Don't forget to change your clocks back one hour this Sunday!!!

Smoke Detectors

Hey - don't forget to grab some extra 9 volt batteries this week. Change the batteries in all of your smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors twice a year. The easiest way I've heard to remember is to do it when you change your clock - that's coming up this Sunday, on November 2nd. Happy battery changing!

The Trick is the Type of Treat for a Healthy Halloween!

Some great tips from Meals Matter!!

It won't be long before children turn into little goblins and venture out into the night to collect a bagful of tempting treats! Halloween is a great time to teach children the "trick" to balancing the gooey candy they love with healthy foods that are both delicious and satisfying! Many parents may feel that their children are on a "sugar-high" during Halloween, blaming too many sugary treats as the culprit. The excitement of the moment is more likely the culprit, as sugar has not been shown to cause hyperactivity. Remember, there are no "bad" foods, only poor diets. A little extra candy and cookies on Halloween aren't "bad." You simply don't want to allow your children to eat too much of those foods, too often! Here are some healthy Halloween tips: Serve children a balanced meal before the Halloween festivities begin so that children aren't tempted to eat their candy before they get home. Discuss with children in advance how much and how often they are allowed to eat their Halloween candy. Offer trick-or-treat candy as a substitute for dessert after lunch and dinner or a few pieces along with a healthy snack. Mix in healthy snacks along with Halloween candy, like string cheese, vegetables with dip, trail mix, yogurt or a glass of milk – for dunking cookies and washing down candy. Model healthy habits to your children by practicing restraint when dipping into the candy jar yourself. Remember that dessert can be part of a healthy diet. Overly restrictive rules on candy can make it even more desirable to your kids. Make Halloween fun without candy! Host a pumpkin-carving contest at your home or school. Invite other parents or older siblings to supervise use of carving tools. Instead of carving, give younger children craft paint or magic markers to create their very own jack-o-lanterns. Many children may not realize the wonderful foods made from the very food they just carved and decorated! Pumpkin is rich in vitamin A, calcium and potassium, as well as fiber. Let your kids help you make pumpkin treats like Pumpkin Pie or Pumpkin Cupcakes. Pumpkin Chowder or Roasted Carrot Soup is as delicious as it is beautiful to look at. Serve it for a family meal, accompanied by a crisp green salad, warm bread and a glass of milk. Add some canned pumpkin and pumpkin pie spice to your favorite pancake recipe or to our Whole-Grain Pancakes for a yummy breakfast. Top off the pancakes with vanilla yogurt for an extra boost of bone-building calcium! Make an edible scarecrow! Offer a prize for the "healthiest" scarecrow made from fruits and vegetables and other foods from all the food groups!

Protecting against colds

A great article from TriVita....

What You Can Do to Protect Against Cold or Flu

Cold and flu season is here. What do we do to stay well or speed the healing process if we are sick? Here are some great recommendations from a number of different sources:

• Wash your hands
  
First, the largest contributor to infection is unwashed hands. Washing your hands with soap every few hours will reduce the chance for pathogens to gain access to your system. As important as washing your hands is making sure they are completely dry. Then, use the disposable towel to open the door out of the washroom. Many ugly microbes lurk on door handles – usually from people who have not properly washed and dried their hands.


• Clean surfaces
  
Next, disinfect surfaces that are shared by many people. For instance, public telephones bring you within kissing distance of hundreds or even thousands of people. Who knows what their hygiene habits are? In a typical day we may be exposed to germs from as many as 150 countries or more!


• Reduce stress
  
Reduce stress during this season. Stress decreases the effectiveness of your immune system. Your immune system may begin to overreact or not react in time to stop an infection when you are under stress. The source of the stress really does not matter. For instance, job stress and an injury may seem like entirely different stresses to your mind but they are treated exactly the same way by your body.

What determines if you get sick or not?
To better understand viral infections we need to look a bit deeper into medical research. In the book, The Promise of Sleep, William Dement, MD describes a routine where live rhino viruses are cultured and people are routinely infected. Yet, not all of them get sick. Some people actually feel better after the virus has been introduced.

Viruses have existed on earth far longer than humans have. We exist in the same time and space constantly. You even have many, many thousands of live rhino viruses in your nose right now! Why aren’t they causing an infection? It has to do with an argument that occurred 150 years ago between Louis Pasteur and Antoine Bechamp.

Pasteur and Bechamp were physicians in France. They were keenly aware of the same things you and I experience every year: during the cold and flu season, some people get sick and some people don’t. Pasteur spent his life looking for what makes sick people sick. Bechamp spent his career looking for what keeps healthy people healthy – and how we can be like them! They settled their argument with the discovery that illness visits people with poor habits much more frequently than those who care for their health.

It turns out that microbes prefer to wreak their havoc on people with compromised immune systems. Dr. Dement discovered that simple things will make you vulnerable to infection with a cold or the flu, such as:

• An imbalanced diet
• Alcohol and caffeine consumption
• An argument with someone you love

He noted that the greatest contributor to wellness or illness concerning these infections is the amount of sleep that we get. Just as Pasteur and Bechamp discovered more than a century ago, our health revolves around a healthy lifestyle more than the virulence of a microbe.

