Breastfeeding headline is dubious. Photo via Milan Jurek.

I hate studies, or shall I say, headlines, like these:

While I fully acknowledge that breastfeeding is healthier for the mom and baby in the majority of cases, to say that it COULD prevent breast cancer in thousands of cases lacks perspective.

I looked it up, there are about 300,000 new cases of breast cancer a year. If breastfeeding could stave off 5,000 cases a year, that’s about 1.8%, and of that 1.8%, what were the confounding factors? I haven’t looked into the actual study in depth, but at that small of a percentage, if all confounding factors were accounted for, that could conceivably be within the margin of error.

So, the concern I have with these types of studies and headlines, is that they are ultimately misleading, regardless of where your values fall on certain behaviors and healthy lifestyle choices.

More Breast-Feeding Could Save Billions and Prevent Thousand of Breast-Cancer Cases

It’s not really fair to turn breastfeeding into a scare tactic or headline maker if we’re giving out misleading information.

Breastfeed if you like it, because it IS healthier, but realize that statistics are just a matter of risk assessment and those risks may be small in the scheme of things. If you enjoy breastfeeding, then you may also be reducing your risk of breast cancer but if you hate breastfeeding, that doesn’t mean you’re going to get breast cancer. There is a big difference.

The post Scrutinizing misleading breastfeeding headlines appeared first on Imperfect Parent.

Photo: Flickr user unfolded via Creative Commons

I always thought that ADHD was a hoax set up by drug manufactures to suck money out of the pockets of inattentive parents. It was the overly-diagnosed syndrome of kids who lacked self-control because the parents worked more outside the home than they did with their kids.

Then my oldest entered Kindergarten.

As a stay-at-home mom, I worked with her on the alphabet, on cutting paper, on writing her name, and on counting. I felt like she was a little behind, but I had nothing to compare it to. What did “normal” look like anyway?

By the second week of school, the notes started coming home as she seemed to be moving her little turtle from green to yellow to red more often than not. Be it dancing, talking, fidgeting, singing, or even getting up to take a lap around the room, she simply was not focusing.

She was not a bad kid. She was not cussing or getting in fights. She was not argumentative or rude. She was just, as the teacher said, disruptively over active.

I decided to pull her from public school and homeschool her. Perhaps the large classroom was just overwhelming. I have a college education, how difficult could this be?

After 3 months of homeschooling, I enrolled her in a private Kindergarten because it became abundantly clear that she needed social interaction. My four walls could not hold in her energy. After a semester there, it became obvious that the problem was more than being behind, it was a complete inability to sit still and focus. She was not failing to listen, she honestly could not do it. And it was as frustrating to her as it was to her teachers and to me.

One day, for example, the private school teacher said that my daughter got in trouble for doing a cartwheel in class. I asked her why she did it and she said, “I looked at the class rules. It was not there. If I was going to get in trouble for it, they should have told me not to do it. Is there anything else I can’t do?”

She had not done anything “wrong,” her energy had just overwhelmed her little body.

Over the summer, I took her to a child psychiatrist as recommended by our pediatrician. Within a session, the initial ADHD diagnosis was in as were a variety of warning signs for other issues. Then the treatment options were laid on the table. Medication was Round 1.

The pediatrician suggested one drug to start with. And we did it. We wanted her to be equipped to learn and succeed, so we did it.

The first few days brought a horrible adjustment period, but then she settled down. She was able to sit. She was able to focus. She was able to learn. And viola, success, we believed, was right around the corner.

Over the next few months her self-esteem and confidence began to lag and then eventually became nonexistent. Her fear rose. And they were “real” fears; she did not worry about monsters under her bed, she feared Mom and Dad dying in a car wreck.

After seeing her anxiety interfere with sleeping, eating, and school performance, we decided something had to change. The sanity and happiness of a 6-year-old was hanging in the balance. So we stopped the medication, and our wilted flower began to bloom within the week.

The doctor suggested we try another kind of medicine, but we have not walked down that road yet. Instead, we are choosing to try to teach our daughter the basics of self-control and impulse-regulation. While I will not rule out medicine in the future, I would much prefer to have an over-active happy child with her turtle on red than a depressed, fearful child with a turtle on green.

It is so easy to sit in the mall and judge kids and their parents by appearance alone. That girl’s short skirt means she has an inattentive father, that woman’s ruining her kid by formula feeding, she is too young to have a baby, and that one is too old to be pregnant. We sit and we judge and we think we have all the answers because we read some article about how ALL kids should be X, Y, and Z and ALL parents should do A, B, and C. But the truth is, when it is your child, those lines and rules are a lot grayer. Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, our kids do not fit into the world’s little boxes.

This experience has taught me that:

1. ADHD does exist. It is both over-diagnosed by parents and pediatricians who want kids to sit down and shut up AND under-diagnosed by parents who are scared to death of labeling their child.
2. Medication can help the symptoms, but they do not solve the underlying problem.
3. The decision to medicate or not should be totally and completely up to the parents (and child if he is older)… not the schools, the doctors, or the opinions of the news media. Every child is so unique that we have to weigh the pros and cons of both options.
4. Doctors, drug companies, and insurance do not have all the answers. Parents need to trust their own instincts and watch their kids to figure out what individualized approach is best.
5. There is no shame in a diagnosis. While labels are scary, understanding what is going on with your child is your first step in knowing how to help him.
6. Just because you start down one road of treatment does not mean you are stuck. These are two lane highways with occasional U-turns and side streets. It is all about keeping your eyes and ears open and watching for signs.
7. Judging does not help. It does not help the child to feel like they are different, it does not help the parent who is doing the best they can to help their child, and it certainly does not help a family unit in the decision making process of whether or not to medicate. The pathway of helping a child with ADHD is difficult enough without feeling like you are constantly under Big Brother’s judging eye.

