Safety

Last week’s recall of half a billion eggs is pushing forward a lot of legislative reform in the way food safety is handled. But in the mean time, parents should keep an eye out to make sure they haven’t purchased any of the recalled brands. Here’s the most up-to-date list of brands with recalled eggs:

• Lucerne
• Albertson
• Mountain Dairy
• Ralph’s
• Boomsma’s
• Sunshine
• Hillandale
• Farm Fresh
• Shoreland
• Lund
• Dutch Farms
• Kemps

From Keen Observers. Photo by Ivy Dawned.

You might think it’s impossible to find a skincare line that meets the following requirements: Vegan, no chemicals, cruelty free, no preservatives, unprocessed and raw, no pesticides, no solvents, and even the glass container is recycled. But you’d be wrong! Steffany has found the Anthology Organic Skincare line.

And it’s even pretty inexpensive! And it’s even less expensive with the 25% off coupon code: ecobold25off at AnthologyPlace.com.

As always, you can see more reviews at Steffany’s website EcoBold.

A new school year has finally begun and that means only one thing: flu season is not far behind. And that means many moms are faced with that seasonal question of whether to get flu shots or not.

Last year, with the outbreak of H1N1, was a nasty flu season and my family was knocked out with H1N1 long before we got the chance to get flu shots.

Because we had H1N1 in October, we chose to still get flu shots once we were all healthy again. After all there was still quite a few months left of the flu season left to deal with. For my family, it seemed better to take our chances with flu shots than to risk welcoming another flu outbreak into the house.

If you’re wondering whether YOU should get the flu shot, the best advice is to trust your instinct and talk to your doctor or pediatrician to see what the flu season is looking like where YOU live.
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Doctors say that headaches and migraines are some of the most frequent complaints in childhood, and yet they seem to be the most overlooked as well. For some reason, pediatricians often view migraines as an adult condition. Interestingly, whereas migraines in adults usually last four or more hours, a migraine in a child can range from 1 to 72 hours, and can be felt more widely throughout the head. Clearly, it’s a real cause for concern.

So what causes headaches and migraines? Changes in a child’s sleep schedule, especially when transitioning back into the school year, can cause headaches. Also the changes in diet — like skipping breakfast or not drinking enough water — can also trigger headaches and migraines for kids.

For more serious cases, pediatricians have been prescribing low doses of antidepressants and anti-seizure drugs, and even preventative therapy. That seems a little extreme, but perhaps it’s because I’ve cast aside headaches in children as an excuse to play hooky for so long?

Do your kids get headaches? How do you treat them (the headaches, not the kids)?

From NYTimes.

Trampolines: every kid wants one, no parent wants to have it in their backyard. But it begs the question: are they safe? Spoiler alert: they’re not safe at all, even with surrounding safety nets. MomLogic asked pediatrician Dr. Gwenn for her input:

It never fails. In fact, not only can I count on this, so can you: Two kids plus one backyard trampoline equals injury. The injury can be mild to major and can involve one or more kids, but it WILL happen — and often includes sprains, contusions, lacerations, head traumas, spinal traumas, dislocations, bumps, bruises and concussions. Safety nets don’t prevent these from happening; they just prevent your kids from getting injured on the ground.

I don’t think it takes a pediatrician to see that trampolines are a terrible idea. Plus, most kids jump on them for five minutes, and if they don’t get injured, they get bored and never use it again. Then it turns into a giant leaf collector in the fall. Awesome. Thanks, trampoline.

Would you buy a trampoline for your kids?

From MomLogic. Photo by Gurumustuk Singh.

BPA is a hormone-disrupting chemical that seeps into your food and water from plastics and cans. While manufacturers keep reassuring people that BPA is not harmful, new research keeps finding evidence that says otherwise. This morning, a study from Washington State University revealed that even small amounts of BPA have negative effects on the ovaries of female mice.

And the worst part is that the BPA exposure, which only takes 12 hours to affect the formation of eggs, gets passed not only from the mother’s children but to her grandchildren as well.