Help protect against seasonal illness
The phrase that describes our vulnerability or resistance to disease is “biological terrain.” The terrain or landscape of our health is made up of our genetics, our environment and, most importantly, our lifestyle. Vigorous application of the 10 Essentials yields the healthiest, most sickness or illness-resistant terrain. Skipping even one of these principles will change your terrain and leave you vulnerable to infection.

• A base of healthy nutrients
  
Establishing a base of healthy nutrients can provide us with a very resilient terrain. The more dense the base is, the more sickness or illness-resistant our terrain will be. Taking a multiple vitamin and mineral supplement every day is an excellent start. Almost all physicians recommend an Omega-3 supplement as well. If your terrain is being remodeled by stress, you may need adaptogens to help you keep from getting sick. Indeed, the long-term studies of adaptogens in Russia clearly demonstrated that these plants help your body resist infections and aid in healing.


• Vitamin C
  
Vitamin C is a favorite for protecting against the common cold. Russell Jaffe, MD, former director of the National Institutes of Health, recommends a loading dose of Vitamin C: one teaspoon of Vitamin C crystals every 15 minutes until you “flush.” By this, he means a complete bowel evacuation. After the flush, he recommends a daily serving of Vitamin C (for one month) that is equivalent to 75% of the amount it took you to flush. This should really improve your terrain!


• Echinacea
  
Echinacea is used in a similar way. Significant medical research from Germany suggests that an hourly dose of Echinacea will help reduce symptoms and shorten the duration of a virus infection. Taking a gram of Echinacea every hour for three days may even reduce chances of an infection that has already begun. Continue taking Echinacea three times daily for up to two weeks afterward to protect against a relapse.

What are the best ways to protect against virus infections from colds and flu? Build up your terrain with the 10 Essentials, and reduce your exposure through hand-washing and other sanitary procedures. If your lifestyle has become so hectic that you become vulnerable, aggressive nutrition can restore balance to your immune system. If you feel a bug coming on, traditional remedies such as Vitamin C and Echinacea may be the final bulwark between you and a serious infection

Helping to prevent SIDS

SIDS... Sudden Infant Death Syndrome... I don't think I've ever heard of a diagnosis that makes me shudder, just from hearing the name, like that one does.

I found an article in USA Today that offers some help in striving to prevent losing children to SIDS. Liz Szabo cites a new study that fans may reduce the risk of SIDS, or sudden infant death syndrome.

"Babies who slept in a room with a fan were 72% less likely to die from SIDS, according to a study released today from Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. The study included interviews with the mothers of 185 infants who died from SIDS and the mothers of 312 other babies.

Fans offered even more protection to babies sleeping in warm rooms, where temperatures were over 69 degrees, according to the study. Although opening a window also appeared to reduce the risk of SIDS, authors say this finding could have been due to chance.

Although doctors don't know exactly why fans seem to help, it's possible that fans improve air circulation, preventing infants from rebreathing exhaled carbon dioxide, which can pool up in the gap between a baby's face and the mattress, says author De-Kun Li, a reproductive and perinatal epidemiologist with Kaiser Permanente's research division.

Because a baby's neck muscles are weak, they may not be able to turn their heads to find fresh air, Li says.

That's why the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that babies sleep on their backs. Deaths from SIDS have fallen by half since 1992, to a rate of about 0.5 deaths for every 1,000 live births. Pacifiers also seem to protect babies, Li says, perhaps because the handles prevent a child's face from becoming pressed against the mattress.

Marian Willinger of the National Institutes of Health says that the new study, while intriguing, needs to be followed up by additional research. Putting babies to sleep on their backs is still the most important thing parents or caregivers can do to prevent SIDS, she says.

A study published Monday in Pediatrics, however, show that 26% of mothers of 3-month-olds don't follow that advice. One-third of mothers shared a bed with their 3-month-old, another practice that may increase the risk of SIDS.

Parents who are young, with low incomes or low education are least likely to follow safe sleeping guidelines, the study says.

Daycare providers are even less likely to put infants on their backs, according to a second study in Pediatrics. About 20% of SIDS deaths occur when someone other than a parent is in charge.

In a study of 1,993 infants, only 51% of babies were put to sleep on their backs at the beginning of the study, in which researchers measured the effect of educating childcare providers about SIDS. The program provided modest improvement. Observers noted that 62% of babies were put on their backs at childcare centers that received the training, compared to 57% of babies at centers that didn't receive the training.

Childcare providers are more likely to put babies on their backs if daycare centers have a written policy about safe sleeping, the study says. About half of states require childcare centers to put babies on their backs to sleep.

Study author Rachel Moon, a leading SIDS expert at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, says parents should talk to their childcare providers. "In our observations, parents go in and talk to the childcare provider about what creams to use for diaper rash much more than they talk about sleep position," Moon says."

Wow... I didn't try to pull that apart and put it into my own words because I thought that they did a great job. Included in that article was also a list of tips regarding SIDS:

WAYS TO REDUCE SIDS Always put babies to sleep on their backs. Never smoke around a baby. Keep stuffed animals and loose bedding, such as blankets and pillows, out of the crib. Don't use a bumper, or use one that is too firm to mold around a baby's face. Give the baby a pacifier, as long as the baby is older than 2 weeks and already breastfeeding. Sources: Ed Martin, Kaiser Permanente; Pediatrics.