The other night we had dinner at a restaurant where you build your own burger. Diners choose the type of meat they’d prefer, an extensive array of toppings and whether they want their burger on a bun or a bed of organic lettuce. You’re even in luck if you have special dietary needs as they Related posts: Healthy Lamb Burger Recipe Chicken Tikka Masala Recipe

In recent news, it has been reported by the University of California Davis MIND (Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders) Institute that obese pregnant women are at higher risk of bearing children with autism than their healthy-weight counterparts. “Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. For a diagnosis to be made, symptoms must become apparent before a child is three years old. Autism affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their synapses connect and organize; how this occurs is not well understood. It is one of three recognized disorders in the autism spectrum (ASDs), the other two being Asperger syndrome, which lacks delays in cognitive development and language, and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (commonly abbreviated as PDD-NOS), which is diagnosed when the full set of criteria for autism or Asperger syndrome are not met.” According to this study, nearly 60% of child-bearing women aged 20 to 39 in the U.S. are overweight and one-third are obese. Similarly, nearly 29% of Canadian women are overweight and 23% are obese as per Statistics Canada. In addition, obesity rates are on a rapid incline for women between the ages of 25 and 34 years and to the point that it is almost twice as high as it was 25 years ago. At the same time, the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) appears to be growing alongside these rates as approximately 1 in every 110 children is diagnosed with this disorder. At present, the exact cause of autism is not known; however there is significant research to suggest that its development likely occurs in the womb, therefore lead author Paula Krakowiak wondered whether there might be a connection between obesity rates among women of child-bearing age and autism. Researchers studied more than 1,000 children and their mothers to obtain evidence to support for their claim that obesity and diabetes during pregnancy could put children at increased risk for autism spectrum disorder and other neurodevelopmental problems. The team analyzed data gathered via telephone interviews and medical records from mothers with children aged 2 to 5 born in California and enrolled in the CHARGE (Childhood Autism Risks from Genetics and the Environment) Study between January 2003 and June 2010. Of those studied, 513 children had autism; 172 had other developmental disorders and 315 children were developing normally. Researchers took into account the mother’s age at the time of delivery, their education level and various other factors. Results showed that “overall, obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure were more prevalent among mothers of children with autism or other developmental disorders than the “control” moms.” In addition, “obese women were 67 per cent more likely to have a child with autism compared to healthy-weight mothers. They were also about twice as likely to have a child with another developmental disorder.” Basically, 21.5% of the mothers with autistic children and 23.8% of the mothers with children with another developmental disorder were obese whereas only 14.3% of the mothers with normally developing children were considered obese. Furthermore, “mothers with diabetes were found to have nearly twice the chance of having a child with developmental delays as healthy mothers.” If proven, imagine how this new discovery might impact public health… Autism Linked To Obesity During Pregnancy Autism © www.mentalhealthblog.com

