All Search Results
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Does My Child Have ADHD?
Many families have opted for virtual education over the past year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so parents have been able to observe their children in an academic setting. And some wonder if their children’s difficulty adapting to virtual learning may be because of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
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Want a Happier Baby? Adopt a Sleep Schedule
Sleep deprivation is one of the main challenges of parenthood. How much a baby needs to sleep and how much they want to sleep are often two different things. This often results in a tired, cranky child and tired, frustrated parents.
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Will My Student Athlete Be a Healthier Adult?
Playing sports as a child can set your kid up for a lifetime of healthy habits. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in five children is obese in the United States. As a result, diabetes, high cholesterol and hypertension are rising among children, who historically hadn’t been plagued by these health issues.
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Does my child need Antibiotics?
Does My Child Need Antibiotics?
About once a month, I will get a phone call from any one of my girlfriends who is looking for a friendly “second opinion” about their child. She tells me that her child hasn’t been feeling well for a few days, and she finally got an appointment to see their pediatrician on short notice. She becomes disappointed because her doctor did not give her a prescription for antibiotics for her child. She is upset because her child “always gets better on antibiotics.” My friend voices her frustration because she feels like her doctor “didn’t do anything.” Then she may ask me to “just prescribe something” for her child. I gently have to tell her no, because it is not right for me to do that since her child is not my patient, and I have not examined her child. I reassure her to trust her pediatrician, and to definitely keep her doctor in the loop if her child’s condition is not improving, or actually worsens over the next day or two.What are Antibiotics?
Antibiotics are medications that can be used to treat bacterial infections. For example, if your child has an ear infection or strep throat, your pediatrician will prescribe an appropriate antibiotic to help treat the infection. Anti-virals are medications that can treat viral infections, such as influenza or herpes simplex. Anti-fungals work against fungal infections, such as ringworm or yeast infections. -
January: National Birth Defects Prevention Month
January is National Birth Defects Prevention Month. One in every 33 babies is born with a birth defect. If you are thinking about becoming pregnant in the near future, there are a few things that you can do to improve your health and reduce the chance of your baby being born with a birth defect.
Start taking a prenatal vitamin with folic acid.
Folic acid is a B vitamin that our body uses to make new cells. This vitamin is important because when you have enough folic acid in your body, that helps reduce the risk of birth defects of the brain and spinal cord in your baby (also known as neural tube defects such as anencephaly and spina bifida). Folic acid works best in preventing neural tube defects if taken before pregnancy and during the first few weeks of pregnancy, before most women even know that they are pregnant. -
Children and CT Scans
In June 2013, an article was published in JAMA Pediatrics that discussed the use of CT scans in children, and the risk of developing cancer in the future. A CT scan can be a very useful tool for a physician to use to either make, or confirm, a diagnosis if your child is having a medical problem. It is important for families to understand that a CT scan uses radiation, and we know that exposure to radiation is linked to cancer.
The Study: The link between CT scans and cancer
The information from the JAMA Pediatrics study describes the overall increase of use in CT scans in children over the past 20 years. The number of pediatric CT scans increased until about 2006, and then began to decline. The amount of radiation in a CT scan can be 100 to 500 times greater than a plain x-ray. Children are very sensitive to exposure to radiation that can cause future cancer because of their young age, and because they have many more years of growth and development ahead of them. -
What we can learn from Leelah Alcorn’s suicide
*this photo was posted on Leelah Alcorn's tumblr site
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Is my child constipated?
Like many other parents, I tend to fuss over my children’s GI tracts – what goes in, and what comes out. Has my son pooped already today? Is the poop too soft or too hard? What did I feed my daughter that made her poop look like that? Are my kids pooping too much or too little?
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“Are you on Facebook?”
“Why, yes, I am…”
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What is Plagiocephaly?
What do you do if your child has an irregularly shaped head?