Consumption of
fast food could slow down your kid’s brain
Eating fast food affects not only your child’s general
health but could also slow down his/her brain, a new research suggests. The
researchers found that children who eat the most fast food score less in tests
for maths, science and reading. ‘Research has been focused on how children’s
food consumption contributes to the child obesity epidemic,’ lead researcher
Kelly Purtell from the Ohio State University in the US was quoted as saying.
‘Our findings provide evidence that eating fast food is
linked to another problem: poorer academic outcomes,’ Purtell added. Lack of
iron in fast food leads to a slowing in development of certain processes in the
brain, the researchers suggested. For the study, the researchers used data from
a sample of 8,500 school children from the US, whose fast food consumption was
measured at the age of ten. This was then compared against academic test
results three years later.
Children were asked how many times they had eaten a meal
or snack from a fast-food restaurant, including outlets such as McDonald’s,
Pizza Hut, Burger King, and KFC. Those who consumed fast food daily scored an
average of 79 points in science, four points less than those who never ate fast
food. Similar differences in academic achievement were observed for reading and
maths, the Daily Mail reported. The study appeared in the journal Clinical
Pediatrics.
Source: www.thehealthsite.com
23.12.2014
Pakistan plans counselling
sessions or traumatised children
Pakistan’s National Health Services (NHS) has prepared
counselling session programme on post-traumatic stress management for the
children who survived the gruesome Peshawar school attack, media reported
Sunday. According to an official statement, sessions will be held with
students, their families and teachers that would help them recover from the
shock, Dawn online reported. A committee of members from the mental health and
non-communicable disease coordination cell of the health ministry, the Army
Medical Crops, psychiatrists from Islamabad and Peshawar, WHO collaborating
centre and UNICEF, held an emergency meeting to prepare a counselling session
programme.
WHO collaborating centres are research institutes, parts
of universities or academies, which are designated by the director-general to
carry out activities in support of the organization’s programmes. Information,
education and communication (IEC) materials, messages, modules on
post-traumatic stress disorder would be made available for public. Another
objective of the committee is to develop a strategy to mitigate the
after-effects of the incident through the media.
The ministry would finalise the plan by Monday in
consultation with the WHO collaborating centre and Rizwan Taj of Pakistan
Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), while Unicef would be providing relevant
support. Assad Hafeez, the executive director of the Health Services Academy,
said that all students of the country have been affected by the unfortunate
shoioting. “The army team which has been carrying out rehabilitation activities
in Army Public School, Peshawar, contacted the NHS ministry and sought
counselling facility for the traumatised children and families,’ he said.
‘We have experts who conducted post-trauma counselling of
the survivors of the 2005 earthquake in Azad Kashmir, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and
other areas of the country,’ he added. ‘At the moment, students are scared of
going to school,’ Hafeez said. Psychiatrists will counsel the children in
groups and provide supporting material to their parents that will help them and
their children recover from the trauma. The terror attack on the Army Public
School in Peshawar by members of the Pakistan Taliban killed 148 people, of
them 132 children.
Source: www.thehealthsite.com
23.12.2014
If you don’t build your dream, someone else will
hire you to help them build theirs
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