Now Hear This – Is all Exercise Healthy ?

Increasing Trends for Music on the Move

A not-so-new, but growing trend in exercise accessories is the use of personal audio devices like an iPod or MP3 player. Over just the last five years, there’s been a surge in iPod usage among young people from 18 to 76 percent. Hand-in-hand with it, unfortunately, goes an increase in noise-induced hearing loss. In fact, hearing loss is now affecting nearly 20 percent of American adolescents age 12 to 19. One in 20 teens has a notable hearing loss and one in five is showing signs they are on the path to hearing loss, according to reports in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“It takes a long time to develop, but we are starting to see more patients with early hearing loss in the high ranges,” says Dr. Steven J. Millen, an otologist with Froedtert & The Medical College of Wisconsin. There are two basic types of hearing loss, impulse loss from a sudden loud noise and a gradual loss. “We used to see most noise-induced hearing loss in men who worked in a factory for many years. Now, we’re seeing more young people with tinnitus, a ringing or buzzing in the ears that does not go away,” he says.

The problem is how long and how loudly people are listening to their iPods. “OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Association) says workers can only tolerate high levels of noise of, say, 100 decibels for up to two hours a day before damage can occur. When you consider the spoken voice is 60 decibels on average and some kids turn up their iPods to the maximum level of 115 decibels for several hours at a time, the risk of damage is quite high,” Millen says.

Adding to the problem is the type of ear phones typically used with personal audio technology. “People are using ear buds that fit right into the ear canal vs. hear phones that sit on the outside of the ear. This adds to the intensity,” he says.

Once tinnitus occurs, hearing loss has already begun. “The sad thing is, the treatment for tinnitus is not very good,” Millen says.

Fortunately, some changes may be on the horizon in the manufacture of personal audio devices. “There is some talk about limiting the output to 100 decibels. That’s already being done in Europe,” Millen says.

Safer headphones have been developed, too. Philips has a set of children’s headphones that include a volume lock that parents can set. Other companies have developed ear “hooks” that feature acoustic chambers that direct the sound waves away from the eardrum, and others are designed to keep the maximum audio level below 85 decibels. “At 85 decibels after eight hours, hearing damage can begin,” Millen says.

Some easy steps can be taken to protect hearing. “I advise people to keep the volume down; listen to your iPod or MP3 player at 50 to 60 percent of maximum output. And, limit listening time,” Millen says.

By JOANN PETASCHNICK Gm Today

 

 

 

Hearing Tests: in addition to their newborn hearing test, children should begin to have formal hearing tests at each yearly visit to their pediatrician

 

 

 

Being aware of these pediatric best practices can help make sure your child is cared for following the latest recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

• Autism Screening: pediatricians should look for subtle autism red flags(poor eye contact, not responding to name being called, and delayed babbling and baby talk, etc.) that could be an indication of autism at each well child visit and should use a formal autism screen tool, such as M-CHAT(Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers), at 18 and 24 months or whenever a parent raises concerns that their child might have autism.
• Blood Pressure: children should have their blood pressure routinely checked at each well child visit beginning at age three years.
• BMI: children and teens should have their BMI calculated and plotted on a BMI growth chart each year to help identify excessive weight gain and a risk of developing childhood obesity. Do you know your child’s BMI?

