LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

raising healthy children

Are Your Cooking Pans Damaging Your Child’s Health?

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You know those wonderful, non-stick pans that you love so well?  I hope you realize that many of today’s “conveniences” like non-stick cookware come with a price beyond the initial purchase.

The wonderful Teflon that keeps all your foods from sticking to the pan is no exception.  The chemical compounds typically found in non-stick cookware include 25 cent words like perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonate (PFOS).  Toxic compounds like these have been found to affect thyroid function, cancer risk and heart disease.

In this particular study, researchers looked at the relationship between PFOA and PFOS levels and cholesterol levels in 12,476 children.  Here’s what they found:

  • PFOA was linked to higher total cholesterol and LDL-C
  • PFOS was linked to higher total cholesterol, HDL-C, and LDL-C

Even if these compounds were not linked to heart-disease-friendly changes in blood lipids, do we really want something called “perfluorooctanoic acid” in our children’s blood anyway when the word is too long to even fit on a Scrabble board??

Toss your non-stick cookware and buy stainless steel.

How Can We Increase the Likelihood of Breastfeeding?

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It seems like society continues to move further and further away from nursing.  There is absolutely no doubt that this move is a BAD thing.
There are compounds in breast milk that we are only now beginning to discover (galacto-oligosaccharides are the most recent discovery).  Formula will never, ever, ever replace breast milk.
I hear often that someone “tried.”  What if they “tried” 2,000 or even 200 years ago?  What then?  If the same attitude was present then, we would likely not exist as a species.  Do you ever see a new mother in the animal kingdom “trying?”
In know this may sound harsh to some, but the second you decide to get pregnant, the decisions you make are impacting that as of yet unconceived child for the next 40, 50 even 60 yrs.  That means that anything we can do to increase the successfulness of nursing is important.
This particular study found multiple factors that delayed the onset of milk production in new mothers.  One of these was mom’s body weight–a factor that needs to be addressed long before a woman actually becomes pregnant.
At some point we need to grasp the idea that every decision, every drop of food, every chemical, every minute of exercise, every stressful period WILL have an effect on that baby for the rest of their lives.  And we need to act like it matters to us.

Is YOUR Stress Programming Your Kids for Depression?

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There is absolutely no doubt that stress is a major factor in the declining health of our country.  From the standpoint of treating patients in my office, helping patients manage their own stress is one of the most difficult tasks I undertake.  Sadly, only on rare occasions are patients successful.
I know that my own life is virtually stress free (despite its challenges) but I am unfortunately all to often unable to help guide patients to the same state of mind.  Maybe if patients truly understood how devastating stress is the outcomes would be better.
This particular article points to previously unforeseen consequences.  Basically, early on (preschool up until 3rd grade), children who were at high risk of dysphoric disorder had a slower than expected cortisol response to stress.  At some point in the next few years, these same high risk kids OVER react to these same stressful situations.
There is something that happens very early on to our children that may predispose them to depression.  Alterations in healthy stress responses begin as early as preschool.  Research has even suggested that life in the womb can predispose children to altered stress responses.
Is YOUR stress affecting your children more than you think?

 

Healthy Kids: Critical Factor for your Kids to Live a Healthy Life

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This blog post is going to cut across a few topics and may seem offensive at first read. But it is clear that your child’s social environment plays a role in long term health.

Any therapist reading this is avidly nodding his or her head in agreement, but there are those who, when given this information, will push back because it bears the heavy weight of parental responsibility in your child’s long term health.

It is already abundantly clear from mounds of research studies that childhood adversity affects long term health. Risk of chronic pain is high. Heart disease rates are higher. Depression rates are higher. Adversity can take the form of malnutrition, emotional abuse or physical abuse. Financial status of the family is not normally considered in this context.

However, socioeconomic status does play a role in a child’s health. Frequently research looks at obesity and diabetes rates as it relates to socioeconomic status. This particular study looks at the issue from a different angle.

I have written about telomeres in previous articles that can be read by clicking here. Basically, they are wicks at the end of our DNA that determine how long a cell is going to live. Longer telomeres are a good thing and are consistent with longevity, while shorter telomeres lead to chronic disease and shorter lives. Despite what some marketing messages tell you about their supplements, I have never come across anything to suggest that we can lengthen our telomeres once they are shortened.

For this reason, preserving telomere length is of the utmost importance and certain aspects of lifestyle have been shown to lead to longer telomeres (positive choices) and shorter telomeres (bad choices). In this study, researchers looked at the telomere length of 40 nine-year old African-American boys; half of the participants were raised in what were considered “very disadvantaged environments,” and the other 20 were raised in what were considered advantaged environments. Here’s what they found:

• Boys in a disadvantaged environment had a 19% shorter telomere lenthgs.
• A doubling of the family income/needs ratio was linked to a 5% increase in telomere length (basically, higher financial stability = longer telomeres).
• If the mother had a high school degree there was a 32% increase in telomere length.
• If the mother had at least some postsecondary education there was a 35% increase in length.
• Most damage to telomere length was when the child was exposed to multiple changes in the family’s structure, leading to a 40% decrease.
• Low scores on the parenting quality index was linked to a 3% decrease.

