Health

Visual sensitivity commonly decreases with age but what most people don’t know is that this age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the most common cause of blindness. As the world’s population ages blindness is becoming increasingly common.

Though some vitamins contained in yellow, orange and red vegetables can prevent degeneration, these vegetables alone won’t offer you a permanent solution.

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Time.com: Why Americans Are Adopting Fewer Kids from China
“Freer is one of a growing number of prospective parents who are unable to adopt from China under new laws Beijing put in place in May 2007. The stricter guidelines, intended to limit the overwhelming number of applicants to China's well-regarded adoption program, have been effective — adoptions of Chinese children by U.S. citizens have dropped 50%, according to the U.S. State Department. The new regulations require, among other things, that adoptive parents be married, under 50, not classified as clinically obese, not have taken antidepressant medications in the past two years, not have facial deformities and meet certain educational and economic requirements.”
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1894333,00.html?iid=tsmodu...

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Seems like every year brings a new animal related health scare. This year's pandemic panic comes to us via Mexican pork, and fears of a worldwide health crisis are already starting to affect China's economy.

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The Care for Children School and Clinic is hosting a great networking event for professionals across a wide range of fields. Take this opportunity to get together and discuss the various services and resources available to families with special needs children in Beijing.

If you're in education, mental health services, pediatrics or are simply interested in hearing more about: the Care for Children Special Needs School, and the newly launched Care for Children Family Services Clinic, then check out the details below.

DATE: Monday 27 April
TIME: 6-7.30pm (refreshments and snacks provided)
PLACE:
Care for Children School and Clinic
Beijing Riviera
1 Xiang Jiang North Road
Jing Shun Road
Chaoyang District

RSVP to Meryl Bailey by TODAY, Friday 24 April: meryl@careforchildr en.com.cn

Been ruminating about the ups-and-downs of toddler feeding habits this week - which, by the looks of it, is a common issue - even for kids (like ours) who were previously prolific eaters.

It's as if someone flipped a switch in the last week or so -- "ingest" has now been reset to "reject" as Marianne spends meal times either spitting or picking out pretty much anything that enters her mouth, even if she had been greedily grabbing at it from our dinner plates (a habit that my in-laws love to indulge) seconds before.

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It’s Back
The highly contagious Foot and Mouth disease is back and like last year, it’s been affecting kids in eastern and central China, including nine reported deaths in Shandong province. The virally borne symptoms include fever and sores and last year “affected around 25,000 people nationwide, killing at least 40.”

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Having a baby is usually considered a joyous event, but all those dead-of-night feedings, pushy in-laws and general jitters can make life miserable for any new mom. To make matters worse, some women experience serious post-natal depression, which leads to a vicious cycle of fatigue, fights and even more stress. This can be particularly distressing for family members caught in the crossfire – a stressed-out mama can turn from “sweet-and-nurturing” to “hellfire-and-brimstone” at the drop of a hat.

Thus for new parents-to-be the recent announcement by US researchers that “measuring levels of a hormone midway through pregnancy may predict a woman's risk of postnatal depression” should be welcome news. The study focused primarily on the relationship between post-natal depression, which usually “starts four to six weeks after giving birth” and “affects around 10 to 15 percent of mothers,” and “pCRH (placental corticotropin-releasing hormone)” – a type of hormone that produces cortisol, which the body produces in greater amounts during pregnancy to help mothers-to-be deal with stress.

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Browsing for interesting articles online, my visual senses were overwhelmed with headlines reading ‘Teenagers Need Long Lie Ins’ and ‘Teenagers Improve Grades With Lie Ins’. Whilst teens might agree, parents no doubt find the concept of pandering to their children’s whining complaints of exhaustion ridiculous.

Parents should prepare to be shocked though as a test carried out at Northwestern University in Illinois shows that teenagers do actually need more sleep than children and adults. If that doesn’t convince parents to let teens spend all morning in bed, experiments performed by the Chairman of Circadian Neuroscience at Brasenose College, Oxford have revealed that teenagers brains perform better in the afternoons.

In a controversial move, Dr. Paul Kelley, headmaster at a school in the U.K has announced that he will delay the start of the school day until 11am because teenagers need more sleep and denying it could impact their mental and physical health and in turn education. ‘Teenagers are not lazy. We are depriving them of the sleep they need through purely biological factors beyond their control’ said Kelley.

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Traditional Chinese Medicine may seem mysterious, if not hokey, to some*, but one area that seems to hold the most weight is acupressure (tui na, 推拿), and its twin discipline, acupuncture (zhen jiu，针灸). Both practices are based on a system of pressure points located along meridians throughout the body, and though there is “no known anatomical or histological basis for the existence of acupuncture points or meridians,” pressure points have been studied extensively to the point that the concept has more or less been accepted by Western medicine (the American Heart Association, for instance, recognizes at least 11 pressure points on the body).

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Want your baby to start talking sooner? Try buying a backward-facing stroller.

New studies from the University of Dundee in Scotland have found that caregivers talk to infants more when the kids face them in strollers. Researchers observed how mothers behaved with infants in two kinds of strollers – one in which babies sit facing away from the mother, and one in which babies sit facing the mother. The result: Moms talk to their kids twice as much when facing them. This means more language development and social interaction.

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