Stress on Children Effects DNA
Violence hurts children.
No disputing this statement. But now they are discovering that it hurts them down to their most basic genetic make-up, their DNA.
University of Maryland Child Development Lab Director Nathan Fox says “Toxic stress, being exposed to domestic violence abuse, sexual physical abuse or neglect, that kind of abuse [children] really can’t escape from and being exposed to it has dire consequences.”
The recent program by Duke University studies the effect of constant, violent stress on the tip of the DNA strand called Telomeres. It has been found that exposure to violence shortens Telomeres, which makes the cells older.
According to the new research it is possible a seven year old who deals with violence, could have the cellular age of a 17 year old. The result of this means that aging diseases normally seen much later in life, can begin developing in someone almost half their age.
Fox further stated that this demonstrates the need to help make life easier for children who could grow up with illnesses that will affect everything from family life to health care.
Professor Fox says this could help shape policies in the future focusing on vulnerable populations of children to help ease stress. “If in fact some of these children develop cardiovascular disease cancer a result of this early exposure to stress that’s going to cost society a lot more if we spend the money early enough in terms of violence prevention,” Fox stated.
But he cautions that there is still more research that needs to be done concerning the research. Such as, continuing to follow the children who were studied initially to see if reducing stress would also reduce the aging risk once they got older.
To learn more about Telomeres and the role they play on aging and your DNA, National Geographic did a video on Telomeres.
eBooks for Kids – Here We Go!
With all the emphasis lately on eBooks and their acceptance into the mainstream especially with the onslaught of Kindle, Nook, et al, it was only a matter of time until this spilled into the Children’s Book market. I am happy to report that spillover is now taking place.
Scholastic Inc., is developing an app called Storia, which includes around 1,300 e-books and multimedia e-books that can be bought directly from the publisher or from retailers. Such favorite picture series as “Clifford the Big Red Dog” and “Ready, Freddy!” will be in digital format for the first time. The app also will feature games, quizzes, interactive stories, an e-dictionary and a virtual book shelf that kids can organize.
Scholastic has been around for nearly 100 years and has become a global distributor of children’s books through its programs to schools, teachers and children. Scholastic carries an exclusive with the Harry Potter series books for children.
Scholastic Media president, Deborah Forte, says the idea is to make e-Books “more accessible and more relevant.” Forte went on to say that she sees the app “as a way to support reading and something that’s just plain fun.”
A beta version will become available Tuesday for teachers and families who buy through the Scholastic Book Clubs and other Scholastic sales channels. Storia is expected to launch for the general public in the fall, when it should have more than 2,000 books.
The app is free and is available first at scholastic.com/storia, then on iTunes later this March. Forte says the e-books should range in price from $1.95 to $20, but those who download the app will get five free books, including two multimedia selections.
Kids are still well behind in the e-book race, and before this week Scholastic had apps for only a handful of books. Vice president for business development Jeff Mathews says that e-books are around 5 percent of sales for Scholastic children’s books, a fraction of the percentage many publishers report for adult books.
Mathews and Forte cite the relative expense of a Kindle or Nook e-book reading device, even as they drop under $100, as a reason few kids have them. They also say that the typical e-book device is not designed for young people.
Personally I have seen movement to bring more eReaders to children lately and while these primarily carry their own stories and are not accessed to the web, once a company like Scholastic gets behind a program like this, it is only a short period of time before the Apples of the world see the marketing potential and will follow suit.
“The devices, the reading experience and the ecosystems are showcasing all manners of books, magazines and videos,” Forte says, “We are dedicated to kids and reading.”
Storia is intended for children ages 3-14, and Forte says that the app is carefully tailored for each age, whether the books themselves or the difficulty of the quizzes. Parents can track which books their kids are reading, how long they read them and which new words they learned.
“We see Storia as following three basic principles,” Forte says. “One size does not fit all. Parental involvement. And the activities and functions allow for interactive engagement.”
Food Police? Seriously?
By now probably everyone has heard at least one, if not several versions, of the story of the “food police” story that came out of North Carolina. It has many variations by now with everything from taking the young girls food away (not true) to giving her enough extra food to feed several children (also not true).
