FAMILY NEWS
Overweight Behavior
A new study investigating the relationship between childhood behavior problems and overweight supports the notion that such a link exists -- and suggests that in many cases the child's behavior problems might precede their becoming overweight.
Julie Lumeng, clinical instructor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan Medical School and research investigator at the Center for Human Growth and Development at the University of Michigan, built on earlier, smaller studies that had found ties between behavior problems and overweight. But, Lumeng notes, none of those studies looked at behavior problems as an isolated factor, apart from ethnicity, socioeconomic status and other influences.
For instance, Lumeng says, "Behavior problems have been linked with excessive television viewing. Overweight has also been linked with excessive television viewing. We were interested in whether, when you took into account all of these other factors, the relationship between behavior problems and overweight was still present. It was."
While the study, published in the November issue of Pediatrics, revealed that many children's behavior problems predated their becoming overweight, Lumeng is careful to note that her work does not establish a cause-and-effect relationship.
Shots, Made Comfortable
Many parents would do anything to spare their babies the apparent agony of receiving all those routine immunizations -- as many as 20 before the baby turns 2. Evelyn Reis, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, has found a way to help -- and it starts with a spoonful of sugar.
Standard pediatric practice has the baby lying alone on the exam table while a nurse administers as many as four shots in a single visit. Reis and her colleagues found that a three-pronged intervention -- a sip of a sugar-and-water solution two minutes before the first injection, allowing the baby to suck a pacifier or bottle nipple throughout the procedure, and having a parent hold the baby during the injections -- reduced the duration of the first cry after the first injection from 57.5 seconds (for those who didn't receive the coddling) to 19 seconds.
Reis, whose study appears in the November issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, says that she'd been looking for "a simple thing that could be easily applied in the office" to reduce babies' injection-related pain. Orally administered sucrose, she says, is known to reduce pain in newborns, but studies had shown it takes more than a single intervention to achieve optimal pain reduction. The combination she arrived at is, she notes, "simple, inexpensive and low-tech."
But because "doctors and nurses get numb to the crying," Reis says, parents will have to take the lead in getting physicians to adopt the new approach. "Parents could bring a packet of table sugar and mix it with two teaspoons of water and give it to their babies two minutes before the shots," Reis says. Then the baby can keep sucking the bottle's nipple while the mother or father holds the infant close to their chest.
E-Health Stymies Teens, Too
The Internet has much to offer teenagers looking for health information, especially when it comes to confidentiality and anonymity. But a small study in the current Journal of Medical Internet Research suggests that even the most computer-savvy teens may have trouble finding reliable information in cyberspace.
"Although teens may be experts at locating music to download or driving directions, this does not mean they are experts at finding online health information," says Derek Hansen, a doctoral student at University of Michigan's School of Information and the study's lead author.
Hansen selected 12 middle- and high-school students deemed by school staff to be skilled at computer research to participate in a study in which each student was given six health-related questions and told to find answers on the Internet. ("You are about to get a tattoo, but a friend warned you that some places spread infections like HIV and hepatitis. Use the Internet to find out if this is true.") The students were asked to say out loud why they were performing certain tasks as they did them, and their searches and comments were recorded. Analysis of their work showed that, of 68 observed searches, 47 (69 percent) were successful, with the student finding a correct and useful answer to the health question.
While those numbers might look pretty good, Hansen notes that his study highlights key obstacles to teens' getting accurate health information from the Internet. "Despite the fact that teens are often considered expert online searchers, some of the best teen searchers were not able to answer fairly straightforward health questions," Hansen says. "A combination of ambiguous and misspelled search terms, lack of patience when reading through Web sites, and poor Web site design contributed to failed searches. Students also paid little attention to the source of the information, which should be of vital importance when dealing with health information."
-- Jennifer Huget
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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