Probiotics: Powerful Prevention?

from Dr. Greene

I have heard wonderful things about the power of probiotics and we are all taking them this year so we can hopefully avoid the usual winter illness that hits our home for several weeks.  I was very excited when I stumbled across this article from Dr. Greene, as he is a great expert on this subject.  If you want to keep your little ones healthy this winter, read up on the benefits of taking probiotics.



What if there were a simple way that you could drop the number of coughs, colds, and fevers your child gets this school year by more than half? And when your child does get sick, what if you could cut the length of the illness in half? What if you could slash the odds that your child will need antibiotics this year, while decreasing missed school days?

Researchers randomly assigned 326 preschool children to one of three groups. In each group, the caregivers were given little foil packets of dry powder that were mixed into 4 ounces of milk for the children to drink twice a day for 6 months. During the week, the milk was prepared and served at school; on the weekends the parents were in charge.

For one group the powder contained 10 billion CFUs of Lactobacillus acidophilus, a type of probiotic or beneficial bacteria (by comparison, a typical serving of yogurt might contain 1 billion CFUs). For the second group the powder likewise contained a total of 10 billion CFUs of probiotics – but it was a mixture of two strains (Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium animalis). Probiotic supplements like this are available in many health, food, or drug stores. For the third group the powder was nothing but an inert placebo.

The school year was quite different for the three groups! In the placebo group, most of the kids got a fever sometime in the next 6 months, much as one would expect. But, the number of kids with fever was slashed by more than half among those who got the single probiotic in their mystery packets -- and by almost three quarters among those who received the double probiotic —even though the kids were in the same preschool classes. Similar dramatic reductions were seen in coughs, runny noses, antibiotic use, duration of illness, and missed school days.

What we think of as “our” bodies includes ten times as many bacterial cells as human cells. Promoting healthy, diverse gut bacteria appears able to make a big difference in keeping us healthy.

Six Month Experience
                                       Placebo       Single Probiotics   Mixed Probiotics
                                                                         
Kids with fever                  66%                       31%                             18%
Kids with cough                87%                       51%                             33%
Kids with a runny nose      85%                       61%                             35%
Kids treated with              57%                       18%                              9%
an antibiotic
Average length of illness,   6.5 days                 4.5 days                        3.4 days
when sick


Bottom line: When families didn't do anything, most kids developed fever, cough, runny nose, and were treated with antibiotics sometime in the next 6 months. But among those who were given the probiotics, most kids did not get a fever, cough, runny nose or antibiotics over the next 6 months. And if they did get sick, it lasted on average about half as long. A dramatic difference!

Read more: http://www.drgreene.com/blog/2010/09/07/probiotics-powerful-prevention#ixzz0yscaV4KX

A Greener Home For Your Baby

from Parenting



Choose a few of these easy, eco-friendly changes (no need to drive yourself crazy making over your whole home!) and know that you're helping your peanut -- and the planet -- to grow up healthy.

Airing Out
Keep the air you and your family breathe fresh and clean. Jerome Poulson, M.D., a Washington, DC, pediatrician and a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics's Committee on Environmental Health, advises watching out for these three serious indoor pollutants:

Tobacco smoke. You know not to smoke around your baby, but "third-hand smoke," toxic residue that sticks to skin and clothing, can be a risk, too. Ask smokers to wash their hands before holding your baby to minimize the danger.

Radon. Check your home's level of this odorless, carcinogenic gas (which emits from the ground) with a simple hardware-store kit.

Lead. If your home was built before 1978, contact your state or local health department to have it tested for this toxic metal. No matter what, your child's blood should be tested for lead at ages 1 and 2.

Good Eats
You can feel assured that the food made for babies is the safest -- and greenest -- around.

Breast milk and formula. Breast milk offers superior nutrition and, of course, is very green: straight from Mom, no processing involved. If you nurse for any length of time, then kudos to you. If you want to spring for organic formula, go ahead, but it's not mandatory, says Tanya Altmann, M.D., a pediatrician and author of Mommy Calls. "The major formulas all have the right combination of vitamins, protein, and fat," she explains.

Solids. Organic fruits and vegetables, grown without pesticides, are definitely good for the earth, but if you go with conventional baby foods, you can be confident that those jarred meals are also strictly regulated and supersafe. If you do make your own baby food, just be careful of ingredients from small local farmers, whose produce might not be checked for contamination, Dr. Altmann warns.

