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Study: Pregnant Alcohol Intake Alters Baby’s Genes

Posted on August 19, 2019

Pregnant women are advised to stay away from alcohol, according to a new study drinking moderate to high levels of alcohol might alter the DNA of their babies.

“Our findings may make it easier to test children for prenatal alcohol exposure and enable early diagnosis and intervention that can help improve the children’s lives,” said lead author Dipak K. Sarkar, a Distinguished Professor and director of the Endocrine Program in the Department of Animal Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

The findings of the study were published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research’. An earlier study done by Rutgers University found that binge and heavy drinking may trigger a long-lasting genetic change in adults.

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Study:Women Are Still Having Heart Attacks After Delivering

Posted on July 31, 2018

Despite improvements in treatment, the number of women having heart attacks during pregnancy and shortly after giving birth is on the rise.

The number of women who experience heart attacks while pregnant, giving birth, or during the two months following birth is on the rise.

A study from the New York University School of Medicine found the risk for suffering a heart attack among pregnant and recently pregnant women rose by 25 percent between 2002 and 2014.

The researchers studied over 49 million births recorded in hospitals. They found that 1,061 heart attacks occurred during labor and delivery, 922 women were hospitalized prior to birth due to heart attacks, and 2,390 heart attacks occurred during the two-month recovery period following birth.

Heart attack rates were also shown to have increased from 7.1 out of every 100,000 pregnancies in 2002 to 9.5 out of every 100,000 pregnancies in 2014.

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Study: Sugar Consumption During Pregnancy Impacts Baby’s Learning, Memory

Posted on April 23, 2018

A new study found that mothers consuming high amounts of sugar and sugar substitutes during pregnancy, or high sugar consumption during early childhood, was associated with compromised learning and memory skills in children. Alternately, high fruit consumption was found to have the opposite effect.

In a new study published online Thursday in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers analyzed data from more than 1,000 pregnant women from 1999 to 2002 who participated in Project Viva, a longitudinal research study of women and children. In addition, the team also assessed the diets of the women’s subsequent offspring, and their cognition at age three and again at age seven.

Results revealed that poorer childhood cognitive skills were associated with mothers who consumed high sugar diets during their pregnancy or in children who consumed greater amounts of sugar during early life.

These cognitive deficits were most noted in non-verbal abilities to solve problems and verbal memory, as well as decreased intelligence.

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Study: Fish Oil and Probiotics During Pregnancy Reduces Baby’s Allergies

Posted on March 9, 2018

Probiotics and fish oil supplements during pregnancy and breast-feeding may reduce the risk for food allergies and eczema in early childhood, researchers report.

In a review of hundreds of studies, they found 19 randomized controlled trials with strong evidence showing that compared to no supplements, probiotics taken after the 36th week of pregnancy and the first months of lactation were associated with a 22 percent reduction in the risk for eczema in children.

They also analyzed six randomized trials with solid evidence that women who took omega-3 fatty acid supplements during pregnancy and lactation reduced the risk for childhood allergic reaction to eggs, the most common food allergy, by 31 percent.

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Study: Device Addiction Has Kids Unprepared to Hold Pencils in Kindergarten

Posted on March 7, 2018

Children are increasingly finding it hard to hold pens and pencils because of an excessive use of technology, senior paediatric doctors have warned.

An overuse of touchscreen phones and tablets is preventing children’s finger muscles from developing sufficiently to enable them to hold a pencil correctly, they say.

“Children are not coming into school with the hand strength and dexterity they had 10 years ago,” said Sally Payne, the head paediatric occupational therapist at the Heart of England foundation NHS Trust. “Children coming into school are being given a pencil but are increasingly not be able to hold it because they don’t have the fundamental movement skills.

“To be able to grip a pencil and move it, you need strong control of the fine muscles in your fingers. Children need lots of opportunity to develop those skills.”

Payne said the nature of play had changed. “It’s easier to give a child an iPad than encouraging them to do muscle-building play such as building blocks, cutting and sticking, or pulling toys and ropes. Because of this, they’re not developing the underlying foundation skills they need to grip and hold a pencil.”

