity is a growing problem, but if parents were to monitor the waist-to-height ratio of those aged 5-15 they could help prevent their child developing serious conditions later in life that are linked to obesity such as cardiovascular disease and risk of diabetes.

The significant figure is when a child has a waist-to-height ratio greater than 0.5 and may seem overweight, but not obese so that warning signals are not raised in time. Such children were found to have a 95% chance of meeting the criteria for metabolic syndrome. As with adults, having a high waist measurement is a red flag, although of course there are more high-tech tools available to assess the risk in such children.

The chief researcher, Dr. Maffeis, says that waist-to-height ratio is easier for parents to monitor and interpret before the stage of intervention may be required.

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