Breakfast cereal tied to lower BMI for kids

View PhotoReuters/Reuters - A bag of corn flakes is seen in Bucharest April 23, 2012. REUTERS/Bogdan Cristel

Breakfast cereal tied to lower BMI for kids - Regularly eating cereal for breakfast is tied to healthy weight for kids, according to a new study that endorses making breakfast cereal accessible to low-income kids to help fight childhood obesity.

One in every four American children lives in a food insecure household where breakfast isn't a sure thing, lead author Dr. Lana Frantzen told Reuters Health.

"(Cereal) is an excellent breakfast choice, it's simple, and gets those essential nutrients that children need, especially low income minority children," who tend to be hit hardest by childhood obesity and related health problems, said Frantzen, who is employed by Dairy MAX, a regional dairy council in Grand Prairie, Texas.

Previous studies have linked eating breakfast with maintaining a lower body mass index (BMI) over time. The new study looked at the role that breakfast, specifically cereal, plays in both weight and nutrition among low-income kids.

Frantzen and her coauthors interviewed 625 schoolchildren as they progressed from fourth to sixth grades in San Antonio. Once a year they asked the children to remember what they had had to eat over the previous three days and calculated their BMI, a measure of weight relative to height.

As fourth graders, 64 percent of the kids said they'd eaten breakfast on each of the last three days, compared to 42 percent by the time they were sixth graders.

With data for three days per year for three years in a row, the researchers ended up with nine days of breakfast analysis for each child. Kids who ate cereal four out of the nine days tended to be in the 95th percentile for BMI, which is considered overweight, compared to kids who ate cereal all nine days, whose measurements were in the 65th percentile, in the healthy weight range.

Thirty-two percent of fourth graders did not eat breakfast at all, 25 percent had something other than cereal and about 43 percent had cereal.

Cereals, like Frosted flakes, Cheerios and Kix, were the most common breakfast items. Children who didn't eat cereal but did have breakfast reported having foods ranging from scrambled eggs, white bread and sausage to granola bars, tortillas and breakfast tacos.

Only 70 kids had cereal on every one of the three days, but for each time they had cereal, their intake of certain nutrients was higher than that of other kids, Frantzen's group reports in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Kids who ate more cereal got more vitamin D, B-3, B-12, riboflavin, calcium, iron, zinc and potassium in their diets than kids who ate less cereal or none at all. They also got slightly more calories, fat, fiber and sugar.

Cereals are fortified with a variety of vitamins and minerals, and the milk that usually comes with cereals is a good source of calcium, potassium and vitamin D, Frantzen said.

"I think it was a nice advancement in knowledge overall about the importance of eating breakfast," according to Dr. Matthew Haemer, medical director of the nutrition and fitness clinic at Children's Hospital Colorado in Aurora.

"But the analysis that they do didn't separate out kids who only ate cereal compared to those who ate something else," said Haemer, who was not involved in the study.

Policies like the School Breakfast Program are already in place to provide a low cost or free meal to kids who qualify, but the issue demands more attention and resources, since generations of kids are starting out the day without a healthy breakfast, he said.

Haemer told Reuters Health he was particularly struck by the fact that for the three days surveyed, each additional day that included cereal was associated with a 2 percentile decrease in BMI.

"Moving BMI percentile down 2 percentage points, that's not going to cure the obesity epidemic, but it is a significant difference," he said.

There is an association between cereal and healthier BMI, but it's still unclear how it works, Haemer said. He recommends that if parents choose cereal as a quick, easy option, they go for one high in fiber and low in sugar and fat.

"They didn't really look thoughtfully at the other types of breakfasts that could be eaten, for example there may be benefits of including oatmeal and low fat turkey sausage that could be part of a healthy breakfast," he said.

"There's still a lot of science to be done," he said. "Cereal appears to be part of the picture but it's not the complete picture." ( Reuters Health )

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How Much Exercise Do Kids Really Need?

How Much Exercise Do Kids Really Need? - After soccer practice this weekend, my three-and-a-half year old son and his buddies hit the playground for a good hour of running and climbing. A gallon of water and a hamburger later, my husband and I were ready to call it a day, but he had a different idea - how about we go to the park and use the climbing wall?