The big problem I have is why we need anyone watching over what parents feed their children in the first place? Okay, I certainly know that nutrition is a cornerstone to a child’s development and growth, but seriously, do we really need others to tell parents what to pack in their kids lunch?
So many things we were told to eat that was good or better for us than what our parents ate, I wouldn’t touch now for any reason. Margarine loaded with trans fats, fast food that would make faire from a garbage can look healthier. Have you seen the latest on Facebook about processed chicken? You will never touch a chicken nugget again in your life if you have.
Fact is, that unless you live on an organic farm and grow and harvest everything yourself, you will just have to trust that everything you eat won’t kill you somewhere down the line. I did a stent for a meat packer for several years and when I got my first tour of the processing plant, I couldn’t eat meat for a week. Enough said. Since that experience, I have repressed the visions and blocked out what I know in the deep recesses of my mind, and yes, I still love sausages of all type to this day.
Missing milk from your lunch is no big thing. In fact, depending who you may talk to, many people think all dairy is a killer anyway (just ask Marilu Henner). Maybe the parents thought all that milk might not be good for their child so they gave her apple juice instead. Should we clasp them in irons and throw them in the pit for their misguided beliefs?
So this is the best way states and federal government can spend our money? Really? What could possibly be next? Fashion police sending children home who are wearing shorts before it’s 75°? In response to this incident, Congress members Larry Kissell and Renee Elmers penned a letter to Tom Vilsack, the U.S. Agriculture Department Secretary. It rightfully stated this incident is a terrible example of “government overreach” and calls it a waste of money and an embarrassment to North Carolina Schools.
I can think of a bunch of foods that could be far more potentially harmful than missing out on milk. And many of these are highly recommended by the USDA. For instance, did you know that apple seeds contain cyanide? Potatoes and tomatoes have very poisonous stems and leaves filled with glycoalkaloid poison. Green potatoes can cause death, normally after a period of weakness and confusion, followed by a coma. Yes, it happens. And don’t even get me started on how many poisonous mushrooms there are. The point is, we have more important things to keep on eye on our kids, like developing their brains over their palates.
I pray that parents always do their best for their children, with all the resources they have available to them. But please, let us not disintegrate to the point where we need food police to inspect and determine whether or not additional supplements need to be supplied to our kids on their say so. I wish those people who want to butt into someone else’s business all the trans fats and apple seeds they can ingest.
Lead Poisoning – Still A Threat?
Is Lead Poisoning Still an Issue in 2012?
Even today in Ohio, hundreds of children are found to have high levels of lead in their blood, affecting their health and their development.
In Ross County, Ohio, over 1,000 children were screened in 2010, and 10 were found to have elevated levels of lead in their blood. In an effort to assist with screenings and to identify affected children sooner, the Ross County Health District has a new tool available to it.
Recently, the health district received a LeadCare II machine, which is a state-of-the-art blood-lead testing system. Developed by Magellan Biosciences, the machine in just three minutes can provide accurate results with only two drops of blood.
“Studies with the CDC have shown that it’s more accurate than a lab test,” said Jeanne Loftis of Ryan Diagnostics. “It provides accurate, on-the-spot lead testing.” Loftis delivered the machine and taught the health district’s nurses how to use it.
The ability to deliver such rapid results is critical.
“Previously, if we had someone tested through a lab, it took time to get the results, it was costly and we often had to work to get the patients back in here for additional testing and education,” said Kathy Wakefield, the district’s director of public health nursing. “Now we can have results while they’re still here with us and we can address the problem immediately.”
Lead issues aren’t as common as they once were, but in many large cities, and in older cities like Chillicothe, old homes still can have lead-based paint on the walls or in the soil around the home. This was before the metal’s use in paint, gasoline and children’s toys was banned.
Wakefield said the Ohio Department of Health lists areas as “at-risk” by their ZIP code, and many areas in Ross County are considered at-risk. “Lead poisoning is especially detrimental to young children,” she said. “It can harm the body, slow development and affect learning. In high doses, it can also be fatal.”
Lead can be swallowed, inhaled and, in some cases, absorbed through the skin. In Ohio, Wakefield said children covered by Medicaid can have the testing paid for, but the district also will seek grants to pay for additional test kits, allowing children who might not fall into the lower income categories to be tested, too.