Bottles and dishware. Some hard plastics are made with BPA (the chemical bisphenol-A, an endocrine disrupter linked to negative health effects), which can leach into food. Check the bottom of plastic containers for the number in the triangle: a "7" usually indicates BPA. There are many BPA-free plastic bottles on the market, as well as glass ones with sleeves to minimize breakage.

A Clean Sweep
Babies have faster respiration than adults, which means they ingest chemicals and fumes at a higher rate. Some commercial cleaners may contain harmful additives, so be aware of the following when it comes to keeping house:

"All-natural" claims. The phrase "all-natural" doesn't really tell you how eco-conscious a product is, so seek out these green terms instead: "readily biodegradable," "plant-based," or "dye-" and "synthetic-free." You can also look for the "DfE" symbol (Design for the Environment), which the EPA assigns to safer, greener cleaners.

Lemon scents. The biggest cleaning myth out there is what clean is supposed to smell like, says Jenn Berman, Psy.D., author of SuperBaby: 12 Ways to Give Your Baby a Head Start in the First 3 Years. "It's not lemony, piney, or rose-scented." In fact, these odors often come from potentially dangerous chemicals, so try to use products that are fragrance-free.

Air "fresheners." For the same reason Berman advises steering clear of scented cleaners, Dr. Poulson suggests skipping air fresheners, including sprays and plug-in products. If you need to remove odors, try sprinkling a layer of baking soda on your carpets and then vacuuming it up.

Homemade cleaners. Green products on the market are great options, but you can also mix some up at home. Linda Mason Hunter, coauthor of Green Clean: The Environmentally Sound Guide to Cleaning Your Home, relies on distilled white vinegar (mix it with water for an effective surface cleaner) and baking soda (combine it with water to make an oven cleaner).

A word about floors. Simply take your shoes off when you come in and you won't have to clean them as much.

Room to Grow
Greening the nursery is next on the agenda, because your baby will spend many hours playing, getting her diapers changed, and snoozing (let's hope!) in it:

Crib mattress. An organic mattress made with chemical-free cotton and/or wool may cost a bit more, but it's money well spent considering your baby will be in her crib for up to 16 hours each day. If you're going non-organic, try to buy your mattress a month or so before the baby arrives. Unwrap it and let it air out in an unused room (or at Grandma's house!) until you need it so that the flame retardant, glues, and other additives can dissipate.

Paint. VOCs (volatile organic compounds) are a group of possibly harmful chemicals found in paint, sealants, and adhesives that become a gas at room temperature. VOCs may cause health problems, including nausea and headaches, so choose low- or even zero-VOC paint. (Once the paint is dry, however, the risk is minimal.) Benjamin Moore, Sherwin-Williams, and Glidden all make low- or no-VOC lines.

Carpet. If you have a strong family history of allergies or asthma, it's a good idea to avoid wall-to-wall carpeting in your baby's room. It can trap dirt, dust mites, and other allergens, which may exacerbate these conditions. New carpeting can also emit toxic fumes, so let it air out for a couple of weeks before your baby spends any time there. A hardwood floor softened by area rugs made of natural fibers is the ideal green nursery flooring.

Looking for Kid Friendly Car?

Check out www.motherproof.com.  Created by a mom who was in search of a new car and wanted answers to questions like “how many child safety seats will fit in the vehicle?” and “how many bags of groceries can I squeeze into it?”  Motherproof is a very up-to-date website that uses seven reviewers to test out every new model vehicle, looking at safety features and even how well the cars can withstand kids.

I know these are the types of features I will be looking for in our next vehicle, while my husband will be checking out horse power and engine size.  I think it’s a pretty cool site to help moms do their own research!  Now maybe we don’t all have to get minivans!

Danger for Children in a Spray Bottle

by Dr. Greene at Seventh Generation



For years doctors have encouraged parents to store toxic household cleaning products in locked cabinets, out of the sight and reach of children. While this advice may have helped considerably, with injury from cleaning products in children declining 46 percent since 1990, a new study by The Center for Injury Research and Policy published by the American Academy of Pediatrics demonstrates that children under age 6 are still at high risk of poisoning and other injuries from cleaning products in the home.