Most little kids have boundless physical energy (when it comes to activities they like, at least) and when they're young, a healthy dose of activity will come in the course of a normal day without much thought. Still, educators and public health officials have guidelines to help parents make sure their little ones are getting the exercise they need for healthy development.

Beyond physical health

We all know that exercise is important for muscle strength, lean body composition, setting kids on a lifelong trajectory of good cardiovascular health, and lowering the risk of chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes.

But when your kid is huffing and puffing, it's not just a benefit to her body. Physical activity has been shown to improve executive function (the ability to focus on and retain important information and filter distractions), perhaps through an increase in available blood or energy to the frontal cortex and the memory-forming hippocampus. In other words, exercise also helps your child think.

And we have reason to believe that staying active is important to your child's mood, too. On an immediate level you can see this difference in spirit - let's say, when your child starts to hit his friends after he's cooped up too long, or when he's been sluggishly devouring shows on the iPad and then brightens when he gets out of the house to play tag.

How much exercise do kids need?

You'll find plenty of benchmarks for children's physical activity out there, and most, like those from the CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services, converge on the idea that male and female children and adolescents need at least one hour of exercise every day. That should be composed of activities that are:

• Aerobic (running, jumping, biking, dancing, and other pastimes that up your child's heart rate)
• Muscle-strengthening (climbing or other actions that "overload" muscles beyond their normal work)
• Bone-strengthening (jumping, running, hopscotch, and other actions that put force on the bones)
• The National Association for Sport and Physical Education says that toddlers need 30 minutes of structured and 60 minutes of unstructured activity every day, and that they should not be sedentary for more than 60 minutes at a time except to sleep. For preschoolers, the recommendation is 60 minutes of structured and 60 minutes to several hours of unstructured activity, with the same parameter of being sedentary for no more than an hour. Kids ages five to 12 should get at least an hour of activity all or most days of the week.

Running out of ideas to keep your kid moving? Try these tips for staying active:

Go for the big schoolyard

If your child is in daycare or preschool (especially if it's a full day program), make sure there is plenty of indoor and outdoor space for toddling and running, and also a safe climbing structure. By the age of three, most kids need a nice wide-open yard to play tag, bike, or just run in good old-fashioned circles.

Keep the stroller for long walks

While the stroller makes life easier for parents, try to limit it to longer hikes. Help your toddler or preschooler get in the habit of walking next to you instead. Make it an "adventure walk," in which you pick up interesting treasures along the way or pretend you're exploring the neighborhood, if she needs encouragement.

The friend factor

A recent study gave us reason to think that social dynamics can have an impact on a child's level of activity; feeling ostracized or excluded may make our little ones more likely to be sedentary. Check out what's happening on the playground with your child's friends and make sure she feels comfortable and motivated to get in the game.

Limit TV

Television is the ultimate anti-exercise, so see if you can limit screen time by having parameters around it, such as only on the weekends or only one show per day.

Sleep and eat well

Your little one needs energy to play, so check that she's sleeping well (13-15 hours a day for a one-year-old; 12-14 hours a day for a two-year-old; and at least 11-12 hours for a preschooler) and getting plenty of healthy foods and lots of water. ( Babble.com | Team Mom )

READ MORE - How Much Exercise Do Kids Really Need?

Study Ties Secondhand Smoke to Bladder Irritation in Kids

Study Ties Secondhand Smoke to Bladder Irritation in Kids - Parents who smoke may put their children at greater risk for bladder irritation, according to a small new study.

Young children between the ages of 4 and 10 were at particular risk from exposure to secondhand smoke.

Bladder irritation involves the urge to urinate, urinating more frequently and incontinence. The study revealed that exposure to secondhand smoke is linked to more severe symptoms of bladder irritation: The more exposure the children had, the worse their symptoms became.

Led by Dr. Kelly Johnson, researchers from Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and Rutgers University analyzed survey information on 45 children ranging in age from 4 to 17. All had symptoms of bladder irritation. The researchers divided the children into four groups based on the severity of their symptoms: very mild, mild, moderate or severe.

Twenty-four of the children studied had moderate to severe symptoms of bladder irritation, while 21 had mild or very mild symptoms.

