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Q&A

You've asked a question I've heard over and over from parents all around the world. We love to hear the quaint expressions our kids come up with as their language skills blossom, but sometimes their insistent questions seems a bit like the drip,...
3 weeks 4 days ago

Blog entry

I recently heard from an anxious mother in Kuwait,"My son has been vaccinated twice with the MMR by mistake, one was at 1.5 year and the second at 3.9 years. Please kindly advise."
5 weeks 1 day ago
Antibiotic-resistant pneumococcal infections have become a major health problem. In February 2000 the FDA approved Prevnar, the exciting new vaccine that can prevent pneumococcal infections - the leading cause of serious meningitis and pneumonia....
5 weeks 2 days ago
More than one in four children in the United States now live with a family member who has an alcohol abuse problem, according to a report in the January 2000 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. This has a major impact on these children,...
6 weeks 4 days ago
Use of St. John's Wort to treat depression has skyrocketed over the last year, increasing by more than 2000%. St. John's Wort has become a multi-billion dollar industry. A major study released in January 2000 found that St. John's Wort can have...
6 weeks 4 days ago
In the Northern Hemisphere it's the season for respiratory illnesses. Children with RSV bronchiolitis usually wheeze. Often these same children go on to develop asthma. My hunch has been that RSV does not cause asthma, but that children born with a...
6 weeks 4 days ago
Literally millions of children in the United States remain without health insurance. Whether from lack of eligibility or from lack of awareness of eligibility, these children fall between the cracks of commercial insurance, Medicaid, and the...
6 weeks 4 days ago
Dr. Kathi Kemper, author of The Holistic Pediatrician, has co-authored a new study of the safety of homeopathic and naturopathic treatment of children. As reported in the January 2000 issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine,the...
6 weeks 4 days ago
The newly approved Lyme disease vaccine is not yet proven safe and effective for children under age 15, although the vaccine looks promising for children in studies currently underway. In the meantime the American Academy of Pediatrics has issued...
6 weeks 4 days ago
Just when we've mastered the difference between good and bad cholesterol, researchers have introduced a host of new risk factors for heart disease. While the major risk factors such as family history and elevated LDL cholesterol are still the...
6 weeks 4 days ago
I heard from a reader about an extremely common practice that most of us have been warned never to do: My wife was cleaning our three-year old daughter's ear with a cotton swab. She turned into the swab causing it to penetrate her ear causing...
6 weeks 4 days ago
Too often, difficult children are incorrectly labeled with ADHD. On the other hand, many children who do have ADHD remain undiagnosed. And in either case, related learning disabilities or mood problems are often missed. The American Academy of...
6 weeks 4 days ago
Many children are allergic to house dust. But what is it in dust that they are allergic to? Much of dust is made up of flakes of our old skin. By itself this isn't a problem, but as we've known for a while, many children are allergic to the house...
6 weeks 4 days ago
Some parents who read the September 28th, 2000 Daily Dose News Alert were alarmed or saddened about the concerns raised regarding plastic-lined disposable diapers. As I said, the association has not been proven (though it does make sense to me). If...
6 weeks 4 days ago
I hear this from parents all the time -- and they are right! A study in the online version of Pediatrics found that pharmacies often dispense insufficient liquid antibiotic to complete an antibiotic course. If thirty 1 tsp doses are to be given...
6 weeks 4 days ago
Even the best trauma centers may not be best for children. A study in the August 2000 issue of the Journal of Trauma found that injured children have significantly higher survival rates (more than twice as high!!!) when treated at pediatric trauma...
6 weeks 4 days ago
Music is a key to the inner world of children. It's also a great way to teach adolescents (and younger children) about health and social responsibility. Between the ages of 13 and 18, the average teen listenes to 10,500 hours of music. Two family...
6 weeks 4 days ago
True homeopathic remedies are often criticized by allopathic physicians because the remedies are so dilute that no molecules of the active ingredients remain. Advocates of homeopathy reply that the homeopathic remedies retain some sort of memory of...
6 weeks 4 days ago
"Enjoy enlightened conversation about nose rings, hissy fits, and Mr. Boo Bear!" I've been to many parenting conferences, but this time, I was floored. I participated in the 2000 For the Love of Kids, put on in the Cincinnati, Ohio area by a...
6 weeks 4 days ago
Women still reeling from the diagnosis of breast cancer need support and guidance regarding discussing this weighty matter with their children. A study in the August 19th/26th, 2000 issue of the British Medical Journal found that although most women...
6 weeks 4 days ago
Most doctors feel like they do a good job communicating with patients. But when researchers analyzed audiotaped conversations between doctors and patients who knew they were being taped to study communication effectiveness, they found that adequate...
6 weeks 4 days ago
Teen girls who have low iron are more than twice as likely to score below average in mathematics achievement tests than similar girls with normal iron status -- even if they have no signs of anemia. The lower the iron, the lower the scores,...
6 weeks 4 days ago
Scooter injuries have skyrocketed since May, sending a total of 27,600 people to emergency rooms (including over 23,000 children), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report in the December 15th, 2000 Morbidity and...
6 weeks 4 days ago
Each time surveyors ask people if they would like to connect with their own doctors online, the answer is overwhelmingly yes. Doctors, however, have been reluctant to integrate the Internet into their practices. It's not that doctors have been...
6 weeks 4 days ago
Secondhand cigarette smoke saps nutrients directly out of kid's blood, according to a report in the December 2000 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Important antioxidants, such as beta-carotene, are especially depleted. Found in...
6 weeks 4 days ago