Scientists at the University of British Columbia have released a study, which suggests that the youngest kids in a classroom are those that are most likely to be taking medication to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. “The study of almost one million B.C. schoolchildren ages six to 12 during an 11-year period found those born in December were 39% more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and 48% more likely to be medicated than those born in January.” However, researchers question whether these children have been diagnosed accurately or whether doctors may have confounded the fact that these kids are merely less mature and academically or athletically inclined due to the simple fact that they have not had those extra few months to develop as much as their peers. This gap in age within the same school grade creates what researchers call the “relative age effect” and it could be leading to many false diagnoses. “Younger, less mature children are inappropriately being labelled and treated,” said lead author Richard Morrow of UBC’s Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology and Therapeutics. Basically, children born closer to December can be almost a full year less developed than their classmates. Although research suggests that boys are three times more likely to be treated for ADHD than girls, the age gap still applies to both genders. “Girls born in December and earlier within their grade were 70% more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD compared to January-born girls.” Ultimately, a false diagnosis and treatment with unnecessary medications could potentially cause more harm than good. “Being been labelled ADHD can often cause children to be treated differently by teachers and parents, possibly leading to poor self-esteem and social issues.” WHAT IS ADHD? ADHD is a problem with inattentiveness, over-activity, impulsivity, or a combination. It is the most commonly diagnosed behavioral disorder of childhood. It affects about 3 – 5% of school aged children. It is also diagnosed much more often in boys than in girls. Inattentive symptoms: Fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork Has difficulty keeping attention during tasks or play Does not seem to listen when spoken to directly Does not follow through on instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores, or duties in the workplace Has difficulty organizing tasks and activities Avoids or dislikes tasks that require sustained mental effort (such as schoolwork) Often loses toys, assignments, pencils, books, or tools needed for tasks or activities Is easily distracted Is often forgetful in daily activities Hyperactivity symptoms: Fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat Leaves seat when remaining seated is expected Runs about or climbs in inappropriate situations Has difficulty playing quietly Is often “on the go,” acts as if “driven by a motor,” talks excessively Impulsivity symptoms: Blurts out answers before questions have been completed Has difficulty awaiting turn Interrupts or intrudes on others (butts into conversations or games) DIAGNOSIS For diagnosis, symptoms must be out of the normal range for a child’s age and development as well as present in more than one setting: Children should have at least 6 attention symptoms or 6 hyperactivity/impulsivity symptoms, with some symptoms present before age 7. The symptoms must be present for at least 6 months, seen in two or more settings, and not caused by another problem. The symptoms must be severe enough to cause significant difficulties in many settings, including home, school, and in relationships with peers. TREATMENT Medication A combination of medication and behavioral treatment works best. There are several different types of ADHD medications that may be used alone or in combination. Psychostimulants (also known as stimulants) are the most commonly used ADHD drugs, such as: Amphetamine-dextroamphetamine (Adderall) Dexmethylphenidate (Focalin) Dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine, Dextrostat) Lisdexamfetamine (Vyvanse) Methylphenidate (Ritalin, Concerta, Metadate, Daytrana) A nonstimulant drug called atomoxetine (Strattera) may work as well as stimulants, and may be less likely to be misused. WARNING: Some ADHD medicines have been linked to rare sudden death in children with heart problems. Talk to your doctor about which drug is best for your child. Behavior Therapy Talk therapy for both the child and family can help everyone understand and gain control of the stressful feelings related to ADHD. Parents should use a system of rewards and consequences to help guide their child’s behavior. It is important to learn to handle disruptive behaviors. Support groups can help you connect with others who have similar problems. Other tips to help your child with ADHD include: Communicate regularly with the child’s teacher. Keep a consistent daily schedule, including regular times for homework, meals, and outdoor activities. Make changes to the schedule in advance and not at the last moment. Limit distractions in the child’s environment. Make sure the child gets a healthy, varied diet, with plenty of fiber and basic nutrients. Make sure the child gets enough sleep. Praise and reward good behavior. Provide clear and consistent rules for the child. Alternative Treatments Herbs, supplements, and chiropractic treatments have become popular, however, there is little or no solid evidence that these actually work. PROGNOSIS ADHD is a long-term, chronic condition. If it is not treated appropriately, ADHD may lead to: Drug and alcohol abuse Failure in school Problems keeping a job Trouble with the law About half of children with ADHD will continue to have troublesome symptoms of inattention or impulsivity as adults. However, adults are often more capable of controlling behavior and masking difficulties. Talk to your doctor if you are concerned that your child may have ADHD. Kids born later in the year more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD: Study Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) © www.mentalhealthblog.com

The secret to a flat belly according to doc Travis Stork: never diet – Prevention Holding that Warrior 1 helps build willpower off the mat – Yoga Journal Borrow these seven habits of highly successful snackers – Real Simple Get the skinny on finding (and using) your fat burning zone – HuffPost Healthy Living When is the perfect time to work out? – Shape Donkey kicks truly are a kick in the pants – Peanut Butter Fingers Fat burning lunches! All under 400 calories a pop – Fitness Was yoga the secret weapon behind the Giants’ Super Bowl win? – Mind Body Green Hit it! Boxing boosts self-confidence – Health Stock options for all your wintry soups – Vegetarian Times

MINNETONKA, Minn. (CBSMiami) – Michael Foods of Minnesota has issued a recall of hard-cooked eggs due to a possible contamination of listeria. The eggs came in brine sold in 10 and 25 pound pails that are available in 34 states, including Florida. So far, there have been no reports of illness connected to the eggs. The eggs came under the brand names: Columbia Valley Fams, GFS, Glenview Farms, Papetti’s, Silverbrook, and Wholesome Farms. The Food and Drug Administration said the eggs were produced at Michael Foods’ plant in Nebraska and bought by food distributors and manufacturers. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, listeria primarily impacts older adults, pregnant women, newborns, and those with weakened immune systems. The illness can trigger fever, muscle aches, along with diarrhea or other gastrointestinal problems.