The children with moderate or severe symptoms were more likely to have consistent exposure to secondhand smoke, the researchers noted. Of these kids, 23 percent had a mother who smoked and 50 percent of them were regularly exposed to secondhand smoke while riding in a car.

On the other hand, the children whose mother didn't smoke and were not exposed to secondhand smoke in the car had only very mild or mild symptoms of bladder irritation.

The study was expected to be presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Urological Association in Atlanta. The data and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

"Secondhand smoke is a leading cause of preventable death in the United States," Dr. Anthony Atala, a pediatric urologist at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and a spokesman for the AUA, said in an association news release. "Beyond conditions such as lung cancer, heart disease and asthma, we now know that smoking has a negative impact on urinary symptoms, particularly in young children. Data presented today should be added to the indisputable evidence that parents shouldn't smoke around their children."

While the study uncovered a link between secondhand smoke and bladder problems, it did not prove a cause-and-effect. ( HealthDay News )

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Study Links Swearing on TV to Teen Aggression

Study Links Swearing on TV to Teen Aggression - Swearing on television during prime time will most likely get a show fined by the Federal Communication Commission, and new research suggests it might be for good reasons.

By studying Midwestern youths, the study found that the more profanity they are exposed to through television and video games, the more accepting they are of swearing and the more likely they are to use profanity themselves. Those kids who swore more were also more likely to engage in physical aggression.

"Profanity is kind of like a stepping stone," said study researcher Sarah Coyne, of Brigham Young University. "You don't go to a movie, hear a bad word, and then go shoot somebody. But when youth both hear and then try profanity out for themselves it can start a downward slide toward more aggressive behavior."

Measuring the profane

Coyne and colleagues polled 266 middle-school students in the Midwest to find out the amount of exposure they had to profane and violent TV and video games, as well as the students' own attitudes and behaviors about profanity and aggression toward others.

The researchers found links between the amount of swearing in video games and television and how often the students used profanity themselves; participants who used more swear language were more likely than other students to exhibit physical and relational violence. However, because the study is correlational it can only show that swearing on TV is indirectly linked to aggression, not whether one causes the other.

"On the whole, it's a moderate effect," said Coyne. "We even ran the statistical model the opposite way to test if the violent kids used more profanity and then sought it out in the media, but the first path we took was a much better statistical fit even when we tried other explanations."

There are some caveats to the study. First, they only relied on the student's self-reports of media and swearing, and self-reports are notoriously variable. Secondly, they only looked at video games and television; they didn't look at other sources of profanity, including music and profanity use in the home. Many video games also have a social component, where users can talk to each other. This talk is often profanity laden, and uncontrolled, the researchers noted.

Positive profanity?

"The authors assume that words 'harm' children, and they need to be 'protected' from words. This is an assumption without basis, though widely held by conservatives and many social scientists," Timothy Jay, a researcher who wasn't involved in the study from Massachusetts college of Liberal Arts, told LiveScience in an email. "There is no evidence that words on TV cause people harm."

What the researchers don't note, however, are the positive effects of media and yes, even swearing, Jay said.

"There is a literature that shows the prosocial effects of media on children, the authors ignore these reports," Jay said. "The authors make no case for profanity being beneficial, as in humor elicitation, or social bonding, or as a coping mechanism, or as a relief from pain." ( foxnews.com )

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Children Could Benefit from Medical Research

Children Could Benefit from Medical Research, Study Says - You read about all these studies and research projects on ParentDish. Have you ever thought to yourself, "Gee, I wish scientists from Pennbrook University would do medical research on my child"?

Most parents overlook the possible benefit of children participating in medical research. How do we know? Guess what? There's been a study.

Researchers from the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health surveyed parents earlier this year and found one in nine adults have participated in medical research -- compared with only one in 20 children.

A university press release also reports that 68 percent of adults are aware of medical research opportunities for themselves. However, 84 percent of parents are not aware of medical research opportunities for children.

So, c'mon, kids, who wants to play guinea pig? It's not as bad as it sounds.

"Medical research is the backbone of improving medical care. Without volunteers, medical research cannot move forward," Matthew Davis, an associate professor at the University of Michigan's medical school, says in the release.

Participation in research is essential to continued medical progress, Davis says.