So what are some of the questions concerning Lead Poisoning?
What is an elevated blood lead level?
Lead is a highly toxic metal that was used for many years in products found in and around our homes. An elevated blood lead level in a child is defined as 10 or more micrograms of lead in a deciliter (μg/dL) of blood.
Who is effected by elevated blood lead levels?
Children are more vulnerable to lead than adults. While all children are at risk from lead, children living in older housing and in poverty are at the greatest risk. Children who eat paint chips or breathe dust from flaking or peeling lead-based paint are the most likely to develop a problem. Children may also develop high blood lead levels by drinking water contaminated with lead that may be in the plumbing system or by being exposed to contaminated soil or other lead hazards.
What are the symptoms?
Most children who have elevated levels of lead in the blood do not have any symptoms. When symptoms, such as stomach ache, poor appetite, and irritability appear they are often confused with other childhood illnesses. Very severe lead exposure (blood lead levels greater than 80 μg/dL) can cause coma, convulsions and even death.
The long-term effects of elevated blood lead levels in children may include slow development, reduced Intelligence Quotient (IQ) scores, learning disabilities, hearing loss, reduced height and hyperactivity. How quickly these symptoms may appear would be dependent on the level of lead in the blood.
How is an elevated level of lead in the blood detected?
The only way to find the problem is to test the blood. Children who are at high risk for elevated blood lead levels should be tested at 6 months of age. Other children should be tested at age 12-15 months.
If a case is found, should family members be tested?
A case of elevated blood lead indicates an environmental source of lead, often in the home. Brothers and sisters up to 6 years of age should be tested. If the source is a home renovation project, parents and older siblings may need to be evaluated to check for signs of exposure. If the source is found to be a day care center, other children in that facility should be tested.
How is an elevated blood lead level in a child treated?
High levels of lead in the blood (45 μg/dL and above) should be removed by a treatment called chelation. Doctors may decide to use this therapy at lower blood lead levels, depending on the child’s age, housing situation, and clinical signs and symptoms. Chelation is sometimes done on an outpatient basis, but hospitalization may be needed.
Can a child with an elevated blood lead level return home?
If a child is to receive chelation therapy as an outpatient and the home is found to be the source of the lead, the child should live somewhere else until the source of the lead is removed from the home.
What can be done to prevent childhood lead exposure?
Keeping the home clean, eating a good diet, and washing hands can help prevent lead poisoning. Adults can check the home for potential danger areas, looking for flaking paint, crumbling plaster, indoor dust and outdoor dirt that may have lead in it. Any peeling paint should be removed and the paint chips swept away. Children should not be present when scraping or cleaning up paint chips. Dust should be kept to a minimum by damp mopping and using a wet cloth to clean walls, window sills, and other surfaces. Painted wood should not be burned for heating.
If you think your child may be at risk, get them checked. Because even in 2012, lead poisoning is still a serious issue.
New Breakthrough on Autism!
Santa Claus has learned there is great news in the treatment of Autism through food and nutrition. Researchers at the NAET Autism Treatment Center in Buena Park, CA, hypothesized that major contributors to the development and symptoms of autism include food and nutrient sensitivities. NAET stands for Nambudripad’s Allergy Elimination Techniques.
The researchers applied NAET, a combination of a special form of acupressure and kinesiology, to desensitize subjects to multiple allergens as a way to treat symptoms of autism. Their findings were published in the just-released October/November 2011 issue of Integrative Medicine—A Clinician’s Journal, and the study is now available for review.
The improvements were life changing. Twenty-three of the 30 autistic children in the NAET treatment group were able to return to regular school classes with their healthy, non-autistic peers after 1 year of treatment while all of the 30 children in the untreated control group continued to require special education.
The study included 60 children (2.5-10 years old) with a diagnosis of autism who were randomly assigned to either the treatment or control groups. The treatment group consisted of 26 boys and 4 girls and the control group included 25 boys and 5 girls. The 30 children in the treatment group received NAET treatments for 50 key allergens for 1 year. The children in the (non-blinded) control group did not receive any NAET treatments. Each group was allowed to continue with any other therapies they had been receiving. The NST (kinesiology/muscle testing) was used to determine which substances triggered sensitivity reactions in each child and NAET acupressure treatments were then used to eliminate the sensitivities.
