A growing number of U.S. children may develop vision problems before they reach kindergarten, according to a study that suggests eye screenings will become increasingly important for the preschool set.
For the study, researchers analyzed data from U.S. census records and from eye exams on about 12,000 kids under 6 years old. Nationwide, researchers estimated that more than 174,000 kids from 3 to 5 years old had vision impairment as of 2015 and projected that their ranks will swell by 26 percent to more than 220,000 by 2060.
Most of these kids have what’s known as refractive errors, or difficulties focusing on things either up close or far away, that can be often be corrected with glasses. This means parents should take kids for at least one comprehensive eye exam by age 3 and watch for signs of vision issues, said lead study author Dr. Rohit Varma, director of the Roski Eye Institute and dean at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
“Parents should watch out for signs such as sitting close to the TV or holding a book too close, squinting, tilting their head, frequently rubbing their eyes, short attention span for the child’s age, turning of an eye in or out, sensitivity to light, difficulty with eye-hand-body coordination when playing ball or bike riding, or avoiding coloring activities, puzzles and other detailed activities,” Varma said by email.
“If children display such symptoms or behaviors then they should certainly get an eye examination,” Varma added.
Hispanic children were most likely to have vision problems, researchers report in JAMA Ophthalmology. As of 2015, Hispanic kids accounted for 38 percent of vision impairment cases, and researchers estimated this proportion would climb to 44 percent by 2060 aided by higher birth rates in this population relative to other racial and ethnic groups.
Based on changing demographics across the country, the second most-affected group is expected to shift from non-Hispanic white kids, who represented 26 percent of cases in 2015, dropping to 16.5 percent in 2060, to African American kids, representing 25 percent of cases in 2015 and 22 percent in 2060, according to the researchers.
The states projected to have the most children with vision impairment by 2060 are California, Texas and Florida, all of which have large Hispanic populations.
Overall, the types of vision problems found in kids are projected to remain little changed by 2060, however.
Refractive errors will make up about 70 percent of cases by 2060, followed by amblyopia, or lazy eye, accounting for 24 percent. About 6 percent of cases will result from eye disease.
One limitation of the study is the reliance on census records with self-reported data on race and ethnicity, the authors note. Researchers also assumed the prevalence of impaired vision within different racial and ethnic groups would not change over time, so increases and decreases are based just on population changes.
Still, the findings should serve as a reminder to parents not to wait to get children’s eyes checked until kids complain about their vision, said Dr. Janet Leasher of the Nova Southeastern University College of Optometry in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
“Many children don’t know that the way they see may not be normal, and the only way to find out is to have them assessed by a qualified eye care professional,” Leasher, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email. “There are pediatric ophthalmologists and optometrists who specialize in children’s vision, but any eye doctor can conduct the tests necessary to determine if there is a problem.”
As warm weather approaches, U.S. health officials are warning that outbreaks of diarrhea caused by swallowing swimming pool water containing parasites have doubled in the past few years.
The infections occur when swimmers ingest water contaminated by diarrhea from a person infected by Cryptosporidium or Crypto, a parasite that is notoriously difficult to kill.
Crypto caused at least 32 outbreaks in swimming pools or water parks in 2016, compared with 16 in 2014, according to a report published in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly report on death and disease.
Arizona last year reported that 352 people became sick with Cryptosporidiosis from July through October, compared with no more than 62 cases per year from 2011 to 2015. Ohio reported 1,940 infections in 2016, compared with no more than 571 in any one year from 2012 to 2015.
The CDC said it was not clear if there are actually more outbreaks, or if states are doing a better job of reporting them since it introduced a new DNA-based tracking tool in 2010.
Crypto is the most common cause of diarrhea outbreaks linked with swimming pools or water parks because it can survive up to 10 days in chlorinated water. It only takes a mouthful of contaminated water to make a healthy person sick for up to three weeks. Infections can cause watery diarrhea, stomach cramps, nausea or vomiting, and can lead to dehydration.
To kill the parasite, the CDC recommends closing pools and treating the water with high levels of chlorine, called hyperchlorination.
The CDC advises parents not to let children swim if they have diarrhea. People who are infected with Crypto should wait two weeks after the diarrhea stops before swimming. And to keep from getting sick, the CDC advises swimmers not to swallow pool water.
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Charlie Quiroga realized she needed to make a change in her lifestyle. She was in need of improving her health and the environment at Push-as-Rx � greatly helped her, motivating and encouraging her to keep going. The trainers at Push as Rx personally mean a lot to Charlie Quiroga. She appreciates how the trainers push her to reach her goals by keeping her focused with every aspect of fitness.