For several months, a group of teenage girls in upstate New York have been suffering from a mysterious ailment: twitching and verbal tics similar to those seen in Tourette’s patients, but with no apparent organic cause. Two appeared on the Today Show this week to discuss their plight. Environmental tests have turned up nothing, according to the Le Roy Central School District . A physician with the New York State Department of Health told NBC News that infectious and communicable diseases have also been ruled out. The diagnosis: “mass psychogenic illness,” or MPI, according to neurologist Laszlo Mechtler , vice president of Dent Neurologic Institute, which has treated 11 of the girls. In MPI, physical symptoms that are perfectly real but that have psychological roots rather than some underlying organic cause appear in a group of people, often spreading from one to the next. When stress or anxiety manifest as physical symptoms — including twitching, paralysis or other loss of function — in an individual, it’s called a conversion disorder, Mechtler tells the Health Blog. But when it happens to many people at one time, it crosses into the realm of MPI, he says. Usually that happens when there’s a report or fear of a chemical exposure, toxin or virus — and suddenly people at a school or factory are coughing, sneezing, reporting dizziness or fainting. For example, there were 23 clusters of MPI investigated in Taiwan associated with a national school vaccination program against H1N1 flu, according to this study published in the journal Eurosurveillance. At one middle school, within two hours of vaccination, 7% of the 692 kids vaccinated reported “adverse events marked by dizziness, nausea and weakness,” believing their symptoms were caused by the vaccine. Physical and lab exams found no organic cause of the symptoms, and the kids recovered quickly and were discharged from the hospital. But other types of symptoms can present as MPI, too. This case report describes how 14 female high-school students in Florida suddenly developed stridor, when breathing produces a high-pitched sound usually associated with croup in infants. And in 2007, a group of female students and a teacher reported inexplicable twitchin g similar to what has been seen in upstate New York. That, too, was chalked up to MPI. The mechanisms of how anxiety or stress produce these symptoms and then how they spread among a group of people aren’t known, says Mechtler. Females seem more predisposed to MPI than males, but men, too, can experience it. The symptoms are believed to arise from emotional reactions to underlying stresses. “These girls are suffering from disabling symptoms,” says Mechtler. “But the issue at hand is that they aren’t caused by a tumor, stroke, infection, drug” or other organic or environmental factor. (One of the girls’ father told the Today Show that “we are all not just accepting that this is a stress thing,” however.) Treatment focuses on any underlying stress, mood disorders and anxiety and can include talk therapy and in some cases, medication. Mechtler has supervised the treatment of 11 of the girls by Jennifer McVige , a fellow at Dent. He says they are making progress. “We are optimistic they will come out of it,” Mechtler says. “They need to get a little space,” he says. “They need normality.” Image: iStockphoto

According to team leaders, Ruth Drdla-Schutting and Jürgen Sandkühler along with their research team at the MedUni Vienna’s Department of Neurophysiology (Centre for Brain Research); opioids can be used for more than temporary pain relief. Apparently, a strong enough dose can actually erase our memory traces of pain in the spinal cord. At the most basic level, opioids bind to specific sites, called µ-opiate receptors (MOR), which suppresses the stimulation of pain. Characteristically, opioids are only known to alleviate pain while bound to these sites, therefore once treatment is ceased, pain resumes. Typically, for chronic pain, opioids are administered continuously in moderate doses in order to achieve a permanent binding. This method may result in pain relief, however the treatment is long-term and the cause of pain cannot be eliminated. To test their theory, that memory traces of pain can be erased with a large enough dose of opioids over a short period, “scientists recreated a surgical procedure in vivo in which pain fibres were stimulated under controlled conditions”. “Although deep anaesthesia prevents any sensations of pain, we were able to reserve long-term synaptic potentiation in the spinal cord. Despite anaesthesia, there appears to be a memory trace for pain and a pain amplifier has engaged.” “Long-term potentiation (LTP) is a long-lasting enhancement in signal transmission between two neurons that results from stimulating them synchronously.” Researchers administered high doses of intravenous opioids over a period of an hour and discovered that this completely removed the long-term potentiation. By doing so, this can reverse the cellular changes that cause pain memories. As such, this could actually rid the memory of the sensation that pain is amplified and longer lasting than in actuality and avoid the development chronic pain syndrome. If proven to be an effective method of treatment, this could mean more than pain management for many people suffering with chronic pain. Current methods temporarily relieve symptoms of pain and typically require long-term opioid use. This type of treatment could greatly reduce the risk of a rapidly growing form of addiction. Opioids Erase Memory Traces of Pain Long-term potentiation mu Opioid receptor © www.mentalhealthblog.com