The research may have just been on mice, but yikes, there’s a reason we test mice first! The best way to avoid BPA exposure is to not use any food or drink containers that have the recycling code #7. Unfortunately, that includes a lot of canned foods and drinks, and while it might be impossible to cut all of those out of your diet, maybe cutting back isn’t such a bad idea.

From Babble. Photo by andrivete.

Back to school means back to sports for a lot of young athletes. But what’s the one sports-related injury parents should be concerned about? Concussions.

New research, appearing in Pediatrics, says that in the five years leading up to 2005, the number of concussions incurred from playing sports has more than doubled to a total of half a million cases between 2001-05. But perhaps more surprisingly, 40% of sports-related concussions patients sent to the emergency room were between the ages of 8 and 13.

My first reaction was, “well maybe those numbers don’t sound so bad when you scale it with the growing participation in sports.” But as it turns out, organized sports have had a declining participation. So really, they’re even more striking.

The research suggests that parents, coaches, and physicians need better guidelines for identifying brain trauma specifically in younger kids and figuring out the appropriate amount of time to keep them on the bench, to protect them from long-term harm.

So what can parents do to make sure their kids are protected from concussions in the meantime? Don’t push elementary and middle school sports too hard. Kids feel an overwhelming pressure to compete, even when they know it can harm them. And of course, make sure you’re following at the standard safety practices (which vary, depending on the sport) and make sure your kid’s coach is doing the same.

From the LA Times.

Tobacco advertising is heavily regulated on TV, and there are movements to cut the amount of smoking out of movies. So what is Big Tobacco going to do to sell cigarettes to kids? Go on YouTube, of course.

Researchers from New Zealand discovered that 163 of the most popular and relevant YouTube videos linked to five big cigarette brands’ websites — Marlboro, L&M, Benson and Hedges, Winston, and Mild Seven. 71% of those were pro-tobacco, compared with the 4% that were anti-tobacco (the rest were neutral).

Tobacco makers “vehemently deny advertising on the internet,” naturally. And unfortunately, there’s no way to verify whether they are directly responsible. But Joe Camel was designed specifically to attract kids to cigarettes, so I’m not holding my breath.

Did you know tobacco companies were advertising to kids on YouTube?

From the LA Times. Photo by ankor.

There’s good news from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention: the death toll for this year’s flu season has been lowered substantially from 36,000 deaths to 24,000. That’s a 33% decrease!

It should be noted that 90% of flu deaths happen to people over the age of 65. The new estimate is based on a re-evaluation from 1976 to 2007. The number of deaths have fluctuated wildly, from a high of 48,614 in 2003-4 to a low of 3,349 in 1986-7. Interestingly, the new estimate is not affected by last year’s swine flu pandemic.

Are you worried about this flu season?

I refuse to exercise without my iPod. Why? It makes the experience so much better/less miserable. And I’m sure many of you would agree.

The relationship between exercise and music is particularly interesting, as it draws from multiple disciplines: physiology, biomechanics, and neurology. And yet, scientists are unsure just how music affects your exercise routine.

In one test, British researchers had 12 male college students ride stationary bicycles while listening to music. They changed the tempo of the music slightly — first slower, then faster — but not significantly enough to be noticed. When the tempo was slower, the subjects biked slower; when it was faster, they biked faster. But oddly enough, nobody fund the workout any easier because of the tempo change. While the tempo improved the workout, nobody found the exercise any less discomforting.

Another study found that basketball players who performed poorly under pressure in games were much better at shooting free throws if they were listening to upbeat music. Clearly, music distracts athletes from themselves and everything around them.

Personally, I listen to my iPod at the gym because I’m tired of hearing my gym play the same three songs over and over. I GET IT, YOU LIKE LADY GAGA. NOW LET ME USE THE ELLIPTICAL IN PEACE.

Do you use listen to music when you exercise? How does it affect you?

From the New York Times. Photo by Ed Yourdon.