Over the last 100 years, infant mortality in the United States has been reduced by 90 percent. Millions of deaths from diseases such as polio, diphtheria, pneumonia and influenza have been prevented by vaccines.

Children with life-threatening diseases such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell disease and diabetes now survive beyond childhood, into adult years.

All thanks to kids participating in medical research.

"Awareness about research opportunities, which is a necessary step before participation, is reasonably high among adults but strikingly low for children's research," Davis adds. "To improve participation rates among children, researchers and institutions evidently need to do a better job of getting the word out to parents." ( parentdish.com )

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Cyber-school students: Pentagon snubs our service

Cyber-school students: Pentagon snubs our service – Students graduating from the growing ranks of online high schools are running into a hurdle if their goal is to join the military: The Pentagon doesn't want many recruits with non-traditional diplomas.

Many would-be soldiers like Ryker Packard, 17, of Fassett, Pa., say they weren't aware the armed services have a policy of not taking more than 10 percent of recruits with a non-traditional high school diploma. Critics, including some in Congress, say the military is behind the times and point to the growth on online teaching and testing at all levels of education, including college degrees.

"It just grinds my gears," said Packard, who wants to become an Army diesel mechanic after graduating from Pennsylvania's Agora Cyber Charter School in June.

Packard said his conversation with an Army recruiter came to a brusque end after he told him he was due to graduate from a virtual school. "He just wouldn't talk to me," said Packard.

Packard's mom, Sherri, said her son switched to online classes after floundering in a geometry course at his brick-and-mortar school. Once he got the attention of online teachers, his grades improved, she said.

Packard said her son's school is fully accredited by the state of Pennsylvania, which requires students to pass the same tests and meet the same curriculum requirements as those in traditional schools.

Jarad Dennis, 18 - Jarad Dennis, 18 , logs onto his school website in his home in Lexington, S.C. Saturday, May 7, 2011. Dennis, who will graduate from the South Carolina Connections Academy virtual school this June, was told by an Air Force recruiter that he would need to complete one year of college-level classes before he could join. Students graduating from the growing ranks of online high schools are running into a hurdle if their goal is to join the military: The Pentagon doesn’t want many recruits from alternative or home schools.

"It's part of the public school system," said Sherri Packard, 43. "It's considered one of the best in the state."

Job prospects amid the rolling hills and farms of northern Pennsylvania are slim, Ryker said. "My options are to work for the gas company or on a pig farm," the dejected teen said in a telephone interview.

Ryker and his family unknowingly ran into a policy the Department of Defense has that ranks graduates of traditional high schools as "Tier 1" and those from alternatives as "Tier 2" status. Tier 1 graduates now make up 99 percent of all recruits for all military branches, according to Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen Lainez. The secondary status includes virtual and homeschoolers, as well as those who've left high school and earned a GED or General Education Development certificate.

Lainez said the Department of Defense limits all branches of the military to accepting no more than 10 percent of recruits with what is known as an "alternate high school credential."

Those who've opted out of the traditional educational system just don't stick with military service, she said. That includes students from what she called "any computer-based, virtual-learning program."

"Years of research and experience show recruits with a traditional high school diploma are more likely to complete their initial three years of service than their alternate credential-holding (Tier 2) piers," Lainez said. Data collected since 1988 shows only 28 percent of graduates with traditional diplomas leave military service before their first three years in uniform, while those with non-traditional backgrounds have a 39 percent attrition rate, she said.

It comes down to money because its costs $45,000 to replace someone who hasn't met their full term, she said.

But some members of Congress and supporters of online schools say the Pentagon should reconsider, in particular given the military's penchant for computerized weaponry and cyber warfare.

"We are dealing with new technology," said Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., head of the House Armed Services subcommittee on personnel. "We just need to keep adapting."

Former Marine and Rep. Duncan Hunter, Jr., R-Calif., who is the only member of Congress to have served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, said it's unbelievable that potential recruits are being turned away during wartime.

"Their level of education is often right on par with traditional public school graduates," said Hunter.

The congressman, who serves with Wilson on the Armed Services and Education Committees, said he doesn't want to tell the military whom to recruit, but he thinks it will have to broaden its thinking when an improved economy starts pulling applicants into the job market.