Here’s where it gets a little more interesting. When the researchers looked through the lens of genes related to serotonin and dopamine pathways (these pathways can basically indicate how “susceptible” the child is to the experiences of life) the relationships above got even stronger. Basically:

• Boys in the most sensitive group have longer telomere lengths when raised in the advantaged environment.
• However, if this same group of sensitive boys is raised in the disadvantaged environment they will, conversely, have the shortest telomere lengths.

This could be fantastic news or incredibly bad news, depending upon the situation. Being a glass-is-half-full type of person, to me this means that, if we make the right choices as a family, even the most “genetically susceptible” kids have the potential for a long and healthy life. Personally, as a parent, the bulk of my choices center around kids. What we eat, the stress I bring into the household, the conversations I have at bedtime (Keegan, now 8, and I always talk about our favorite parts of the day so that he goes to bed with positive thoughts flowing through his mind) and the importance of being active.

Even in the worst of socioeconomic situations, there are always things under our control But, in order for us to manipulate our children’s environment for the best of outcomes, we, as parents, have to accept the WE are in control of many of the factors. Until parents accept this responsibility, the child has little hope to break out and move above in life.

Childhood Obesity Statistics–Where Do We Place the Blame?

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It’s very easy to look around and notice that any childhood obesity statistic you point to is headed in an unwanted direction. But what is the best way to fix it?

It started with getting our kids to move more.  Sitting around playing video games was destroying our kids’ collective waistlines.  If we could just get them moving more life would be great again.  Heck–even Ronald McDonald hopped in this bandwagon.

And yet the percentage of obese children continue to grow.

So it must be soda in our schools.  Pepsi and Coke weren’t happy about this movement but we did it anyway.  And what did we see?  Sugar sweetened beverage consumption didn’t change.  And how could this be?  Because the kids had ready access at home to this marvel of modern chemistry.

We’ve danced around the problem for so long now that we’ve forgotten where it starts.  At home.

Sure, school lunches need some work.  Sure, we know that things like BPA leads to obesity and diabetes and other chemical exposures are everywhere (of course-parents should NOT be giving their kids bottled water anyway…).

Long before children arrive at school and start to eat school lunches they have been influenced by the parents eating behaviors.  This means you.

As parents, we have to stop the cycle.  Of course, first we have to recognize the problem, and studies have shown that some parents are having a problem accepting his or her child as being overweight.

Just in case you don’t believe me or think I’m being overly dramatic, this particular study adds additional evidence to the fact that parental obesity is driving childhood obesity statistics in the US off the worldwide charts.

Researchers looked at weight loss interventions for obese children that were at an average of 11.9 years old.  They looked at factors that led to an inability to lose weight and one single factor stood out above all else.

Obese children in families where both parents had weight problems were 600% more likely to be unsuccessful.

600%

If you are a parent of an obese child and you yourself have weight issues, you owe it to your child to make the right decisions for yourself first.  That means NOT running around stressing about making sure your child eats breakfast or dinner but skipping it yourself.

It means that your exercise is just as important as your child’s soccer or football practice.

It means understanding that the overwhelming stress from work is never worth teaching your children these same coping habits. 

Make the decision right now for your family.

7 WAYS TO SHORTEN YOUR TEENS’ LIFE

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Sounds like a pretty strong statement? I cannot make it any clearer that the decisions our children make today will pave the way for health or disease in their later years.

It should also be clear by now that the fastest way to an early grave is by taking in too many calories. Calorie restriction without nutrient restriction is the key to longevity and avoiding all chronic diseases. So how can we tell how well we’re doing with our lifestyles?

There really isn’t a single marker that can measure longevity, but there are a few that correlate very, very strongly with long term health and longevity. One of these is telomere length.  What are telomeres, you ask? Consider them as the wick on the end of the DNA of our cells. When this wick burns down, that’s it. The cell is no more. So, the longer the telomere on the end of our DNA, the longer that cell is going to live and, by extension, the longer you are going to live.

This particular article finds that higher caloric intake in teens led to a shorter telomere length in their white blood cells. Not a good thing. And we don’t get these telomeres back–once they are shortened they’re shortened for life.

Consider that the next time the Mcdonald’s drive thru seems like the “only” option.

So what else has been shown to lower telomere length?

  1. Multivitamin use has shown to lead to longer telomeres
  2. A pro diabetic lifestyle shortens our telomeres
  3. Stress shortens telomere length
  4. Overweight children have shorter telomeres
  5. Childhood abuse (emotional, nutritional or physical) shortens telomeres
  6. Omega 3 fatty acids lead to longer telomeres

Overall, you can see that the everyday decisions we make as parents for our children have a direct impact on their longevity. Decide well or they will pay the price.