Spray bottles are the most common source of injury, especially those containing bleach-based products. Despite our best efforts to keep these and other products locked away, US poison control centers still receive hundreds of thousands of calls each year because of unintentional poisonings from cleaning products. Each call is more than a statistic; it's an important moment in the life of a family. And nearly 12,000 children were sick enough to be treated in US hospital emergency departments in 2006 alone.

To me, the old childproofing strategy has become out of date. We haven't seen much improvement in overall injury rates since 1996, and injuries from cleaners in spray bottles have actually increased. Meanwhile, effective non-toxic cleaning products are now available to get the job done at home.

When it comes to childproofing, I now recommend that in addition to childproofing their homes, expectant mothers and parents of young children replace their toxic household cleaning products with non-toxic alternatives -- reducing the risk both of immediate injury and of ongoing low-level exposure.

Who is at risk?
The Center for Injury Research and Policy reviewed 17 years of emergency room data for children under age 6 to analyze the scope of injuries from household cleaners. The results will be published in the September 2010Pediatrics.

• Children age 1 to 3 account for 72 percent of injuries
• One-year-olds account for 46 percent of injuries
• Boys (59 percent) are more likely affected than girls (41 percent)
• More than 80 percent of poisonings occur while at home

How are they injured?

• Poisoning is the most common (68 percent), followed by chemical burns (16 percent), and other injuries to the skin or eyes (10 percent)
• Spray bottles are the most common source (40 percent), followed by regular containers (30 percent), kitchenware (14 percent), and recently cleaned items (8 percent)
• Bleach is the most common product ingredient (37 percent), followed by hydrocarbons, acids/alkalis, detergents, and ammonia

What's the Solution?
It's an easy one: Effective, non-toxic products are now available for every common household cleaning job. My advice is that you replace your toxic cleaners with those that are non-toxic.
Think about it this way: You make sure your child buckles up in the latest, safest car seat on the market. So why clean with out-of-date chemistry?

Strawberr-Wee Fruit Leather

from weelicious

A yummy homemade snack for little ones!



If you follow weelicious on Twitter or Facebook, you may have read about my recent fruit leather obsession. My kids love fruit roll-ups and while there are some great brands out there made with just fruit, I know can save a ton of dough making it myself. While I haven’t spent a lot of money trying to figure it out, I have spent a lot of time! As of today, I’ve made 15 (yes, fifteen!!!!) batches of strawberry leather in an effort to perfect the recipe. It’s been a frustrating challenge to say the least, especially when making fruit leather seems so easy in principal. It’s just fruit and heat, right? Yes and no.

Here’s a breakdown of my results:
Batches 1-4: I used juicy strawberries from the farmer’s market, baked them for three hours and the batch turned out perfect and chewy with a deep red color. I couldn’t believe how easy it was and was very busy congratulating myself afterwards. Kenya actually found one of the batches that I hid in the closet to save for his school lunch and ate the entire thing! At least I know he got his vitamin C for the day — I mean, week!

Batches 5-8: So much for being proud of myself. These attempts were total disasters. This time I used organic strawberries from the grocery that were much bigger and less juicy than the ones I bought from the farmer’s market. Sadly, each of these batches burned when I cooked them at different times right around three hours. I was left totally frustrated.

Batches 9-12: Back to perfection using berries from the farmer’s market. I kept the cooking time at three hours for each batch and I finally realized the juicier the berries, the longer they take to cook. You really have to judge the berry you are using before setting your cooking time.

Batches 13 & 14: Back to the organic grocery store berries, but this time I wised up and only baked them for only two hours, which produced one batch that burned a bit on the edges (because I didn’t spread it out totally even) but another turning out perfect.

Knowing that people will have varying results, I asked friends and a bunch of weelicious readers to give the recipe a try. Everyone’s outcomes were slightly different. Here’s what I’ve determined: you have to experiment for yourself with this recipe. Everyone’s berries and ovens are different, so there isn’t one definitive cooking time. My best advice is to spread the mixture as evenly as possible on the baking sheet and keep a close eye on the fruit while it’s cooking. Be prepared for a bit a trial and error and don’t lose your cool. Hopefully when you find your ideal cooking time, you’ll be knocking out batches of your own fruit leather with ease.