PUSH-as-Rx � is leading the field with laser focus supporting our youth sport programs.� The�PUSH-as-Rx � System is a sport specific athletic program designed by a strength-agility coach and physiology doctor with a combined 40 years of experience working with extreme athletes. At its core, the program is the multidisciplinary study of reactive agility, body mechanics and extreme motion dynamics. Through continuous and detailed assessments of the athletes in motion and while under direct supervised stress loads, a clear quantitative picture of body dynamics emerges. Exposure to the biomechanical vulnerabilities are presented to our team. �Immediately,�we adjust our methods for our athletes in order to optimize performance.� This highly adaptive system with continual�dynamic adjustments has helped many of our athletes come back faster, stronger, and ready post injury while safely minimizing recovery times. Results demonstrate clear improved agility, speed, decreased reaction time with greatly improved postural-torque mechanics.��PUSH-as-Rx � offers specialized extreme performance enhancements to our athletes no matter the age.
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Women in their early 40s with the highest intake of vitamin D and calcium from food sources may have a lower than average risk of starting menopause before age 45, a recent study suggests.
Taking vitamin D or calcium in supplement form had no benefit in the large study of U.S. nurses, the study team writes in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, and there may be other substances in dairy foods that also contribute to their apparent protective effect.
“Early menopause can have substantial health impacts for women. It increases their risk of cardiovascular disease and early cognitive decline and osteoporosis,” lead author Alexandra Purdue-Smithe told Reuters Health.
In addition, as women are delaying having kids into their later reproductive years, having early menopause can have a substantial impact on their ability to conceive as they wish, which can have psychological and financial consequences, said Purdue-Smithe, an epidemiologist with the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
“Given that (early menopause) affects roughly 10 percent of women in the U.S. and other Western populations, it felt like a worthwhile problem to start investigating and seeing if there are any potentially modifiable risk factors for it,” she said.
Menopause, when a woman stops menstruating and her levels of hormones like estrogen decline, typically happens between the ages of 45 and 55. Menopause before age 45 is considered “early.”
Vitamin D may be involved in some of the hormonal mechanisms of early menopause, but little is known about how dietary vitamin D and calcium affect the risk, Purdue-Smithe and her colleagues write.
They analyzed data from the Nurses’ Health Study II, a long-term study of more than 100,000 U.S. registered nurses who were 25 to 42 years old in 1989 when they began answering health questionnaires every two years.
The questionnaires were designed to assess the nurses’ lifestyles, behaviors and overall health. Questions about diet were asked five times over 20 years. Researchers followed the participants until 2011, by which time 2,041 women experienced early menopause.
“The women who consumed the most vitamin D from food sources had a 17 percent lower risk of having early menopause as compared to women who consumed the least,” Purdue-Smithe said. The researchers found this association only with dairy sources of vitamin D, like milk, not with non-dairy sources like oily fish.
Women who consumed the most calcium from food sources were also about 13 percent less likely to experience early menopause compared to women who consumed the least calcium, and once again, only dairy foods seemed to provide a benefit.
“Our next direction is to look at actual individual dairy foods and see if there’s something else going on with dairy itself,” Purdue-Smithe said.
The study team also found that taking high doses of calcium in supplement form was associated with a higher risk of early menopause. But the researchers speculate that these women might have been diagnosed with osteoporosis or other conditions that are also risk factors for early menopause.
“Most of what is known about the relationship between calcium and Vitamin D and women’s issues is related to bone health,” said Sandra Arevalo, a dietitian and director of the Nutrition Services and Community Outreach for Community Pediatrics at Montefiore Medical Center in New York.
Lack of Vitamin D and calcium in a woman’s diet, mainly as age progresses, increases her risk of low bone mineral density, osteoporosis and bone fractures, said Arevalo, who wasn’t involved in the study.
The top 10 food sources of calcium are low-fat yogurt, low-fat cheese, sardines, calcium-fortified soy milk, calcium-fortified orange juice, salmon, calcium fortified ready-to-eat cereal, turnips, kale and bok choi, she noted in an email.
The top 10 sources of Vitamin D are cod liver oil, swordfish, salmon, tuna fish, vitamin D fortified orange juice, low-fat vitamin D-fortified milk, yogurt, fortified margarine, sardines and liver, Arevalo said.
Doctor of Chiropractic, Dr. Alexander Jimenez examines why sciatica can be so painful.
