Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Young Americans Have Highest Death Rate Among High Income Countries

A new study of adolescent health around the globe found the United States had the highest mortality rate for people ages 10-to-24 of any high-income country in the world.

The American kids were also No. 1 in pot-smoking, moving toward the top spot in boozing — all while still hitting the gym harder than their contemporaries in other wealthy nations.

Death on the wrong end of a gun or any other violent method is up to 20 times more likely in the U.S. than the other 27 wealthy nations, according to findings reported in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

Traffic accidents combined with the violent deaths boosted the U.S. to its undesired position atop the mortality charts, The Lancet wrote in a series of articles this week.

“The drinking patterns of USA adolescents are catching up with those in other (high-income countries),” The Lancet reported. One reason the American numbers are disturbing: Most of the domestic binge drinkers are too young to drink legally. While the U.S. drinking age is 21, the number is as low as 16 in other nations.

The numbers also indicated that U.S. kids ages 13-15 exercised more than their global counterparts in high-income countries. The boys were No. 1 and the girls No. 2 in the rankings.

Source: NY Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/hard-partying-young-americans-highest-death-rate-high-income-country-study-article-1.1067644

Blood Test for Teen Depression Under Study

Scientists have developed a blood test that one day may help diagnose major depression in teens and young adults.

The test is in very early stages. However, scientists hope it will someday make diagnosing depression more objective for teens.

"The bottom line is that a test is possible from blood that can differentiate teens with major depression from those who do not have it," says scientist Eva Redei, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Major depression affects about 1% of children under age 12, Redei says. By late teens and young adulthood, that figure rises to about 25%.

Currently, doctors diagnose depression by asking about symptoms. In developing the blood test, Redei's team focused on blood biomarkers, or indicators, for depression and anxiety. These indicators reflect the activity of genes related to depression. The blood test is very preliminary and not ready for clinical use.

The findings are published in Transitional Psychiatry.

Source: WebMD
http://teens.webmd.com/news/20120417/blood-test-for-teen-depression

Family Routines Cut Risk of Obesity in Kids

What if the real answer to the childhood obesity epidemic isn’t just diet and exercise? Two research studies done years and an ocean apart suggest that three family routines -- setting limits on TV, having family meals together and getting the kids to bed on time – could reduce kids’ risk for obesity by 40%, while food choices and exercise alone have proven less successful.

The two studies show that routines make a difference.  In the United Kingdom, a long-running study of over 14,000 school children found in 2005 that 17 variables – including food and breast-feeding as babies – didn’t seem connected with which kids became overweight. What was: The amount of sleep kids got each night, the amount of TV they watched, and whether their parents were obese.

In the US the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study of about 8000 children is getting similar results.  When researchers looked at the household routines of a group of 4-year-olds from the study, they found three variables that were related to obesity. Obesity rates were much lower in families that simply set an average 2-hour limit on TV and other ‘screen time’, had meals together at least five nights a week and got kids to bed early enough that they slept an average of 10 ½ hours per night (a healthy sleep number for 4-year-olds). Just 14% of kids whose families practiced all three routines were obese, compared to 24% of kids whose families didn’t follow any of them.

To be sure, food and exercise are still important part. What the research is telling us is that without consistent healthy routines at home and warm supportive parents who can set limits as needed, that information on food and exercise is not going to help.

Source: Philly.com
http://www.philly.com/philly/health/Beyond-Food-and-Exercise--What-Children-Really-Need-for-Healthy-Growth.html

Troubled Homes May Fuel Obesity in Girls

Girls from troubled homes are more likely to be obese at age 5 than girls from happier ones, new research shows. However, researchers did not find that same association between boys' weight and difficult family situations.

In the study, researchers looked at data on more than 1,600 preschoolers from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, which tracks the health and well-being of children born to mostly low-income, single-mother families. About half were black, 27 percent were Hispanic and 22 percent were white.

When their children were aged 1 and 3 years, mothers were asked about six stressors: domestic violence, depression, drug abuse, housing insecurity, food insecurity (meaning that their household didn't always have enough nutritious food to eat) and whether the child's father was in prison. Children's height and weight were measured at age 5.

