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If you have kids, then you’ve certainly heard of the Chuck Norris meme. People all over the Internet try to top each other with the most outrageous claims for the aging action movie star and six-time karate world champion: “When Google has a question, they Norris it." "Guns carry Chuck Norris for protection." "Chuck Norris: His tears cure cancer. Too bad he’s never cried.”
Let’s try to create our own: Chuck Norris advises the President on Syrian foreign policy. Oh, wait, too late. Chuck Norris already made that one up himself. Seriously, if you see Chuck Norris, don’t tell him I made fun of him. If he’s already heard, say I’m not home. I’ve moved in with the Honey Badger.
Wait for it...
Can I be honest, just with you? It annoys the fool out of me when parents say they want to delay their children’s vaccines. I especially relish it when, using their extensive backgrounds in immunology and infectious diseases, they hand me some schedule where we give one vaccine every time a full moon falls on a date in Fibonacci’s sequence. Why, I wonder, should we limit such caution to vaccines? Shouldn’t we hold off on using car seats until kids’ skeletal systems are mature enough to handle them, around age 18?
Now a coalition of researchers from Kaiser Permanente publishing in JAMA Pediatrics tell us that children whose pertussis vaccines are delayed are more likely to get whooping cough. How did we come to live in a world where this is even a legitimate research topic, much less a headline? Additional studies will examine the relationships between not eating and starvation, water and drowning, and walking with your eyes closed and tripping over stuff.
In a case-control study, investigators found that children aged 3 to 36 months who missed three doses of pertussis vaccine were 18 times more likely than were vaccinated children to contract the disease. Those who missed four doses were 28 more times likely to fall ill. In 2012, the United States saw 41,000 reported cases of pertussis and 18 deaths, mostly in infants, the highest numbers since 1959. Maybe we need a new public service campaign. How about, “Get your kids vaccinated against whooping cough. Unless they’re Chuck Norris.”
Peas porridge cold
Some days I have to ask myself, “Am I cynical enough?” I know what you’re thinking: “You? Really?” Really. Take baby food for example. I figured it was, you know, good for babies. Because if it weren’t better than nursing, wouldn’t we just tell mothers to nurse until their kids are old enough to grill their own steaks? Thanks to Dr. Charlotte Wright of the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and her team for pulling the scales from my eyes in this months’ Archives of Diseases in Childhood.
Her team evaluated the nutritional content and label suggestions of 462 first foods on the shelves in Great Britain, including powdered foods, breakfast cereals, finger foods, and little pots of stuff that looked like even the dog might not try it. The first thing they noted was that most foods were marketed for infants 4 months and older, in contradiction to feeding guidelines in place in both the U.S. and the U.K., but hey, since when did babies read guidelines?
Next they found that the nutritional content of the foods was no better than breast milk and that they were overwhelmingly sweet. They also discovered little to recommend these foods when it came to protein and iron content, even in the pasty goo that, according the label, was once meat. The authors suggested that homemade infant foods provide much better nutrition than do commercial brands. Of course, that leaves it to you to grill the steak and grind it up...unless your infant is Chuck Norris.
In therapy
We all know what kids are supposed to learn in high school health class: that if you text during the videos, you risk missing the gross parts. But what if, in the first 15 weeks of school, they could participate in a program that would leave them with better social behaviors, higher grades, lower levels of depression, less alcohol use, and healthier weights? I don’t know about where you live, but here in North Carolina, we’d cut the funding.
A new study of 800 high school students who participated in the COPE program (for Creating Opportunities for Personal Empowerment) demonstrated that teaching kids cognitive-behavioral therapy techniques could have all of the above beneficial effects. Lead author Bernadette Melnyk, Ph.D., dean of the Ohio State University College of Nursing, said, "This program dropped scores of severely depressed teens almost in half. Less than 25% of adolescents who have mental health problems get any help, and here we have an intervention that addresses that suffering and also can prevent or reduce obesity." She added, “As we refine the program, we fully expect our graduates to be able to defeat Chuck Norris...in a foreign policy debate.”
David L. Hill, M.D., FAAP is the author of Dad to Dad: Parenting Like a Pro (AAP Publishing, 2012). He is also vice president of Cape Fear Pediatrics in Wilmington, N.C., and adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He serves as Program Director for the AAP Council on Communications and Media and as an executive committee member of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. He has recorded commentaries for NPR's All Things Considered and provided content for various print, television, and Internet outlets.
