children's health

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Heart Association recommend that all children drink low fat or skimmed milk after the age of two to reduce their saturated fat intake and ward off excess weight gain. But the evidence to back up this stance is mixed, say the authors, who wanted to find out whether milk consumption patterns among two-year-olds affected weight gain.

High birth weight, rapid weight gain, and having an overweight mother who smokes can all increase the risk of a baby becoming obese later in childhood, according to research by experts at The University of Nottingham. The study was published in the latest edition of the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood.

A study published in Cancer, Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention found that mothers who took folic acid supplements during their pregnancy reduced the likelihood of childhood tumors by 45 percent.

While some foods are enriched with folic acid, more research shows that the body absorbs the synthetic version of the vitamin much better than the natural version.

It’s 2 a.m. and the piercing scream hits my ears like a gunshot. My eyes, heavy with sleep, snap open and I stumble down the hallway, groping in the dark for the switch that will guide me to the source of the unfolding drama. I am not alarmed, at least not in the heart-in-your-throat way that follows an unknown scream in the night.