At 5 years old, 17 percent of the children were obese, defined as having a body-mass index in the 95th percentile or above, or being heavier than 95 percent of their peers for their height.

Girls whose mothers reported experiencing two or more stressors when their daughter was age 1 were twice as likely to be obese at age 5. If the mother reported experiencing two or more stressors when the daughter was age 3, the girl was also about twice as likely to be obese.

The study is published in the May issue of Pediatrics.

Source: U.S. News & World Report
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/04/16/troubled-homes-may-fuel-obesity-in-girls

For Many Girls, Slimming Down Doesn't Help Self-Esteem

Weight loss doesn't necessarily lead to a boost in obese teenage girls' self-esteem, according to a new study.

"We found that obese black and white teenage girls who transitioned out of obesity continued to see themselves as fat, despite changes in their relative body mass," study author Sarah Mustillo, an associate professor of sociology at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., said in a university news release.

"Obese white girls had lower self-esteem than their normal-weight peers and their self-esteem remained flat even as they transitioned out of obesity," added Mustillo, who studies obesity in childhood and adolescence.

Researchers noted that the study did not prove that girls' self-esteem remained low because they continued to see themselves as overweight, Mustillo said. There could be other explanations for the girls' continuing low self-esteem in adolescence.

The study appears in the current issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

Source: U.S. News & World Report
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/04/03/for-many-girls-slimming-down-doesnt-help-self-esteem

Doctors See "Cinnamon Challenge" as a Recipe for Disaster

It is known as “the cinnamon challenge.’’ You try to swallow a spoonful of cinnamon without drinking water - or vomiting - preferably as a video camera is rolling. It may sound like silly fun, but health professionals and a growing number of local school systems are warning parents that the practice can cause health problems including respiratory distress and choking.

The YouTube generation finds the trend hilarious. How else to explain the more than 10.9 million hits for a video of a woman with big gold earrings spewing cinnamon after a failed attempt? Or the 30,000 cinnamon-related videos on the website? The challenge has been around for years, but a video posted by two NBA players, and the growth of social media and camera-enabled smart phones, have sent it viral in recent months.

Doctors aren’t laughing. They say the practice can cause serious injuries.

“The biggest problem is that the powder dries your mouth and throat, which makes it easier for it to enter your lungs instead of your stomach,’’ said James Mojica, a pulmonologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.That, in turn, can inflame the lungs, and lead to breathing difficulties, an acute lung injury, an aspiration pneumonia, or lung scarring.

Youths - the very people most commonly ingesting the cinnamon - are at particular risk, Mojica said. “Young patients can generate such high pressure when they cough that their lungs can collapse.’’

Source: Boston.com
http://articles.boston.com/2012-03-24/community/31234565_1_cinnamon-lungs-challenge

Sleep Deprivation and Teens - Walking Zombies

We just lost an hour of sleep by turning our clocks ahead for Daylight Savings Time. But imagine if you lost an hour of sleep — or even more — every night of your life. That’s what it’s like for our nation’s teens, who are facing an epidemic of sleep deprivation.

How bad is it? “Every single high school student I have ever measured in terms of their alertness is a walking zombie,” says Cornell sleep expert James Maas. It’s a description that will sound familiar to the parents of pretty much any teenager.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, American teenagers require about 9-1/4 hours of sleep a night, yet only 8 percent of them are getting it. A recent study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that as much as two-thirds of high school students get less than seven hours of sleep nightly.

If it was just a matter of early-morning fogginess this wouldn’t be a big deal, but sleep deprivation in teens has been linked to lower levels of Human Growth Hormone, which is integral to a teenager’s physical growth, brain development, and maturation of their immune system, as well as higher rates of anxiety disorders and depression. A 2010 study in the journal Sleep found that teenagers who go to bed after midnight are 24 percent more likely to suffer from depression and 20 percent more likely to consider harming themselves than those who go to bed before 10:00 p.m.

