In Review Now: Health

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Top 10 Summer Health Concerns for Kids

As we slide into summer, parents are weighing in on the summer health risks they see for their adolescent children.

Sunburn, bee stings, and heat strokes made the list. So did concerns such as online safety and knowing how to handle an unsafe situation.

That's according to an online survey taken by 542 parents of kids aged 10-13 years.

Nearly one in four parents are "extremely" or "very" concerned about their school-aged child's health during summer break, the survey shows.

The survey, conducted by the National Parent Teacher Association's survey, was funded by the drug company GlaxoSmithKline.

Parents' Summer Health Concerns

The parents rated a list of 10 health issues related to their young adolescent.

Here is that list, along with the percentages of parents noting concern about those issues:

Knowing what to do in an unsafe situation: 77%
Understanding how to be safe online: 75%
Making healthy food choices: 71%
Getting a sunburn: 61%
Getting injured while playing sports: 56%
Getting bitten by a tick: 46%
Swimming or playing at a pool, lake, or beach not attended by a lifeguard: 46%
Getting stung by a bee or wasp: 44%
Suffering from heat/sun stroke or dehydration: 44%
Being exposed to an infectious disease: 42%

Almost all parents -- 95% -- said they want their child to be active and fit over the summer.

Nearly a quarter said their child doesn't get enough exercise over the summer.

About half said their child spends too much time watching TV or playing video games.

Parents' Stay-Safe Summer Strategies

The parents also rated how likely they were to take certain steps to keep preteens and young teens healthy over the summer.

Here are the eight steps most frequently chosen:

Maintain open communication with him/her: 92%
Provide him/her with healthy food choices: 81%
Insist that he/she wear sunscreen: 75%
Talk to him/her about Internet safety: 71%
Ensure that he/she takes a bottle of water with him/her every day: 68%
Make sure his/her vaccinations are up to date: 62%
Teach him/her 911 protocols: 61%
Teach him/her first aid protocols: 52%

Let us enjoy summer and have fun - safely!

Tips for Preventing Dehydration in Children

Drink water or sports drinks. Water is fine, but a flavored beverage may be preferable for preventing dehydration because children may drink more of it, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

Fruit juice may be fine for kids participating in lighter activity, but sports drinks are better for the more active child, says Steven Parker, MD, co- author of the 1998 edition of Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care.

Be prepared. Before training and competitions, children should be well- hydrated

Get on schedule. Active or athletic children should drink fluids on a regular basis. Create a "fluid schedule" in which your child drinks a certain amount of fluids before, during, and after practices, games, and competitions. Children should drink more if they are working out in hot, humid, sunny conditions, or if they sweat heavily.

Steps to Take During Sports Activities

Drink early. By the time a child is thirsty, he or she may already be dehydrated.

Drink enough. The AAP suggests that a child weighing about 88 pounds drink 5 ounces of cold tap water or a flavored beverage every 20 minutes. Children and teens weighing 132 pounds should drink 9 ounces of cold tap water or a flavored beverage like a sports drink every 20 minutes. One ounce typically equals two kid-size gulps.

What to avoid: dehydrating beverages such as caffeinated beverages (sodas, iced tea). The caffeine is a diuretic, meaning it causes the child to lose more fluid.

A Good Brain Work-out!

TAKE NOTE - Speaking more than one language protects the brain against cognitive decline and makes a person better at multi-tasking, researchers said.

Being bilingual, or even learning a second language late in life, has been shown to slow the decline of some key brain functions, said Ellen Bialystok of York University in Canada, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

A study co-authored by Bialystok found that people who spoke more than one language were diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease 4.3 years later and reported the onset of symptoms 5.1 years later than monolingual patients.

"One of the reasons bilingualism has these powerful mechanisms including protecting against early symptoms of dementia is because it's one way to keep your brain active," Bialystok told reporters.

"Every little bit helps. The longer you've been bilingual, the more you use all your languages, the more fluent you are, all of those things contribute.

"Even if you're starting to learn a language at 40, 50, or 60, you're unlikely to become bilingual, but you are keeping your brain active. So you're contributing to cognitive reserve through very engaging and intense activity," she said.

Cognitive reserve has been defined by Yaakov Stern of Columbia University's Department of Neurology as the ability to recruit different brain networks to optimize brain performance.

"Bilingualism is a cognitively demanding condition that contributes to cognitive reserve in much the same way as do other stimulating intellectual and social activities," said the study co-authored by Bialystok and published in Neurology late last year.

Other studies have found that bilingual people are better than monolinguals at shutting out distractions and focusing on what's important, which makes them better at multi-tasking, Amy Weinberg of the University of Maryland said at the conference.

"Getting to some level of proficiency in a second language certainly makes you an expert multi-tasker," Weinberg, a professor of linguistics, told AFP.

"When you're speaking, all the languages you speak are turned on, and you have to activate a mechanism in the brain that allows you to limit interference from one language when talking in the other," she said.

"You're juggling all kinds of mental balls as a bilingual," she said.

This mental juggling act is what makes people who speak more than one language more adept at managing several tasks at once, agreed Judith Kroll, director of the center for language studies at Penn State University.

"The bilingual is somehow able to negotiate between the competition of the languages, and the speculation is that these cognitive skills come from this juggling of languages," she said.

But an ability to speak English, Chinese, Russian and Creole, for example, does not make a person more intelligent.

"Bilinguals simply acquire specific types of expertise that help them attend to critical tasks and ignore irrelevant information," said Kroll.

THEREFORE - Speaking more than one language protects the brain against cognitive decline and makes a person better at multi-tasking.

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