If you have kids, then you’ve certainly heard of the Chuck Norris meme. People all over the Internet try to top each other with the most outrageous claims for the aging action movie star and six-time karate world champion: “When Google has a question, they Norris it." "Guns carry Chuck Norris for protection." "Chuck Norris: His tears cure cancer. Too bad he’s never cried.”
Let’s try to create our own: Chuck Norris advises the President on Syrian foreign policy. Oh, wait, too late. Chuck Norris already made that one up himself. Seriously, if you see Chuck Norris, don’t tell him I made fun of him. If he’s already heard, say I’m not home. I’ve moved in with the Honey Badger.
Wait for it...
Can I be honest, just with you? It annoys the fool out of me when parents say they want to delay their children’s vaccines. I especially relish it when, using their extensive backgrounds in immunology and infectious diseases, they hand me some schedule where we give one vaccine every time a full moon falls on a date in Fibonacci’s sequence. Why, I wonder, should we limit such caution to vaccines? Shouldn’t we hold off on using car seats until kids’ skeletal systems are mature enough to handle them, around age 18?
Now a coalition of researchers from Kaiser Permanente publishing in JAMA Pediatrics tell us that children whose pertussis vaccines are delayed are more likely to get whooping cough. How did we come to live in a world where this is even a legitimate research topic, much less a headline? Additional studies will examine the relationships between not eating and starvation, water and drowning, and walking with your eyes closed and tripping over stuff.
In a case-control study, investigators found that children aged 3 to 36 months who missed three doses of pertussis vaccine were 18 times more likely than were vaccinated children to contract the disease. Those who missed four doses were 28 more times likely to fall ill. In 2012, the United States saw 41,000 reported cases of pertussis and 18 deaths, mostly in infants, the highest numbers since 1959. Maybe we need a new public service campaign. How about, “Get your kids vaccinated against whooping cough. Unless they’re Chuck Norris.”
Peas porridge cold
Some days I have to ask myself, “Am I cynical enough?” I know what you’re thinking: “You? Really?” Really. Take baby food for example. I figured it was, you know, good for babies. Because if it weren’t better than nursing, wouldn’t we just tell mothers to nurse until their kids are old enough to grill their own steaks? Thanks to Dr. Charlotte Wright of the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and her team for pulling the scales from my eyes in this months’ Archives of Diseases in Childhood.
Her team evaluated the nutritional content and label suggestions of 462 first foods on the shelves in Great Britain, including powdered foods, breakfast cereals, finger foods, and little pots of stuff that looked like even the dog might not try it. The first thing they noted was that most foods were marketed for infants 4 months and older, in contradiction to feeding guidelines in place in both the U.S. and the U.K., but hey, since when did babies read guidelines?
Next they found that the nutritional content of the foods was no better than breast milk and that they were overwhelmingly sweet. They also discovered little to recommend these foods when it came to protein and iron content, even in the pasty goo that, according the label, was once meat. The authors suggested that homemade infant foods provide much better nutrition than do commercial brands. Of course, that leaves it to you to grill the steak and grind it up...unless your infant is Chuck Norris.
In therapy
We all know what kids are supposed to learn in high school health class: that if you text during the videos, you risk missing the gross parts. But what if, in the first 15 weeks of school, they could participate in a program that would leave them with better social behaviors, higher grades, lower levels of depression, less alcohol use, and healthier weights? I don’t know about where you live, but here in North Carolina, we’d cut the funding.
A new study of 800 high school students who participated in the COPE program (for Creating Opportunities for Personal Empowerment) demonstrated that teaching kids cognitive-behavioral therapy techniques could have all of the above beneficial effects. Lead author Bernadette Melnyk, Ph.D., dean of the Ohio State University College of Nursing, said, "This program dropped scores of severely depressed teens almost in half. Less than 25% of adolescents who have mental health problems get any help, and here we have an intervention that addresses that suffering and also can prevent or reduce obesity." She added, “As we refine the program, we fully expect our graduates to be able to defeat Chuck Norris...in a foreign policy debate.”
David L. Hill, M.D., FAAP is the author of Dad to Dad: Parenting Like a Pro (AAP Publishing, 2012). He is also vice president of Cape Fear Pediatrics in Wilmington, N.C., and adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He serves as Program Director for the AAP Council on Communications and Media and as an executive committee member of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. He has recorded commentaries for NPR's All Things Considered and provided content for various print, television, and Internet outlets.