• Breastfeeding: pediatricians should encourage exclusive breastfeeding, without supplementary water, juice, or other foods, for the first six months of a baby’s life, and even after cereal and baby food is started around six months, “Breastfeeding should be continued for at least the first year of life and beyond for as long as mutually desired by mother and child.”
• Cholesterol Screening: children between the ages of two and ten years should have a fasting lipid profile blood test if they a positive family history of dyslipidemia (high blood cholesterol and/or triglycerides) or premature cardiovascular disease (high blood pressure, heart attacks, stroke, or heart failure, etc., at 65 (men) or 55 (women) years old and younger), if their family history is unknown, or if they are overweight, have high blood pressure, diabetes mellitus, or smoke cigarettes.
• Hearing Tests: in addition to their newborn hearing test, children should begin to have formal hearing tests at each yearly visit to their pediatrician beginning when they are four years old. A yearly hearing test is also done at age five, six, eight, and ten years. Less formal risk assessment for hearing problems should be done at their other yearly checkups.
• Hematocrit: a hemoglobin or hematocrit blood test is usually done at 12 months to test children for anemia, which is typically caused by iron deficiency. Additional screening for anemia risk factors, such as breastfeeding infants who don’t eat iron-fortified cereal or toddlers who drink too much milk, etc., is recommended at four months, 18 months, and then at your child’s yearly well child checkups.
• HIV: the CDC recommends routine HIV screening for teens beginning when they are 13 years old and repeated each year if they are at high risk for an HIV infection. The AAP simply states that pediatricians should make teens aware that HIV tests are available and encourage an HIV test for sexually active teens and teens who use drugs.
• Jaundice: All newborns should be routinely monitored for the development of jaundicebefore they are sent home from the nursery and a baby’s risk for developing jaundice should be assessed before they are sent home. They should then be seen by their pediatrician within a few days to make sure they aren’t developing jaundice. Parents should keep in mind that sunlight exposure to treat jaundice is no longer recommended by the AAP.
• Lead Poisoning: children, especially infants and toddlers, should be regularly asked about risk factors for lead poisoning and tested when appropriate, such as living in a home built before 1978, having friends or family members with high lead levels, or because of a state or local lead poisoning screening plan.
• Newborn Discharge: most newborns should be allowed to stay in the hospital for at least 48 hours after a vaginal delivery and at least 96 hours after a cesarean delivery, although some healthy, full term newborns without risk factors, who meet specific criteria can go home a little earlier if they will have follow up with their pediatrician within 48 hours.
• Screen Time: kids shouldn’t have a TV in their room and should be limited to no more than one to two hours each day of total screen time, including watching television, videos, and movies, and playing computer and video games, etc.
• Sex Ed: respecting the family’s individual and cultural values, pediatricians should talk to parents, children, and teens about sexuality education in age appropriate ways.
• STDs: all sexually active girls should be routinely tested for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) each year, including chlamydia and gonorrhea, which they can have without symptoms.
• Sunscreen: pediatricians should remind parents that their kids should avoid sunburns, suntanning, and other measures to decrease sun exposure, in addition to recommending that once they are six months old, they apply a broad-spectrum sunscreen with an SPF of 15 or higher 15 to 30 minutes before going out in the sun, and that they need to reapply it at least every two hours. Infants less than six months old should be kept out of the sun, although when absolutely necessary, sunscreen can be applied on exposed areas that aren’t covered by a hat and other protective clothing.
• Swimming Lessons: in addition to counseling parents about childproofing their pool andwater safety, pediatricians should remind parents that most kids who are at least four years old should take swimming lessons until they learn to swim.
• TB Tests: a Tuberculin Skin Test (TST) is usually only done for children with TB risk factors, including children with HIV infection, incarcerated teenagers, children who have either have contact with someone with tuberculosis, have signs or symptoms of TB, recently emigrated from, including international adoptees, or traveled to a country with endemic TB.
• Universal Newborn Hearing Screening: all newborns should have their hearing tested and should be evaluated by the time they are three months old if they fail their first hearing tests, so that they can receive early intervention services before they are six months old if they do have a permanent hearing loss.
• Vision Tests: children should begin to have formal vision screening tests at each yearly visit to their pediatrician beginning when they are three years old. If they are uncooperative with the first vision screening test, your pediatrician will likely re-screen within six months. A yearly vision test is done though age six, and then alternates with less formal risk assessment for vision problems every other year until age twelve. Teenagers should have formal vision tests when they are 15 and 18 years old, and a vision risk assessment at their other yearly checkups.
• WHO Growth Charts: the CDC and AAP recommends that pediatricians use the World Health Organization (WHO) growth charts for children who are less than 24 months old, instead of the older CDC growth charts. The CDC growth charts can continue to be used for children and teens who are two years and older. The WHO growth charts will especially be helpful when evaluating breastfeeding infants, who sometimes appear to be gaining weight poorly on the CDC growth charts, even when they are breastfeeding well.

Pediatric Best Practice By Vincent Iannelli, M.D., About.com Guide

 

Man reunited with stolen ‘hearing’ dog

Mr Ward and "Soot" The border collie

A dog that helps his owner with his hearing impairment has been recovered a week after it was stolen.

Soot, Peter Ward’s eight-year-old border colllie, was in his car when it was stolen from a petrol station in Bridgnorth, Shropshire.

Mr Ward, from Bridgnorth, said he had trained Soot to help him overcome his failing hearing and was lost without her.

She was found in Sedgeley in the Black Country on Wednesday.

Thanks to media appeals, help from two dog charities and several false leads, a member of the public contacted a dog warden in Dudley to say they had found a dog fitting Soot’s description.