Their subcommittee has inserted language into its portion of the Pentagon fiscal year 2012 budget bill instructing the military to treat students from online high schools equally if the schools are in line with state education laws. The full committee is due to take action on the bill on May 11.

One of the main backers of virtual schools says it has been seeking a change in the military's policy because the number of students attending online is growing.

Peter Groff, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said his organization estimates 168,310 students attended virtual schools in 2009-2010. They know of 219 charter schools that are purely online, and 134 that are a hybrid of bricks-and-mortar and virtual schooling, he said.

Projected enrollment is expected to increase next year by 7,000 students, Groff said.

States such as Minnesota have had programs for 20 years, while Utah, Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania also have seen strong growth, he said. In all, 40 states and the District of Columbia have some form of charter school program allowed, he said.

Jared Dennis, Lexington, S.C., said he was devastated when he sought out an Air Force recruiter, but was told he was in "Tier 2" status. He was told he could enlist only after he took about a year of college-level classes.

"It was heartbreaking to say the least," said the 18-year-old, who said he wants to follow a family tradition of joining the service and become a military policeman. He is set to graduate from the Connections Academy in Columbia in June, one of South Carolina's five virtual public charter schools.

Dennis's mother, Alice, said she sought out the virtual charter school after her son was barred from returning to his public school on a weapons violation. He left a pocket knife in his jacket, violating the school system's zero-tolerance policy. They sought an alternative where Jared could continue with honors-level classes, she said.

In California, 19-year-old Mandi Jenkins of Long Beach, said she gave up trying to join the military after graduating last year from Connections Academy in San Clemente. The message she got was the same as that given to Dennis: Go get some college credit.

Attending a virtual school fit Jenkins' schedule because she played competitive tennis. Now, she is thinking of becoming a professional tennis player instead of donning an Army uniform. Heeding her experience, Jenkins said her 17-year-old brother is staying in his local traditional high school because he wants to join the Marine Corps.

Jenkins said she's upset with the idea that students with a cyber-education are considered less capable of fitting in or following commands.

"You still have to get your work in, you have to turn it in on time," she said.

One student who was able to get the military's attention is 20-year-old Greg Bush, who is attending Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, on a four-year Army ROTC scholarship.

The Delaware, Ohio, native said he thinks attending Ohio's Virtual Academy was a plus, both academically and socially. He was able to take Advanced Placement courses in English and literature and was able to feed an interest in military history and earned a 3.7 grade point average.

"I was a very introverted person, and doing so much course work on line drove me to reach out" to make friendships, he said. "It really benefited me." ( Associated Press )

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Children need a firm parent before they need a friend

Children need a firm parent before they need a friend - We all know where a "laissez-faire attitude" to parenting leads, writes Michael Deacon.

Frank Field, the Coalition's poverty adviser, wants school pupils to be given classes in parenting. A needless scheme, you may argue, given that most girls today are already seasoned mothers by the age of 13, but for the few with no experience of raising children, I think it sounds a great idea.

The main problem, Mr Field says, is that parents today have no grasp of "tough love". They fail to "set boundaries for [their] children". I once interviewed a psychologist about this subject – Dr Aric Sigman, author of The Spoilt Generation – and he said much the same. "There seems to be a confusion between being a parent and being a friend," he said. "People want to endear themselves to their children. In our liberal age, it's thought to be much better to have a laissez-faire attitude to children doing what they want than to be authoritarian. But this is a highly destructive trend."

I imagine most of us have witnessed examples of what this "laissez-faire attitude" leads to. I'll list a few of mine. Take the children flinging Frisbees around a National Trust garden, too busy decapitating flowers and trampling beds to notice the signs saying it isn't a play area. "Yes," murmured one of their parents fondly, looking on, "it's so good for them to let off steam."

Frank Field wants school pupils to be given classes in parenting

Then there was the mother who politely tried to coax her five-year-old son off his seat and on to her lap because the bus they were travelling on was crowded, and several elderly passengers were having to stand. The boy said no, so that was that.

Tame stuff, of course, next to the boys who broke a window of a woman's house by throwing stones at it. The woman shouted at them and they fled. The next day the police called on her. Not to ask her to describe the vandals, but because the parents had reported her for intimidating their children.