Fifty-six children (26 in the NAET-treated group and 30 in the control group) completed the study. After 1 year, the children receiving NAET treatments exhibited clinically dramatic and statistically highly significant improvements in performance (p<.0001 vs. the control group), including a:
- Mean 68.4% decrease in the total Autism Research Institute Autism Treatment Evaluation Checklist (ARI-ATEC) Score
- 64% to 82% mean decreases on the 4 ARI-ATEC subtests
- 47.4% average increase in the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) and
- Decrease of 85% in the total Allergy Symptom Rating Scale (ASRS Score)
“We found that NAET is an effective, safe and simple treatment for children with allergy-related autism,” said board certified internist Jacob Teitelba.um, MD, the lead author of the study. “In human terms, NAET can provide profound and dramatic benefits, giving children with autism and their families their lives back.”
Dr. Teitelbaum, whose foundation funded the research, became interested in NAET after his severe hay fever symptoms were eliminated by a 20-minute NAET treatment, and never recurred. After witnessing an autistic girl become normally verbal after receiving an NAET treatment by his wife Laurie Teitelbaum MS, who practices NAET in Kona, Hawaii, and discovering that this was the experience of many autistic children, they were inspired to design and underwrite the study.
NAET was developed by Devi S. Nambudripad, MD, PhD, L.Ac., DC, in 1983, and since then, she has trained over 10,000 licensed medical practitioners in the protocol.
The full test of the study can be seen at http://www.endfatigue.com/documents/Autism-NAET-full-study-IMCJ_10_5_teitelbaum-Published.pdf
Hopefully this may assist parents everywhere with Autistic children.
A New Hope For Leukemia
The most horrible thing imaginable is to hear your child may have cancer. And one of the worst stigmas has to be attached to the word “leukemia”.
In the United States in 2007, approximately 10,400 children under age 15 were diagnosed with cancer and about 1,545 children will die from the disease, and approximately 100 children with leukemia under the age of 15 die each year in the U.K. Cancer is the leading cause of death by disease among U.S. children 1 to 14 years of age, though it is still relatively rare in this age group. On average, 1 to 2 children develop the disease each year for every 10,000 children in the United States [Source: National Cancer Institute].
According to the Children’s Cancer Fund of America leukemia was once the most dreaded disease that meant almost certain death for a child diagnosed with it. Today, thanks to advances in research and medical treatments, over 80% of childhood leukemia patients survive! Despite great progress in the treatment of childhood leukemia, Leukemia that has returned or is resistant to current treatments remains one of the key causes of death from childhood cancer.
And leukemia is still the most common cancer in children and teens. It accounts for about 1 out of 3 of cancers in children. Even so, as stated above, childhood leukemia is a rare disease.
Acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) accounts for about 3 out of 4 the leukemia cases among children and teens. Most of the rest of the cases will be acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). ALL is most common in early childhood, peaking between 2 and 4 years of age. Cases of AML are more spread out across the childhood years, although it is slightly more common during the first 2 years of life and during the teenage years.
Even now, Cancer Research UK’s Drug Development Office has opened the first trial of a new type of drug to treat children aged from six months to 18 years with acute leukemia, the most dangerous, who are no longer responding to treatment.
In this first-in-child study, 15 children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML) will receive a treatment called AT9283. AT9283 belongs to a new class of drugs called aurora kinase inhibitors.
The trial is led by Great North Children’s Hospital, Newcastle upon Tyne and is also running at four other clinical centers.
AT9283 looks promising in laboratory studies and has been tested in a small number of adults (solid tumors and hematological malignancies) and children and adolescents with solid tumors. This trial will assist in establishing the correct drug dose and investigate if it can treat children and adolescents with leukemia.
Chief investigator Professor Josef Vormoor, said: “It’s devastating to have to tell parents of a child with leukemia that the disease has returned. Or that it’s unlikely their child can be treated with existing drugs. So I’m incredibly excited about the launch of this trial, to see if a new drug can treat the disease, when a child has stopped responding to current treatments.” AT9283 blocks the activity of a group of proteins called aurora kinesis which control cell growth. Blocking these proteins can stop cancer cells’ ability to grow.
