The health benefits of honey are many and well-known.  From skin cleanser to antibiotic, cough suppressant, allergy relief to just plain old sweetener, honey can do it all.  But can it help you sleep?  Some studies are suggesting that it can.

I have to credit my sister-in-law for this one.  She’s a recent convert to “all things natural” and is sharing her new discoveries with evangelical enthusiasm.  The latest is the apparent evidence that having a spoonful of honey at bedtime helps you get to sleep, and stay asleep.  She swears that she has noticed an enormous difference in her own sleep since trying this.

I’ve struggled with insomnia my whole life.  My son seems to be heading down the same route.  As he has SPD (Sensory Processing Dysfunction) and possibly ADHD, his sleep is vitally important yet he cannot settle down to rest.  We’ve had to resort to him taking melatonin most nights for the past couple years, though we’ve recently been working to find other means to help him relax and get to sleep.

Will a simple dose of honey solve our sleep problems?  We’re going to find out. And I’ll keep you posted right here on Eco Child’s Play.  Stay tuned!

Photo credit:  alsjhc via Creative Commons

But we all know that being drunk while pregnant is a gigantic “no-no”. A new study shows that fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) are often misdiagnosed as ADHD. Both disorders have a number of similar symptoms: very limited attention, physical restlessness and extreme impulsivity.

But in some ways, FASD seems to be a bit more like another spectrum disorder: ASD. And now a study from the University of Toronto claim that we’re confusing disorders.

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Problem is, stimulants like these make kids who take them 7 times more likely to die suddenly.

What we found — to our surprise — is that even if you take out confounding factors, the association between stimulant use and sudden death was still significant.

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The study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, found that early childhood exposure to indoor air pollution, specifically NO2 (nitrogen dioxide), led to lower scores on cognitive tests and was found to affect the child’s ability to pay attention.

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One mother’s frightening odyssey into the world of ADHD and multiple drug treatments for her children highlights the unhealthy relationship between big drug companies and child psychiatry, and the effectiveness of following half-finished studies.

“When a major study said kids with ADHD could benefit from drugs, we gave my son Ritalin. Then he became manic and delusional—and now the study’s researchers say they might have been wrong all along.”

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That adds up to over 2 million kids, one in every class of 25.

Traditional treatments involve medications such as Ritlin and Adderall, as well as other prescription drugs.  Side effects linked to ADHD medication include depression, anxiety, loss of appetite, inability to fall or stay asleep, rapid heartbeat…the list goes on and on.

Research has shown that nutrient deficiencies can exacerbate ADHD symptoms.  For many children, proper nutrition may effectively work as an ADHD alternative treatment.  (If your child is currently taking prescription medication for ADHD, don’t stop the medication without discussing it with your physician first.)

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I’m not a doctor or a psychiatrist, but as a parent, I am very protective about my kids. Messing with their brain chemistry or masking symptoms while the root causes go untreated seems like it will come back to haunt us later.

First, a clip from the new movie GenerationRX:

For decades, scores of doctors, government officials, journalists, and others have extolled the benefits of psychiatric medicines for children. GENERATION RX presents “the rest of the story” and unveils how this era of unprecedented change in Western culture really occurred - and what price has been paid by our society.

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Image:  Biotech Weblog

A friend of mine, who also happens to be our school nurse, has a son with ADD.  This child takes rRitalin during the school year; however, during summer vacation, he is drug free.  It is only during the structured, restricted environment of school that this child needs drugs to focus.  Given recent research on the subject, I can’t help but believe recess and play matters greatly for all children, especially those suspected of having attention problems.

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You've probably heard of attention deficit disorder, but have you heard about nature deficit disorder? Richard Louv has written about the link between these two disorders and their effects on one another in Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.

According to a University of Illinois study published in the American Journal of Public Health, children five years old and older with ADHD showed significant reductions in symptoms when they were engaged in nature. Louv writes, "In fifty-four of fifty-six cases, outdoor activities in more natural settings led to a greater reduction in ADHD symptoms than activities in less natural areas. The only instances when symptoms worsened occurred in the artificial environments. In a related experiment, the laboratory found that children could focus on specific tasks better in green settings."

My children do not have ADHD, but like all children, they have their difficult moments. When the tension builds up inside our home, we head out for hike or to work in the garden and calmness returns. Louv also writes about the importance of nature for all children. He quotes researcher Nancy Wells of New York State University stating that, "green spaces may enable children to think more clearly and cope more effectively with life stress." I know this is true in my family.

Louv's ideas expressed in his book Last Child in the Woods, has sparked a movement entitled Leave No Child Inside, a movement to correct "nature-deficit disorder". According to Louv, "Within the space of a few decades, the way children understand and experience their neighborhoods and the natural world has changed radically. Even as children and teenagers become more aware of global threats to the environment, their physical contact, their intimacy with nature, is fading.

As one suburban fifth grader put it to me, in what has become the signature epigram of the children-and-nature movement: 'I like to play indoors better ’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.'"

His desire is not at all uncommon. In a typical week, only 6 percent of children age nine to thirteen play outside on their own. Studies by the National Sporting Goods Association and by American Sports Data, a research firm, show a dramatic decline in the past decade in such outdoor activities as swimming and fishing. Even bike riding is down 31 percent since 1995.

In San Diego, according to a survey by the nonprofit Aquatic Adventures, 90 percent of inner-city kids do not know how to swim; 34 percent have never been to the beach. In suburban Fort Collins, Colorado, teachers shake their heads in dismay when they describe the many students who have never been to the mountains visible year-round on the western horizon.

Raspberry HuntUrban, suburban, and even rural parents cite a number of everyday reasons why their children spend less time in nature than they themselves did, including disappearing access to natural areas, competition from television and computers, dangerous traffic, more homework, and other pressures." I feel blessed to raise my children in the mountains, where we discover the wonders of nature around us on our daily hikes. Just this week we saw a green tree frog, a dead sparrow hack, shooting stars, and a trillium making its first spring appearance.

To quote a Senegalese ecologist, "“In the end we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught.”

Bloggers writing about :

Access to Awareness

Eco Child's Play

American Hiking Society