It isn't just parents who are lenient with unruly children, though. One woman I know saw a boy hurling eggs at a neighbour's house, so she went to the police. After looking into it, the officer said he couldn't do anything because the boy "has social deprivation in his background". The woman was puzzled. "He doesn't know his father," explained the officer.

...

Among the most popular Christmas stocking-fillers these days is the humorous anthology of dim things people say: Dumb Britain, Colemanballs and so on. This year there's one called Universally Challenged: Quiz Contestants Say the Funniest Things. Here's an example from it. Q: "The Ashmolean in Oxford was England's first what?" A: "Indian restaurant."

I enjoy these books but really I'm in no position to laugh at other people's unworldliness. When I was a teenager, I saw a newspaper advert in which a zoo invited the public to adopt an animal. Immediately, I rang up. "Excuse me," I said, "but is it true you want people to adopt your animals?"

"That's right, sir," said the voice at the other end.

"But how on earth," I said indignantly, "can you expect an ordinary, untrained member of the public to raise a baby baboon or armadillo or zebra in their own home?"

...

Today is my 30th birthday, but I should probably lay off the cake and champagne. Last week I had a health assessment. It revealed that my body is 20 per cent fat. For a man my age and height (6ft), the figure should be 12 per cent, or 18 at most.

Human beings are 70 per cent water. Which means, I suppose, that my body is 90 per cent a mixture of fat and water, plus 10 per cent other, unspecified matter.

I'm basically a supermarket own-brand sausage with eyes. ( telegraph.co.uk )

READ MORE - Children need a firm parent before they need a friend

Half of parents will take children out of school for holiday

Half of parents will take children out of school for holiday - More than half of parents say they intend to take out their children from school in order to go on holiday, according to a survey.

The survey of 1,000 parents underlined how many felt that the large premium charged by travel companies for flights and hotels during holidays has forced them to take their children away during term time.

As many as 52 per cent of the parents asked said they were thinking of taking their children out of school this summer to save money on a holiday, and 15 per cent of parents had already done so. The survey was undertaken on behalf of gurgle.com, a parenting website.

The survey comes a few months after a separate piece of research suggested that package holidays to sunny locations during the Easter half-term were considerably more expensive than the week before and after.

Parents who take their children on holiday during school term risk a fine from their local authority

One holiday was 269 per cent more expensive, and on average a family of four was paying £1,132 more for their break away during half term, than if they took their children out of school and went two weeks later.

Travel companies say the reason why holidays are less expensive during term time is a simple case of supply and demand, with fewer people wanting or able to travel at these times they are able to lower the price. During the summer holiday demand shoots up, enabling them to put up their prices.

Nifa McLaughlin, editor of gurgle.com, said: “Taking children on holiday can be stressful at the best of times, but when that’s coupled with tighter budgets, it’s no wonder that parents are contemplating taking their kids out of school to save a few pennies and avoid the crowds.

“Holidays abroad are now more of a luxury than ever before, and getting out of the country is going to continue to be expensive for families."

Local authorities brought in a fines system in 2004 ago in an attempt to stop this practice. They can now issue offending parents with a £100 penalty, and some have been known to report the child to social services for truancy, even when the parents have warned the school about what they intend to do.

Nearly 21,000 penalty notices for unauthorised absences were issued in England in the school year 2009-10, a 17 per cent increase from two years previously. ( telegraph.co.uk )

READ MORE - Half of parents will take children out of school for holiday

Are Boys An Endangered Species?

Are Boys An Endangered Species? - Why half as many boys as girls are being born in places around the world - Half as many boys as girls are being born in some places around the world—and pollution is the prime suspect.

Among the Chippewas of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation community living on the shores of the St. Clair River outside Sarnia, Ontario, tribal leaders were puzzling over a variety of health problems—from asthma to cancer to miscarriages—plaguing their families. The Aamjiwnaang—the name means “at the spawning stream”—were shaken when they realized that there was a dramatic disproportion of girls to boys among them.

Jim Brophy, director of the Occupational Health Clinic for Ontario Workers’ Sarnia branch, remembers the look of shock on their faces when they suddenly made the connection. “It was like a deep family secret getting out,” Brophy recalls. “They had enough girls for three baseball teams, but not enough boys for even one boy team.”