Around 1,500 children are diagnosed with cancer each year in the UK, with leukemia, the most common childhood cancer accounting for around a third (31 per cent) of all cases.
The trial is funded, managed and sponsored by the charity’s Drug Development Office (DDO) and the drug is provided by Astex Pharmaceuticals.
Dr Nigel Blackburn, director of drug development at Cancer Research UK’s Drug Development Office, said: “We’ve made amazing progress in the treatment of childhood cancers: In the 1960s, only around a quarter of children with cancer survived. Today, three quarters survive. But there is much more to do.
Blackburn continued, “There’s an urgent need to develop new treatments for young people with leukemia. The launch of this first trial of a completely new treatment for childhood leukemia is incredible news and we’ll be watching the results with great interest.”
With continued research, this might be one more step toward giving families hope to having their children live full, normal, healthy lives.
Information above was provided by Cancer Research UK (http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/news/archive/pressrelease/2012-01-27-Cancerresearchuk-launches-leukaemia-drug-trial-for-childhood-cancer?rss=true), the National Cancer Institute (http://www.cancer.gov) and Children’s Cancer Fund of America, Inc. (http://www.ccfoa.org).
How Does Your State Rate?
According to Foundation for Child Development, the first state rankings on how states are doing with child development was released. The STATE CWI draws from the most comprehensive set of data used to form a state index of child well-being. With these data, the STATE CWI ranks children’s well-being in seven different domains for each state and compares them across the states. In addition to state rankings, the new report includes new findings about the strength of relationships between state policies and selected economic and demographic factors indicative of child well-being.
According to the FCD, the key findings from this study are:
Higher State Taxes Are Better for Children. States that have higher tax rates generate higher revenues and have higher CWI values than states with lower tax rates.
Public Investments in Children Matter. The amount of public investments in programs is strongly related to CWI values among states. Specifically, higher per-pupil spending on education, higher Medicaid child-eligibility thresholds, and higher levels of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits show a substantial correlation with child well-being across states.
A Child’s Well-Being Is Strongly Related to the State Where He or She Lives. Child well-being varies tremendously from state to state, ranging from a 0.85 index value for New Jersey, the highest ranked state, to a negative 0.96 index value for New Mexico, the lowest-ranked state. The six states that had the highest CWI values were New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Utah, Connecticut, and Minnesota. On the other end of the spectrum, Arizona, Nevada, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and New Mexico were found to have the lowest index values.
The full report can be read at http://fcd-us.org.
Rank State Index Value
1 New Jersey 0.85
2 Massachusetts 0.84
3 New Hampshire 0.77
4 Utah 0.75
5 Connecticut 0.74
6 Minnesota 0.73
7 Iowa 0.59
8 North Dakota 0.56
9 Maryland 0.53
10 New York 0.46
11 Pennsylvania 0.43
12 Virginia 0.40
13 Vermont 0.35
14 Wisconsin 0.29
15 Nebraska 0.26
16 Illinois 0.26
17 Maine 0.20
18 Rhode Island 0.1
19 Hawaii 0.19
20 Kansas 0.17
21 Delaware 0.13
22 Washington 0.09
23 Michigan 0.09
24 Idaho 0.07
25 Ohio 0.04
26 Colorado 0.02
27 South Dakota 0.01
28 Indiana -0.01
29 Missouri -0.04
30 California -0.07
31 Oregon -0.0
32 North Carolina -0.11
33 Montana -0.13
34 Florida -0.15
35 Georgia -0.18
36 South Carolina -0.20
37 Wyoming -0.23
38 West Virginia -0.27
39 Texas -0.34
40 Tennessee -0.45
41 Kentucky -0.47
42 Alaska -0.47
43 Oklahoma -0.56
44 Alabama -0.59
45 Arizona -0.68
46 Nevada -0.74
47 Arkansas -0.77
48 Louisiana -0.80
49 Mississippi -0.92
50 New Mexico -0.96
Happy 2012 Everyone!
Wow, 2012!