Strawberr-Wee Fruit Leather (Makes 8 Long Strips)
3 Cups Strawberries
1 Tbsp Honey
1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees.
2. Remove the stems from the strawberries and rinse.
3. Place the strawberries and honey in a blender and puree until smooth.
4. Pour the mixture on to a parchment paper lined baking sheet and spread with the back of a spoon or spatula in a large rectangle (my rectangle was 11 x 15 inches) making sure that the mixture is completely even.
5. Bake for 2-3 hours (or until it’s dry and not sticky to the touch). Remember, cooking times will vary depending on how thick you spread your mixture and how much water (juice) is naturally in the fruit. *Every oven is different, so the cooking time maybe less then 2 hours if your oven tends to be hot.
6. Allow to sit and cool at room temperature. It takes several hours for the fruit to soften up (when you first take the leather out of the oven the edges will be a bit dry and crispy, but if you allow it to sit overnight it softens up nicely).
7. Cut with a knife or pizza cutter into strips or use scissors, keeping the paper on, and then roll the leather into “roll ups”.
8. Serve.

Hurray, It’s a Giveaway! Nature Certified Skincare Products for Baby

Nature Certified is a brand new company created by a mom who cares, a mom who wants to put safe and natural products on our babies skin.  This line of products is100% natural and certified organic, using almost all edible whole ingredients.

I know there are several companies out there that claim to offer natural products for babies, but they really aren’t (just look at the ingredient list).  There are very few brands that I really love and trust, and since there are not that many choices I was definitely excited to learn about Nature Certified.
I love the philosophy that this company lives by, as stated on their website:

• To be consistent with the concept of natural products, and not compromise on quality.
• To take the best elements of natural care remedies from around the world, and introduce them to the baby-child personal care market.
• To use edible, whole ingredients, as well as organic ingredients whenever possible.
• To present the product in a consumer-friendly manner. The company is committed to identifying at least 70% of the ingredients in each product on its front label.
• To avoid any product that we would not use for our own babies.

Nature Certified offers a varying array of products, and a few products for baby that I have never seen or tried on the market:

• Organic Grapeseed Oil for Baby and Child: A combination of food grade organic oils, such as grapeseed and coconut.  This oil can be used in the bath, in place of lotion, of for massages.
• All Natural Lotion for Baby and Child: There are no artificial ingredients, fillers, or harmful substances. Even the preservative is natural. Use it daily for moisturizing yourself and your little one.
• Organic Oil Blend for Baby and Child:  Unique combination of food grade oils and cardamom for aromatherapy.  Great for massage or moisturizing.
• Organic Baby Bath Tea: One-of-a kind bath tea bags for children. Soothes, relaxes, and indulges. 100% organic. These tea bags dispense the correct amount of bath product required, so you don’t have to worry about how much should go into your baby’s bath.
• Foaming Body Wash and Shampoo: Delicate and mild fragranced foam comes out of the bottle foaming and leaves your baby clean from head to toe!

I received samples of all these products and I was so excited to give them a try!  I was very pleasantly surprised that the oils were not at all overly potent (as many can be), but were just the right smell of “relaxation.”   I especially love the Foaming Body Wash and Shampoo for children, because I love using shampoo where you don’t have to create your own lather, and I love the soft, natural scent of it.  My baby definitely came out clean and smelling nice!

I still put lotion on my two year old every day to keep his baby skin soft.  When I tried using the Grapeseed Oil and Organic Oil Blend instead of lotion I was reminded of the massaging component that I’m often forgetting when applying moisturizer on him.  Babies and children can greatly benefit from soft massages, both physically and mentally.  The oil blends worked great as a lotion replacement and my little guy actually liked his massage so much he kept asking for more !  I love that using oils reminded me to take the time to spend a little more skin-on-skin contact with child.  These oils are non-greasy and I truly would like some for my own skin!

I love, love, love that Nature Certified has created this great line of completely NATURAL products for our children – something that is so often missing from the mass retailers.  Right now they are only available online, but hopefully we’ll be seeing them in stores nearby soon!

Enter to Win!

To win a free sample kit, complete with travel size containers of the foaming body wash & shampoo, all natural baby lotion, organic oil blend, and organic grapeseed oil simply send an email to abby@littlemiraclesbabyplanning.com with the subject “Nature Certified.”  Contest ends Thursday, Aug. 2nd at 12 noon est.