In a study of fourth and sixth graders conducted by sleep researcher Dr. Avi Sadeh at Tel Aviv University, a mere one-hour nightly loss of sleep was “equivalent to the loss of two years of cognitive maturation and development.” In other words, when deprived of just one hour of sleep each night, a sleep-deprived sixth-grader performed like a fourth grader. That’s not progress.

Not only is too little sleep affecting teens, but so is their means of staying awake. Many rely on coffee, caffeinated soda, and energy drinks. Some take Adderall or amphetamines. In Massachusetts and New York they can now stay up with the help of a lipstick-sized canister of inhalable caffeine. The Journal of Pediatrics recently concluded that energy drinks are “never appropriate for children or adolescents,” citing the harmful “neurologic and cardiovascular” impact of caffeine on teenagers.

Parents are encouraged to view sleep as essential to teenagers’ well-being and success by teaching them that sleep is as important as nutrition, exercise, studying, and free time.

Source: Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/sleep-deprivation-and-teens-walking-zombies/2012/03/10/gIQAr0QP3R_blog.html

Vitamin D Intake May Reduce Fracture Risk in Girls

Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals, has published an article showing that vitamin D intake can lower stress fracture risk in girls, especially in regards to injuries caused by high impact style activities.

Stress fractures are a common injury, often related to sports or physical activity. Essentially, the damage occurs when the bone is not able to withstand the pressure and force it is put under. They can also develop over time from repeated impact that might not initially cause any noticeable injury, but after multiple stress episodes become something of a problem to the bone structure.

Vitamin D appears to have been particularly important in maintaining healthy bones, able to withstand high impact events, particularly in those girls involved in an hour or more per day of high stress activity.

The authors of the study noted, "there was no evidence that calcium and dairy intakes were protective against developing a stress fracture or that soda intake was predictive of an increased risk of stress fracture or confounded the association between dairy, calcium or vitamin D intakes and fracture risk."

The authors conclude that their findings support the Institute of Medicine's recent increase in the recommended dietary allowance for vitamin D for adolescents from 400 IU/d to 600 IU/d.

Source: Medical News Today
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/242565.php

Kids with Concussions May Suffer Lingering Consequences

Children with even relatively mild concussions can have persistent attention and memory problems a year after their injuries, according to a study that helps identify which kids may be most at risk for lingering symptoms.

In most kids with these injuries, symptoms resolve within a few months but the study results suggest that problems may linger for up to about 20 percent, said study author Keith Owen Yeates, a neuropsychologist at Ohio State University's Center for Biobehaviorial Health. The results were published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Problems like forgetfulness were more likely to linger than fatigue, dizziness and other physical complaints, the study found.

Forgetfulness, difficulty paying attention, headaches and fatigue were more common in study children who lost consciousness or who had other mild head trauma that caused brain abnormalities on imaging tests, compared with kids who didn't get knocked out or who had normal imaging test results.

The study looked at symptoms up to a year after injury so it doesn't answer whether any kids had longer-lasting or permanent problems. But, for that year, the report concluded that the children who had injury-related symptoms "significant functional impairment in their daily lives."

Those children suffering problems may need temporary accommodations, including extra time taking school tests, or wearing sunglasses if bright light gives them headaches, Yeates said.

Source: CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57391791-10391704/kids-with-concussions-may-suffer-lingering-consequences/

Youngest Kids in Class More Likely to be Diagnosed with ADHD

Children who are the youngest in their class are more likely than their older classmates to be diagnosed and given medication for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) -- suggesting that immaturity may be part of the problem, not ADHD.

The finding is from a study of more than 900,000 Canadian children aged 6 to 12, and it dovetails with two U.S. studies that found the same thing in 2010.

In fact, the youngest boys were 30% more likely than their oldest classmates to get an ADHD diagnosis, and the youngest girls had a 70% greater chance, according to the study conducted by Dr. E. Jane Garland, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and colleagues.

"The younger children in a grade were significantly more likely to be diagnosed, labeled, and treated with medication for what in some of them must simply be immaturity," Garland says.

Source: CNN