I apologize for the long sabbatical from this website. We were extremely busy throughout the last quarter of the year. With getting the book out to the public, our school visits and every single weekend since August spent at a market meeting and greeting people, it was an exhausting time when added to all our other duties and parties.
Then after running ourselves down to nothing came all those ugly germs that had been hiding around every corner. Like so many of our friends, Mary and I had spent several weeks passing little nasties back and forth to each other along with the tissue box.
But the germs have finally given up, our immune system seems to be remembering what it is there for, and overall (except for a few coughs and sniffles) we are back to nearly full strength. And of course as soon as we felt better we plunged ourselves back into our tasks.
Even while under the weather, we were discussing plans and goals to achieve in 2012. We are already completely revamping our website (which you already know if you came to this blog through it). And we have plans to add some more features, along with an auto-responder, and change some of the things that didn’t receive the hits we were hoping, while improving the ones that did.
And while I am also feverishly working on my second novel, The North Pole Chronicles, I also intend to be writing a series of articles for this blog, my other website – Santa Claus Stories – and much more. We are hoping to release the new book sometime in July.
For all of you who are returning to this blog and website, we thank you for your loyalty and plan to give you much more to view here. For those of you who are new, welcome! Here you will find much new, along with tried and true, information helping you to make educated decisions about raising your kids. Sometimes the information will surprise you, some may even scare you (read the article on Phthalates, for instance) and some of it you may already know. But we promise to always try to enlighten you further.
So we wish all our readers a very successful and prosperous New Year and we hope you will make stopping by Santa Claus Unplugged a regular routine in your busy schedule.
Nurturing Mothers Can Trump Socio-Economic Pitfalls
It is always interesting to read the latest study on child development. It is even more so when we can see that a loving home and nurturing Mom can trump nearly any socio-economic problem given to that family. Case in point, this was released through Fox News at: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/09/30/mothers-love-may-keep-doctor-away/.
An extra dose of motherly nurturing insulates children from lifelong health problems associated with poverty, a new study says.
The study found that people whose parents did not finish high school were 1.4 times more likely to develop a condition called metabolic syndrome by middle age than children raised by college-educated parents. Metabolic syndrome is a precursor to diabetes and heart disease.
However, among people from less-educated households, those who said they had a very nurturing mother were less likely to develop metabolic syndrome, according to the study published Friday, Sept. 23rd in the journal Psychological Science. A nurturing mother in a more educated household had no effect on the likelihood that her adult children had developed metabolic syndrome.
Parents’ education can be a more reliable indicator of a child’s home life than family income, said Lisa Berkman, director of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. Families may fall into low income because of unlucky circumstances such as illness, but still have some of the protective benefits education seems to bring to households.
Researchers “often look at education, because it makes a stronger case,” said Berkman, who was not involved with the new study.
Low income and lack of education are often tied to poor health, but the study suggests that the connections between socioeconomic status and chronic health conditions are not as clear as the effects of genetics and lifestyle, the researchers said.
Still, it was striking to see a disadvantaged childhood could manifest in physical disease, said Margie Lachman, a co-author of the new study.
“It [childhood experience] shows up under the skin and in the body as an important risk factor,” said Lachman, who is the director of the Lifespan Initiative on Healthy Aging at Brandeis University.
Education is not the whole story
A team of researchers mined data from a subset of 1,200 participants in the decade-long National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) looking for correlations between socioeconomic status as a child and the risk of metabolic syndrome as an adult. The adult participants filled out questionnaires about their parents’ behaviors, and researchers checked their blood pressure, blood sugar, stomach fat and other signs of metabolic syndrome.
Previous results from MIDUS showed adults’ education levels influence their risk for disability, memory and cognitive reasoning problems, said Lachman, one of the principle investigators on the MIDUS study.
“But not everybody who has low education does poorly in these areas,” Lachman said.
The study showed that parents’ education level was not the single determining factor in children’s health: half of children in the least-educated households grew up to develop metabolic syndrome by middle age, but 31 percent of children from college-educated households developed metabolic syndrome, too.
And adults from a disadvantaged household who went on to earn higher degrees were still more likely to develop metabolic syndrome than those raised in more-educated households.
Nurturing, the results implied, could be one difference that explains why some people go on to live healthy lives despite their circumstances, and others don’t.
