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When hot gets too hot: keeping children safe in the heat
Follow me on Twitter @drClaire Heat is part of summer — and for the most part, children do fine in the heat. But sometimes, heat can be dangerous, even deadly. As summer heats up — and as much of the country sits in a heat wave — it’s important to know about those dangers so that you can keep children safe. Here’s what you need to know about heat and children: Never leave a child in a car in the heat. Children’s bodies can heat up incredibly quickly — leading to damage to organs and even death. Every year children die from being in a hot car — because their caregiver thought they would be fine, because an e...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - July 26, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Children's Health Parenting Prevention Safety Source Type: news

3 reasons your child shouldn’t go “gluten-free” (unless your doctor says so)
Follow me at @drClaire There is a puzzling and worrisome new phenomenon that I am seeing as a pediatrician: parents who are putting their children on gluten-free diets. It’s puzzling because in the vast majority of cases it isn’t necessary — and it’s worrisome because, although parents are doing it because they think it’s healthy, a gluten-free diet can be very unhealthy for children. Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye, barley, and some other grains. It’s in bread and other baked goods, cereals, pastas — and in many other foods in small amounts. For people with celiac disease, even those small amounts ca...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - June 7, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Children's Health Healthy Eating Parenting Source Type: news

FDA warns parents about arsenic in rice cereal
Follow me at @drClaire For years, rice cereal has been a go-to for parents when they start their babies on solid foods. It’s time to change that. In 2012, the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) issued a report warning about high levels of inorganic arsenic in rice and rice products. Rice plants are particularly good at absorbing arsenic from the soil, in particular because they grow in a lot of water. Inorganic arsenic is a common ingredient in pesticides and other products used in farming, and can linger in the soil for a long time after it is used. It can be poisonous. In high doses it is lethal, but even small...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - April 5, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Children's Health Parenting Safety Source Type: news

What parents need to know about pain in newborns
Just because newborn babies can’t tell you they feel pain doesn’t mean they don’t feel pain. They do. And parents can help. We tend to think that newborns are too little to really experience pain, and that if they do experience it, they soon forget it. However, research has shown that, indeed, babies do experience pain — and that repeated painful experiences in the newborn period can lead to both short- and long-term problems with development, emotions, and responses to stress. This is particularly a problem for babies who need many medical procedures after they are born, such as premature babies, babies with certa...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - January 26, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Children's Health Family Planning and Pregnancy Parenting Source Type: news

Four new recommendations for adolescent health
The yearly “check-up” is the perfect (perhaps only) time to not only see how kids are growing and give any needed shots, but to see how they are doing more generally — and help be sure that they grow into healthy, happy adults. After all, prevention is really what pediatrics is all about. That’s why the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has a checklist for pediatricians called “Recommendations for Preventive Pediatric Health Care.” These recommendations, which are updated every few years, are based on the most up-to-date research about the health of children now — and in the future. While the latest versio...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - January 4, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Children's Health Parenting Prevention Source Type: news

CPR during cardiac arrest: someone’s life is in your hands
Cardiac arrest is the ultimate 911 emergency. The heart stops sending blood to the body and brain, either because it is beating too fast and too erratically, or because it has stopped beating altogether. Oxygen-starved brain cells start to die. Death occurs in minutes — unless a bystander takes matters into his or her hands and starts cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Doing CPR keeps blood circulating until trained and better-equipped first responders arrive on the scene to jump-start the heart back into a normal rhythm. “The brain is the most sensitive of the body’s organs to oxygen deprivation,” sa...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - July 23, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Daniel Pendick Tags: Heart Health cardiac arrest CPR Source Type: news