Since then, the Chippewas of Aamjiwnaang’s 850 band members—who live near a cluster of chemical plants known as Chemical Valley—have worried that the air and water around them contribute to the drop in the number of their male children, as well as a host of grim diseases associated with toxic chemicals.

And now, in a number of villages at the northernmost reaches of the Arctic Circle—seemingly remote from any hazardous chemicals—scientists have found a similar syndrome: populations spawning twice as many girls as boys. Based on preliminary data released in September 2007, researchers are blaming high levels of man-made chemicals that have made their way up the food chain, through fish and other marine species, and into indigenous seafood diets.

Indigenous Arctic peoples show high levels of chemical contamination, researchers say, because they depend on local fish, marine animals, seabirds and reindeer meat, which are significantly more contaminated than imported food by persistent organic pollutants like PCBs, dioxin and DDT.

So far, researchers from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme have linked the dramatically skewed declines in male baby births with chemical contamination. But they haven’t determined the exact biological mechanisms by which these changes are taking place.

However, according to Lars-Otto Reiersen, executive secretary of AMAP in Oslo, Norway, “PCBs, DDTs and other persistent organic pollutants are known from research to possibly trigger male and female hormone signals incorrectly.”

These strange and disturbing cases are by no means the only ones providing clues that there can be changes to the sex ratio—the normal, and usually fairly even, proportion of male to female live births. One of the first examples of this phenomenon came when thousands of people were contaminated by dioxin in a 1976 industrial accident at a chemical factory in Seveso, Italy. After the accident, researchers followed the children of the people affected to discover that half the number of boys as girls were born in the next generation.

Lars-Otto Reiersen and other Arctic researchers fear the same thing could be happening in the Russian Arctic. “Arctic indigenous populations, whose lifestyle is based on the consumption of traditional country foods, are subject to some of the highest exposure levels to PTS (persistent toxic substances) of any population groups on Earth,” according to the AMAP report.

Also alarming is the decline in male births around the world, a trend some scientists find troubling. In the United States, more boys are being born than girls, but the gap between the two has declined in the last 30 years.

One of those worried is Devra Davis, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute’s Center for Environmental Oncology and professor of epidemiology at the university’s Graduate School of Public Health. Davis is the lead author of a June 2007 article in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives that found statistically significant reductions in male births and increased fetal deaths in Japan and among Caucasians in the United States since 1970. She and her co-authors note that this decline represents 135,000 fewer white males in the U.S. and 127,000 fewer males in Japan stretching over the past three decades than the normative rate would expect.

“There are environmental and other factors—probably not genetics, because such changes couldn’t happen in a decade or two—working to threaten the ability of the human species to make healthy babies,” Davis told MSN.

Most parents think their chance of having a baby girl or a baby boy is 50-50. However, normally, it’s more like 51-49, since on average there are 105 or 106 males born for every 100 females.

Throughout history, males have usually outnumbered females slightly, according to Christopher Wills, a Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. Nature, or evolution, compensates for the fact that males are more fragile by producing more of them, Wills says, “so that the ratio of males to females is about 1.2 to 1 at conception.”

Given this natural tilt toward male births, the declining probability of having a male baby is ever more troubling to Davis; it’s what she considers a “sentinel” indicator of ill health in the population—indicating, as she and her co-authors wrote, that “males are being culled in some systematic fashion.”

Davis and the University of Pittsburgh team also found that an increasing proportion of fetuses that die are male. They say a range of environmental factors may explain these trends: whether they originate in paternal exposures or maternal exposures before conception—possibly, as they write, “prenatal exposures to endocrine disrupting environmental pollutants at a critical stage of sexual differentiation.”

However, the reasons behind these trends aren’t clear. “Normally, many more boys than girls should be born,” Davis told MSN, “and they aren't being born. Something is obviously wrong, but we don't know how to explain this."

Not everyone agrees that the small decline these researchers point to is so consequential.

The American Chemistry Council, which represents U.S. chemical manufacturers, won’t discuss these statistics, but refers reporters to Dr. Harry Fisch, a longtime researcher on male reproductive health who dismisses the idea that these global trends are being triggered by endocrine-disrupting chemicals. [Fisch says he is not affiliated with the ACC or a paid consultant to the organization, although he has accepted several reimbursements for travel expenses from ACC to international meetings to discuss his own independently-funded research].