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Study: Eating Bacon and Eggs While Pregnant Can Boost Baby’s IQ

Posted on January 8, 2018

Eating a full English breakfast during pregnancy could increase a babies’ IQ, new research has found.

The study, published in the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, revealed that mothers who consumed eggs and bacon during the last three months of their term performed better in tests.

This, it says, is because both foods are rich in a nutrient called choline, which despite being vital during pregnancy, most women do not consume enough of.

The link between increased levels of choline and higher IQ has previously been made in mice but has now also been proven in humans.

Dividing 26 participants into two groups, half the women received 480mg/day of choline, slightly more than the adequate intake level of 450mg/day, and the other 930mg.

Researchers then tested information processing speed and visuo-spatial memory at four, seven, 10 and 13 months of age, the Mirror reports.

They recorded how long each baby took to look towards an image on the periphery of a computer screen, a measure of the time it takes for a cue to produce a motor response.

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Study: Spanked Children Have More Behavioral Problems

Posted on December 1, 2017

Most Americans say that spanking is sometimes necessary to discipline a child, but there’s even more evidence that spanking not only doesn’t work, in fact it may be making matters worse.

A new study finds that children who have been spanked by their parents at age five are more likely to have worse behavior problems at ages six and eight compared to children who have never been spanked.

For years pediatricians have been warning parents not to spank their children, but some continue to do so for a variety of reasons including cultural, educational, and even the severity of their child’s behavior. And it’s been hard to prove that the spanking itself is what makes a child more likely to misbehave down the road.

But using statistical analysis of more than 12,000 children researchers found that independent of parents’ education, their socioeconomic status, their marital status and other factors, spanking itself draws out worse behavior in children.

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Study: Restless Leg Syndrome can Impact Sleep During Pregnancy

Posted on July 16, 2017

New York: A new study on pregnant women shows that restless legs syndrome (RLS) is twice as likely to lead to poor sleep quality, poor daytime function and excessive daytime sleepiness.

RLS is an irresistible urge to move your legs typically in the evenings.The results showed that 36 percent of women in their third trimester had RLS, and half of the women with RLS, had moderate to severe symptoms.

Compared with pregnant women without RLS, those with RLS were twice as likely to report poor sleep quality and poor daytime function, and they were also more likely to have excessive daytime sleepiness.

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Study: Breastfeeding Doesn’t Make Babies Smarter After All, This Does

Posted on March 31, 2017

A new study casts doubt on whether breastfed-kids are smarter than their formula-fed peers, though it does note there are benefits to breastfeeding babies including reduced hyperactivity.

The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, finds that while kids between 3 and 5 years old who were breastfed as babies scored higher on cognitive tests than their counterparts, the difference was not that significant.”We weren’t able to find a direct causal link between breastfeeding and children’s cognitive outcomes,” Lisa-Christine Girard, an Irish researcher who authored the study, told NPR.

Socioeconomic factors and the overall behavior and environment of a child contribute to a higher cognitive ability, the study found. When the researchers accounted for those factors, it was harder to link breastfeeding by itself to smarter children, NPR reports.

The researchers did, however, note that the breastfed kids were less hyperactive by age three if they had been breastfed for six months as a baby. But by age five, the impact on hyperactivity appeared to fade.

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Study: Kids Need Help Deciphering Real from Fake news

Posted on March 12, 2017

If you wondered whether we need to do more to help our kids recognize “fake news,” a new report makes it clear the answer is a resounding yes.

Although 44% of tweens and teens in a recent survey said they can tell the difference between fake news stories and real ones, more than 30% who said they shared a news story online during the past six months admitted that they didn’t get it exactly right.

They said they later found out that a story they shared was wrong or inaccurate, according to the survey by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization focused on helping parents, kids and educators negotiate media and technology.

The survey of 853 children ages 10 to 18 in the United States also asked kids how much they trust the information they received from each of their news sources.

Family got higher marks than teachers, news organizations and friends. Sixty-six percent of tweens and teens said they trust the information they received from family, compared with 48% for teachers and other adults, 25% for news organizations and just 17% for friends.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/10/health/fake-news-kids-common-sense-media/index.html

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