Mr Ward, from Cann Hall Road, Low Town, said he asked the warden to try doing a “high five” with the animal to see how it would respond.

‘Booted her out’

“Back over the phone about 10 seconds later, [the warden said], ‘she’s just done an amazing high five’.”

Soot was in the back of Mr Ward’s Land Rover Discovery when the thieves struck at the Hermitage services in Bridgnorth at 1905 GMT on 22 February.

He left the key in the ignition when he went to pay for fuel.

Two men in a white van were filling up at the same time and one of them got into the Land Rover while the other man followed in his van as they drove away without paying for their fuel, police said.

Mr Ward said he thought the thieves “booted her out” once they realised she was in the vehicle.

But he said she had not been mistreated, had even put on a little weight and smelled strongly of shampoo.

He described their reunion as “very emotional”.

“She just sort of looked at me and grabbed part of my foot and sort of said ‘can we play please’?”

Source BBC NEWS

Health Services are ‘failing deaf children with additional complex needs’

Accessing services is most challenging part of caring for child with disabilities, according to a major study

It is estimated that 40% of deaf children have an additional disability. Photograph: Andia/Alamy

Deaf children with additional needs are having their futures blighted by bad, unprofessional and often non-existent support and medical care.

Some medical staff are “overwhelmed by these children’s complexity of needs” while others treat deafness as a minor condition that can be addressed later in the child’s life, according to the largest study into the experiences of deaf children with complex disabilities, published on Wednesday.

In one case, doctors failed to diagnose a deaf child as also being profoundly blind until she was 18 months old, despite the mother repeatedly reporting her daughter’s inability to see.

In another case, the behaviour of a blind toddler who repeatedly hit his head against hard surfaces was dismissed as normal for a child with learning disabilities. It was not until the father persuaded the doctor to watch a film he had made on his laptop, that the child was diagnosed with a brain tumour.

Susan Daniels, chief executive of the National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS) at the University of Manchester, which funded the Complex Needs, Complex Challenges report, said: “We are alarmed by the findings of this research, which shows services are not geared up to support or care for children who are deaf and have other disabilities.”

The research revealed the “shockingly low” expectations some professionals have of these children: often, the report said, a result of them seeing a collection of conditions instead of the whole child.

“As the number of children with complex needs rises, due to increasing survival rates of children who are born prematurely or suffer a severe illness, it is becoming even more important for services to drastically improve how they support these families,” added Daniels, who is organising an NDCS weekend for families and deaf children with additional complex needs (ACN) from 4 March.

“We urge professionals to work with parents to address shortfalls so that deaf children receive the support and care they need,” she added.

Dr Wendy McCracken, co-author of the report, interviewed 50 families of deaf children with conditions such as autism, Down’s syndrome and cerebral palsy.

It is estimated 40% of deaf children have an additional disability. The NDCS estimates that 10% of deaf children, approximately 4,500, in the UK have ACN.

The report comes ahead of the government’s special educational needs green paper, due to be published this month.

“This group raises significant challenges for support and medical services because of the complexity of their needs,” said McCracken. “But instead of striving to help them, researchers frequently exclude these children from research studies.”

She found that professionals seemed “overwhelmed” by the complexity of these children’s needs, with others telling parents that their child’s deafness was a minor issue that “could be dealt with later”. The report also found evidence of parents being wrongly told that their child did not meet the referral level for support services.

“Children were also denied treatment, in particular cochlear implants, on the basis of their additional complex needs,” McCracken said. “This suggests that some professionals are poorly informed about the potential benefits of cochlear implantation for deaf children with additional complex needs, and may as a result be discriminating against these children.”

Even the specialists at special schools for children with learning disabilities lacked the skills and knowledge to help deaf children with other, complex needs, the research found.

“This is contrary to the expectation that deaf children with additional complex needs can take advantage of all the specialisms within such schools,” said McCracken.

“Several parents expressed concern about services having low expectations of their child,” she added. “There were some examples of poor professional practice, where serious conditions were left undiagnosed and often only picked up by a chance encounter by other professionals.”

Accessing and dealing with services is so difficult that the majority of parents in the study said it was the most challenging part of having a disabled child.

They described audiology departments not being able to cope with children’s behaviour, or that they were unable or unwilling to adapt tests for children with additional complex needs.

“My son is deaf and has cerebral palsy, and so is physically unable to do the tests the hospital try to make him do,” said one mother. “It doesn’t matter how often I tell them: they just say it’s the only test that they can do and they can’t refer or treat him until he can complete the test.”

Source: The Guardian