“Over the years, there have been major fluctuations,” says Fisch, a professor of urology at Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons, "True, there are less boys being born compared to girls, during the last few decades, but only fractionally."

Fisch, author of The Male Biological Clock, blames older parental age as a more likely explanation than pollution for some of these unexplained trends like skewed sex ratio, noting that a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found that older mothers and older fathers tended to produce fewer boys. "Before you start saying that chemicals in our global environment are the culprit, you have to look at your own personal environment," he adds. "The bottom line is that we're seeing a trend toward older parents."

Fisch also dismisses worries over a drop in sperm counts and increases in hypospadias, and argues that the neurodevelopmental problems affecting boys—the sixfold increase in autism, for example—can be attributed to more people having children at older ages, not environmental chemicals.

However, many public health professionals argue the opposite: That drops in male births and general declines in reproductive health ought to be examined even more closely in connection with endocrine disruption.

“This is a very serious issue that speaks to our future reproductive health,” argues OHCOW’s Jim Brophy. “We tend to look at chronic diseases, like cancer and autism, in isolation, while these reproductive issues—higher rates of miscarriage, for example—tend to go below the radar and may offer clues for the huge rates of diseases we’re seeing.”

Population biologist Christopher Wills offers another concern connected with the greater fragility of males: It isn’t just that males are being born in lesser numbers, but that their lives are being foreshortened, especially in places hit hard by pollution.

“Just look at the life expectancy for men in Russia—it’s age 73 for women, but age 59 for men,’ says Wills. “This may turn out to be the real elephant in the bedroom.” ( msn.com )

READ MORE - Are Boys An Endangered Species?

Inactive Parents Equals Inactive Kids

Inactive Parents Equals Inactive Kids - Parents are the key to alleviating obesity among Latino kids, according to a study.

The research, published in this month’s journal Pediatrics, measured core muscle activity in 80 Hispanic parents and 85 of their preschool-aged children. For one week, the participants who were mostly mothers and first-generation Mexican immigrants wore a small device that registered muscle movement every 10 seconds.

Sitting at a desk with your legs crossed and one foot wiggling would constitute mild physical activity. Leisurely walking would be considered moderate activity. Reclining and doing little more than breathing is sedentary.

Parents spent about 80 percent of their day being sedentary, and their children who were between 3 and 5 years old spent nearly 70 percent of their day that way.

Parents spent about 80 percent of their day being sedentary, and their children who were between 3 and 5 years old spent nearly 70 percent of their day that way, a study says.

“We were shocked,” said Shari Barkin, principal researcher from Vanderbilt University Kennedy Center, and a mother of three. “We expected children in this age group to be constantly moving but they were almost as sedentary as their parents.”

The children spent about four hours each day around media, said Barkin.

But she and her team are working on a more detailed, seven-year study that would account for how families spent their time during the day.

Children of immigrants tend to be more sedentary than children born in the U.S. Among Hispanics, 22 percent were physically inactive compared to 9 percent of non-Hispanic white children, according to other research.

Parents are the key to alleviating obesity among Latino kids

That inactivity may help explain why obesity among U.S. preschool age children has doubled in nearly 30 years with a high prevalence among Latinos, according to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey administered by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The problem is so extreme in the Hispanic population, the U.S. Dept of Agriculture recently gave a five-year, $3.75 million grant to the research arm of a community group at Cal State University Long Beach to find ways to combat the epidemic.

Approximately 30 percent of children are considered overweight and about 15 percent obese. Among Mexican-Americans, 39 percent are overweight and 24 percent are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Low-income, preschool Hispanic children had the second highest obesity rates (18 percent) in the nation, after American Indian/Alaska Native preschoolers (21 percent).

The result is that related diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure are showing up in children.

Changing what the kids eat is only part of the obesity puzzle. Instead, parents need to take kids out to playgrounds or for walks, said Barkin.

“Parents really matter … that has huge implications,” said Barkin. ( foxnews.com )

READ MORE - Inactive Parents Equals Inactive Kids