Crossing a busy street while blasting music into your headphones doesn’t exactly enhance your awareness. The number of serious injuries and deaths occurring to pedestrians who were walking with headphones has tripled in seven years in the United States, according to a report published in Injury Prevention. Dr. Richard Lichenstein and co-authors from the University of Maryland School of Medicine reported 116 crashes involving pedestrians who were wearing headphones between 2004 and 2011.  Eighty-one of them resulted in deaths.  It started with 16 cases between 2004 and 2005 and rose to 47 by 2010 and 2011. Half of the victims were struck by trains; the other half by cars, buses, trucks, tractor trailers or bicycles.  Using headphones while walking isn’t really a new phenomenon – considering people used to walk around with portable audio cassette players and compact disc players. The difference is that our electronic gadgets are more prevalent and much more portable than the age of the Walkman, said Lichenstein, director of Pediatric Emergency Medicine Research at the University of Maryland.  A Pew study found that about 75% of teens reported using an MP3 player in 2008. “You’d be hard-pressed not to look out the window and see people walking around with headphones,” he said.  “People probably had it with growing up – not to the extent that we see now.” They are likely to have inattentional blindness (distraction) and sensory deprivation, where people can't hear warning sounds.  On Friday, a pedestrian was struck by a train as he crossed the streetcar tracks while wearing headphones, according to a German newspaper.   Although the train sounded the warning horns, the pedestrian was not able to hear the warning horn and was later hospitalized. Lichenstein and the group gathered the injury and death data from National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Google News archives and Westlaw Campus Research databases. They used a grading system to assess whether the evidence that the victim had been wearing headphones at the time of the incident was strong. The median age of the victims was 21 years old and the majority (68%) were male. The cases the study authors counted is “the tip of the iceberg,” Lichenstein said as injuries are likely to go unreported. The idea for this study came because Lichenstein, who chairs the state’s child fatality review team, had heard of several incidents in Baltimore of serious injuries and even deaths of people wearing headphones. “We acknowledge that there are limitations to the study,” he said.  “We did the best we can, given the fact that there’s no way to do an observational study of this type.” The authors wrote: “Since this is a retrospective case series, neither causation nor correlation can be established between headphone use and pedestrian risk.”  It’s also impossible to decipher whether the reason why some people were struck by trains and cars were due to suicidal intentions, substance abuse, mental illness rather than distraction caused by headphone use. But the injuries and deaths of distracted pedestrians have caught the attention of lawmakers around the country.  One Chicago lawmaker proposed banning all cell phone use for cyclists.  A New York bill was proposed last year that would’ve banned cell phone or MP3 usage while crossing the street, according to the New York Times . That’s not the “most efficient or wisest regulation we should have,” said Lichenstein. “We want people to be thoughtful and conscious.  Everyone loves their tunes and enjoying themselves. When they’re walking, talking or listening to music, at least be cognizant of the fact it’s a big world out there.  You may not be paying attention and people may not be paying attention to you.” Filed under: Children’s Health , Health and tech Tagged: Madison Park – CNNhealth.com Writer/Producer

Don’t have time or the willpower to diet all week long? Two days might just do the trick, according to British researchers. The dietitians found that women who cut carbs for two days and ate normally, yet sensibly, the rest of the week lost more weight than women sticking to a Mediterranean-style diet of 1,500 calories a day. After four weeks, the women who gave up carbs twice a week lost an average of nine pounds, while the group on the low-calorie diet only lost five. The head of the study, research dietitian Michelle Harvie, says this is something you can try at home: “You just need to dramatically cut back carbohydrates two days a week and try to eat sensibly the rest of the time . . . you can eat protein and healthy fats on the two low carb days, but skip bread, pasta, root vegetables like potatoes, carrots, and parsnips to get to the 50 gram limit. The diet allows for one piece of fruit on the low carb days.” I like the flexibility of this plan, and the fact that you reduce your carb intake but don’t cut it out entirely – definitely healthier and more sustainable than a completely carb-free diet. Is this something you would try to encourage weight loss?

Research reveals that people that experience recurring episodes of depression or those that are exposed to chronic stress have shorter telomeres in their white blood cells. “A telomere is a region of repetitive DNA sequences at the end of a chromosome, which protects the end of the chromosome from deterioration or from fusion with neighboring chromosomes.” Consequently, as we age, telomeres, the outermost part of the chromosome, shorten. Moreover, research suggests that oxidative stress and inflammation can accelerate this process. The lengths of telomeres are suggestive of our biological age and have been associated with age-related diseases, unhealthy lifestyle, and longevity. Additionally, new studies now show that the shortening of telomeres is also linked to recurrent depression and exposure to chronic stress. To demonstrate, researchers studied 91 patients with recurrent depression and 451 healthy patients by measuring the telomere length in their white blood cells. Results showed that telomeres were shorter among the patients with recurrent depression. Also, by examining the participants’ stress regulation using a dexamethasone suppression test, researchers again revealed that cortisol levels, indicative of chronic stress, were also associated with shorter telomeres in both depressed participants and healthy ones. “The fact that depressed patients as a group have shorter telomere lengths compared to healthy individuals can be largely explained by the fact that more depressed people than healthy people have disturbed cortisol regulation, which underscores that cortisol regulation and stress play a major role in depressive disorders” says Mikael Wikgren, a doctoral candidate in the research group. Accordingly, people could experience age-related complications much earlier in life; therefore properly treating and managing stress and/or depression may significantly impact the quality of life throughout the lifetime. Depression and Chronic Stress Accelerates Aging Telomere © www.mentalhealthblog.com