The researchers measured parental nurturing with survey questions such as “How much did she/he understand your problems and worries?” or “How much time and attention did she/he give you when you needed it?”
The researchers said that this type of study cannot prove why or how a nurturing mother protects her children’s health over the long term. Yet previous studies have shown “nurturant caregivers imbue children with the sense that the world is a safe place and others can be trusted,” the authors from the University of British Columbia and the University of California Los Angeles wrote in the discussion.
“These beliefs may enable disadvantaged youngsters to read less threat into their social worlds, with a consequent reduction in the wear-and-tear such vigilance can place on bodily systems,” they wrote.
Fathers’ nurturing was found not to have an effect in the study, and authors hypothesized that either mothers have a unique contribution to children’s health, or that gender roles during the participants’ childhood after World War II could have influenced the results.
A ‘constant test’ for moms
Studies have found good social ties and stable income lead to better health, Berkman said.
“When you have neither of them you are at double jeopardy,” she said.
And while improving education and socioeconomic status would likely help children grow up to be healthier adults, Berkman said there are also policy changes to family leave laws and flexible work schedules that could give families the opportunity to be more nurturing at home.
“Mothers in almost all cases try really hard. We live in a country where it’s a constant test, and it’s more of a constant test for those who have the least resources,” Berkman said.
New Words Cause New Worry
Welcome to September and the beginning of what we refer to as “Crunch time†at the North Pole. While not immediate, this is the month we prepare for that – all important season – when everything turns on and we start flying all over the place literally and figuratively. It’s also a time when lots of words not normally associated with Santa become more commonly spoken around here. And speaking of words, here’s a couple new words to increase your vocabulary and impress your friends: Phthalates and Methylation. Both are a danger to our kids, and the former is in everything from cars to shampoo. The latter is a result of the stress we are under.
I have reposted the article (see article section) that I found on phthalates in its entirety. While there doesn’t seem to be much we can do about them today, we should at least be aware of the problem and begin working toward a solution.
However, to some extent we can control our environment and the stress we put ourselves under. A common topic for parents is whether their genetics, or their behaviors, are more influential in shaping their children. A study by University of Wisconsin researchers discovered the bridge between them. It shows that parent stress has a lasting impact on the genetic composition of their kids.
The report, published this week in the journal Child Development, is part of the ongoing observation of 500 children from Madison and Milwaukee. Researchers from UW and the University of British Columbia found a chemical reaction called methlyation, which regulates or inhibits genetic expressed, was more common in the DNA of adolescents whose parents reported high levels of stress when their kids were young.
In the current study, researchers measured methylation patterns in cheek-cell DNA collected from more than 100 adolescents at age 15. These patterns were compared to data obtained in 1990 and 1991, when these same children were infants and toddlers, and their parents were asked to report on their stress levels – including depression, family-expressed anger, parenting stress and financial stress.
The researchers, led by Michael S. Kobor, a University of British Columbia associate professor of medical genetics, found that higher stress levels reported by mothers during their child’s first year correlated with methylation levels on 139 DNA sites in adolescents. They also discovered 31 sites that correlated with fathers’ higher reported stress during their child’s preschool years (3½ to 4½ years old).
“This seems to be the first demonstration, using carefully collected longitudinal data, that parental adversity during a child’s first years leads to discernible changes in his or her ‘epigenome,’ measurable more than a decade later,” says Kobor. “This literally provides a mechanism by which experiences ‘get under the skin’ to stay with us for a long time.”
“This is very exciting because we’ve shown that day-to-day stress in early childhood can predict changes in DNA that can be observed in adolescence,†said Dr. Marilyn Essex, a professor of psychiatry at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. “It’s further proof of the importance of those early years and the lasting effects of children’s family environments during infancy and preschool.â€
The researchers found that stress levels in fathers were more strongly related to DNA methylation in daughters, while stress levels in mothers were associated with both boys and girls. Interestingly, the DNA affected by high parental stress levels are not the DNA known to play a role in influencing a person’s behavior or reaction to external stress. The study is nonetheless one of the first to link early childhood stress with how genes express themselves in adolescents.
So maybe it’s not nature or nurture, but nature AND nurture.