If you have kids, then you’ve certainly heard of the Chuck Norris meme. People all over the Internet try to top each other with the most outrageous claims for the aging action movie star and six-time karate world champion: “When Google has a question, they Norris it." "Guns carry Chuck Norris for protection." "Chuck Norris: His tears cure cancer. Too bad he’s never cried.”
Let’s try to create our own: Chuck Norris advises the President on Syrian foreign policy. Oh, wait, too late. Chuck Norris already made that one up himself. Seriously, if you see Chuck Norris, don’t tell him I made fun of him. If he’s already heard, say I’m not home. I’ve moved in with the Honey Badger.
Wait for it...
Can I be honest, just with you? It annoys the fool out of me when parents say they want to delay their children’s vaccines. I especially relish it when, using their extensive backgrounds in immunology and infectious diseases, they hand me some schedule where we give one vaccine every time a full moon falls on a date in Fibonacci’s sequence. Why, I wonder, should we limit such caution to vaccines? Shouldn’t we hold off on using car seats until kids’ skeletal systems are mature enough to handle them, around age 18?
Now a coalition of researchers from Kaiser Permanente publishing in JAMA Pediatrics tell us that children whose pertussis vaccines are delayed are more likely to get whooping cough. How did we come to live in a world where this is even a legitimate research topic, much less a headline? Additional studies will examine the relationships between not eating and starvation, water and drowning, and walking with your eyes closed and tripping over stuff.
In a case-control study, investigators found that children aged 3 to 36 months who missed three doses of pertussis vaccine were 18 times more likely than were vaccinated children to contract the disease. Those who missed four doses were 28 more times likely to fall ill. In 2012, the United States saw 41,000 reported cases of pertussis and 18 deaths, mostly in infants, the highest numbers since 1959. Maybe we need a new public service campaign. How about, “Get your kids vaccinated against whooping cough. Unless they’re Chuck Norris.”
Peas porridge cold
Some days I have to ask myself, “Am I cynical enough?” I know what you’re thinking: “You? Really?” Really. Take baby food for example. I figured it was, you know, good for babies. Because if it weren’t better than nursing, wouldn’t we just tell mothers to nurse until their kids are old enough to grill their own steaks? Thanks to Dr. Charlotte Wright of the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and her team for pulling the scales from my eyes in this months’ Archives of Diseases in Childhood.
Her team evaluated the nutritional content and label suggestions of 462 first foods on the shelves in Great Britain, including powdered foods, breakfast cereals, finger foods, and little pots of stuff that looked like even the dog might not try it. The first thing they noted was that most foods were marketed for infants 4 months and older, in contradiction to feeding guidelines in place in both the U.S. and the U.K., but hey, since when did babies read guidelines?
Next they found that the nutritional content of the foods was no better than breast milk and that they were overwhelmingly sweet. They also discovered little to recommend these foods when it came to protein and iron content, even in the pasty goo that, according the label, was once meat. The authors suggested that homemade infant foods provide much better nutrition than do commercial brands. Of course, that leaves it to you to grill the steak and grind it up...unless your infant is Chuck Norris.
In therapy
We all know what kids are supposed to learn in high school health class: that if you text during the videos, you risk missing the gross parts. But what if, in the first 15 weeks of school, they could participate in a program that would leave them with better social behaviors, higher grades, lower levels of depression, less alcohol use, and healthier weights? I don’t know about where you live, but here in North Carolina, we’d cut the funding.
A new study of 800 high school students who participated in the COPE program (for Creating Opportunities for Personal Empowerment) demonstrated that teaching kids cognitive-behavioral therapy techniques could have all of the above beneficial effects. Lead author Bernadette Melnyk, Ph.D., dean of the Ohio State University College of Nursing, said, "This program dropped scores of severely depressed teens almost in half. Less than 25% of adolescents who have mental health problems get any help, and here we have an intervention that addresses that suffering and also can prevent or reduce obesity." She added, “As we refine the program, we fully expect our graduates to be able to defeat Chuck Norris...in a foreign policy debate.”
David L. Hill, M.D., FAAP is the author of Dad to Dad: Parenting Like a Pro (AAP Publishing, 2012). He is also vice president of Cape Fear Pediatrics in Wilmington, N.C., and adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He serves as Program Director for the AAP Council on Communications and Media and as an executive committee member of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. He has recorded commentaries for NPR's All Things Considered and provided content for various print, television, and Internet outlets.