Babies are teaching scientists much about the human mind

from The Oregonian



Problems like this arise constantly in life: You hit the "print" command on your computer and nothing happens. To get anywhere, you have to figure out whether the printer is broken or you're just doing something wrong, like forgetting to turn on the power.

Babies, it turns out, possess reasoning skills that make them adept at solving this kind of problem.

In one recent study, 16-month-olds quickly and accurately deduced whether a toy that failed to make music needed to be replaced or that they needed to ask for help because they did something wrong.

"Babies come into the world with a lot of initial knowledge and ways of thinking. They make rich, abstract inferences from just a little bit of evidence. They are the most powerful learners in the universe," says Laura Schulz, a professor in the department of brain and cognitive sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. She and hundreds of other scientists presented findings in Portland this week at the annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, a group including anthropologists, linguists, neuroscientists, psychologists and others striving to understand how our brains learn, create and make us who we are.

Many focus on the minds of babies, who are proving to have abilities far beyond what researchers long assumed. In the past year or two, studies have shown newborns grasp abstract numbers enough to link matching numbers of objects and sounds, they understand musical rhythm well enough to detect a missed downbeat in a percussion line, and show moral judgment by 3 months.

The mind in infancy acquires more abilities in less time than at any other age, making it an ideal time for studying the process of learning. And infants offer a window on basic workings of the mind, before culture and other experiences multiply the differences between people at older ages.

Delving into abstract reasoning, Schulz and MIT graduate student Hyowon Gweon showed a series of 16-month-olds how to push a button on a green toy to make it play music. In one trial, researchers handed the toy to the baby to try. In another trial, they handed the baby a yellow toy that otherwise looked identical. In both cases, it was impossible for the babies to make the toy play music. The green toy required activating a second, hidden switch while the yellow toy had no music maker.

When the switch failed to work, babies had two options: turn to a parent for help or reach for a third toy, colored red, placed just out of reach. The babies consistently made the right choice. When given the green toy that they had seen working a moment earlier they sought help from a parent. But when given the yellow toy, they assumed it was broken and grabbed for the red toy.

"They are able to attend to very subtle differences in the world," says Gweon.

Other groups are exploring babies' sophisticated moral reasoning. As early as 3 months, newborns show a preference for puppets or animated characters that help others over those that hinder, in one study. Kiley Hamlin and colleagues at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., showed babies scenes with puppets struggling up a hill. Some puppets helped while others pushed their struggling fellows down the hill. When offered a chance to play with the puppets, the infants picked helpers almost 100 percent of the time.

"And they make inferences about how characters will behave in the future," says Hamlin.

When a hindering character acts in a helpful way, infants register surprise by gazing longer.

In a related study presented at the Portland meeting, Korean researchers found that 16-month-olds not only prefer helpful behavior, but they also expect it. Woo-yeol Lee and others from Yonsei University in South Korea showed babies animated cartoons enacting hill-climbing struggle similar to the puppet show. One character, a square, easily climbed a steep hill but a circle character could not. In some scenes, the square helped the circle and in others, the square ignored its struggling fellow. When the square failed to help, babies consistently showed surprise by staring longer at the ignoring event than they did at helping events.

"They very rapidly develop awareness of moral obligation," says Tamar Kushnir, assistant professor and director of the Early Childhood Cognition Laboratory at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Kushnir and graduate student Nadia Chernyak presented studies on preschoolers' ability to reason about morality and other limits on free will.

They asked 4- and 5-year-olds to draw a picture and gave them two choices of what to draw. A puppet presented the kids with varying pressures to draw one shape and not the other. In some trials, the puppet explained that triangles, for example, were sad and made him cry. In others, the puppet told the children they "have to draw a squiggly," or exerted pressure to conform by saying "all of the other boys and girls" drew a line. One puppet told kids to draw the shape "you like best."

The moral pressure and the pressure to conform showed the strongest effect: Thirteen out of 15 children said they did not have a choice to draw the picture that would make the puppet cry, or to draw a picture other than the one everyone else drew. The children felt freer to ignore orders or to draw a picture other than their favorite.

When asked to explain why their choice was limited, the children were able to do so consistently only in the case of the moral pressure to avoid hurting the puppet. While pressure to conform limited just as many children, only two out of 15 were able to name that reason. The strength and sophistication of moral reasoning surprised researchers.

"It was just whopping," Kushnir says.

-- Joe Rojas-Burke