Sciatica may be perceived as the worst form of nerve malady, but that�s more reputation than reality.
Nerve pain is one of the most extreme forms of pain. It elicits imagery of searing heat, electric shock, and lightning bolt -like shooting sensations. And, the most dreaded kind of spinal nerve damage is arguably the tell tale low back and leg pain of sciatica.
A question patients frequently ask is, � Why is sciatica so distressing?� That�s not the case, although they often consider there�s something exceptional about sciatica versus other kinds of spinal nerve malady.
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Myth-busting Sciatica Pain
Many assume sciatic nerve compression delivers more pain than other pinched nerves through the body because sciatica requires the sciatic nerve, which can be the longest and largest nerve within the body. But in 99 percent of sciatica cases, it�s not the sciatic nerve that�s compressed�it�s the nerve roots in the lumbar spine (low back) that join as they leave the spinal column and form the sciatic nerve.
When most folks refer to sciatica, they describe pain that shoots down the leg after the path of the sciatic nerve, but it�s actually one or two nerve roots compromised (commonly, the L4 or L5 nerve root). Doctors ascertain the exact nerve roots which are compressed by the positioning of the pain, like if the pain goes down to the side of the foot or the big toe.
Other Sources Of The Sciatica Stigma
It Affects Your Legs
One of the reasons sciatica gets so much attention is since the sciatic nerve�s roots feed to the legs, and we use our legs a lot. Sciatica may be perceived by patients as being more painful when compared to a compressed root in a less active portion of the human body, for example in the torso. In case you compressed or irritated another nerve of prominence or identical use to your own leg, it will be equally as distressing as sciatic pain.
Muscle Spasms Are�The Actual Culprit
Another rationale sciatica is associated with intense pain isn’t related to nerve compression muscle spasms. A patient with sciatic symptoms is hunched over and can�t stand up straight when, that�s a signal the patient has had a back spasm due to the nerve irritation. As sciatica changes your lumbar spine, the muscles that could spasm following nerve damage will be the large, postural back muscles. You�ll feel them when they spasm, because these muscles are so large. On the other hand, if a neck nerve root is compressed by you, you won�t find a muscle spasm that is potential quite as much because the muscles near the cervical spinal column are much smaller. (But spasms of neck muscles can nevertheless be really painful!)
Sciatica Is A Standard Enemy
The lumbar spine is prone to wear and tear on the intervertebral discs. When this happens, materials that irritate the encompassing nerves are leaked by the discs. Discs can also herniate, and that may irritate the nerve. Sometimes, the commonality of sciatica helps it be a catch all diagnosis when a patient doesn�t even have nerve root problem. For example, tweaking your back from lifting is generally a muscular problem, not a nerve issue.
Nerve Pain Is Created Equal
There are various causes of back malady, and sciatica is merely one. As they are all equally hazardous, sciatica isn�t especially unique when you compare it to other types of nerve malady. It can be really intense and debilitating, when nerve pain happens everywhere in the body. Lives are turned upside down from nerve pain, so don�t hesitate to see a spine specialist to simply help alleviate nerve pain in your neck or back.
Luis Martinez chose to come to Push-as-Rx � in order to change his life and now he’s in the best shape he’s ever been. Mr. Martinez encountered health challenges despite taking care of his health but Push as Rx helped him overcome his hardships. Luis Martinez is grateful to the trainers for believing in him to succeed in regaining his health once more.
PUSH-as-Rx � is leading the field with laser focus supporting our youth sport programs.� The�PUSH-as-Rx � System is a sport specific athletic program designed by a strength-agility coach and physiology doctor with a combined 40 years of experience working with extreme athletes. At its core, the program is the multidisciplinary study of reactive agility, body mechanics and extreme motion dynamics. Through continuous and detailed assessments of the athletes in motion and while under direct supervised stress loads, a clear quantitative picture of body dynamics emerges. Exposure to the biomechanical vulnerabilities are presented to our team. �Immediately,�we adjust our methods for our athletes in order to optimize performance.� This highly adaptive system with continual�dynamic adjustments has helped many of our athletes come back faster, stronger, and ready post injury while safely minimizing recovery times. Results demonstrate clear improved agility, speed, decreased reaction time with greatly improved postural-torque mechanics.��PUSH-as-Rx � offers specialized extreme performance enhancements to our athletes no matter the age.
Please Recommend Us: If you have enjoyed this video and/or we have helped you in any way please feel free to recommend us. Thank You.
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