While the process has been long and exhausting, I sincerely believe that every step has been the right one for our daughter. This label is not for us as parents, after all, and it is not a “get out of jail free” card that allows my daughter to get away with things she should not. ADHD is simply a descriptor that allows us to understand her needs and try to meet them to the best of our ability.

The post To medicate or not: The ADHD debate appeared first on Imperfect Parent.

The best mosquito is a dead mosquito. Photo via Zoran Ozetsky.

When my children were young, they had what I considered an allergic reaction to mosquito bites. One time my younger son was bit on the face and on the ear and wound up looking like the Hunchback and Howdy Doody’s love child. The boy looked grotesquely deformed. He was a swollen, miserable mess. I made multiple trips to the drug store to try to find magic potions to alleviate his discomfort. You would think in this day and age something like that would exist, but mosquitoes apparently have us by the bloody balls. Children’s ibuprofen and “maximum strength” topical aids turned out to be a colossal waste of money. He went to school with my sincerest apologies and explanations. You can’t send that kind of physical train wreck to school without an explanation.

According to WebMD, genetics plays a large role in the 85% of people who are preferred by mosquitoes. Who knew?!? Those who exhale more carbon dioxide are at increased risk of being the current special on the mosquito’s menu.

My mosquito aura was likely passed down to my kids. I remember growing up, I would come home with what looked like measles after the little fuckers got to me. As an adult, I’m still their favorite entree, with each bite looking as if I am growing a boob on random parts of my body. I’m not really sure if PETA has an official stance on mosquitoes and I don’t care,  my opinion is that the best mosquito is a dead mosquito. I have also learned recently that mosquitoes can carry up to 68 viruses. Assholes!

But this is not just a rant about my hatred for the blood sucking a-hole insects, it goes deeper than that. I blame the government. I blame the EPA.

While the EPA gladly acknowledges the risk of mosquitoes and the safety of DEET, they have made it so cost prohibitive for counties to spray for mosquitoes that many, if not most counties in America have stopped spraying for mosquitoes altogether. The EPA claims it doesn’t regulate DEET or any other pesticides deemed to be safe, but they do regulate when and where you can spray it. The problem is, since the guidelines are so stringent, if a molecule of pesticide from a spraying truck is found in the atmosphere of an EPA “off limits’ area, they are well within their right to issue outrageous fines and possible jail time for the county insect control administrators. It’s a risk most that most counties cannot afford nor can they guarantee that a molecule of pesticide will not travel to a leaf .00001 inches within a “safe zone.”

While mosquito control spraying uses other forms of pesticide and not specifically DEET, they have little to no evidence of the health effects on humans in the amount that’s being sprayed and for the seasonal duration has any dire consequences. While I like rivers and streams as much as the next guy, I hate mosquitoes so much, I’m gonna use a quote from Dennis Leary as an analogy. His quote was about smoking but if you substitute smoking for “pesticides,” well, you get the idea…

“Smoking Pesticides take ten years off your life. Well it’s the ten worst years, isn’t it folks? It’s the ones at the end! It’s the wheelchair, kidney dialysis, adult diaper fucking years. You can have those years! We don’t want ’em, alright?”

The post Just give me the DEETs appeared first on Imperfect Parent.

Photo by matsou/istockphoto

As peanut and food allergies in general are on the rise in western industrialized countries, more and more restrictions are placed on the children without allergies, causing an increased amount of frustration and resentment. One prevailing theory as to the cause and rise of food allergies is the effect of the sanitary bubble we’ve created in wealthier countries. Previously, it was thought that peanut allergies stemmed from past generations eating too much peanut butter, but scientists now believe that because of our ability to control disease and our obsession with cleanliness — coupled with a fatty diet — that our bodies now lack the good bacterias and floras required to tolerate certain foods. This is called the “hygiene theory” and translates to many of our perplexing diseases, infections and allergies today.

My opinion is that the bullying and the policies are two separate issues.

No child should be bullied for any reason. It’s even more of a concern for children with food allergies because some bullying involves the contamination of food or exposing another child to the allergen which can result in anaphylactic shock or even death, but whether you ban the food item or not is not going to stop bullies from picking on children with food allergies. So, bullying needs to be addressed separately.

And part of the resentment, at least in theory, is understandable in my opinion. When schools enact a policy forbidding all food items with nuts (or other allergens), it becomes the responsibility of the parents whose children are without food allergies to strictly monitor their childrens’ diet for a good part of the day as well. Children are in school all day, so it’s not a minor inconvenience. I speak from experience as I constantly have to think about every pot luck my son’s school puts on to be 100% certain I comply with the schools “no nuts” policy.

From Associated Content, a mother of a child with peanut allergies makes an interesting point about the policy, questioning its rationale:

Granted, peanut allergy is an extremely serious allergy and should be handled very carefully and diligently on a daily basis. However, there are other food allergies that can be just as severe. What about children with severe allergies to milk products, wheat, soy or shellfish, to name a few? Are the schools prepared to ban these products as well? Or what about students who are allergic to bee stings? These children can have the same type of life-threatening allergic reaction as children with food allergies. Would there be a ban on recess so the allergic child would not get stung at school? It’s hard to know where to draw the line when it comes to this issue.

As a mother of a child who was born extremely premature and struggles with food sensory issues, the ban on nuts at his school was made even more complicated. One of the few things he would eat as a toddler and Kindergartner was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We tried the soy nut butter, but for some reason, like most foods, his gag reflex was violently triggered with the imitation peanut butters. He went through some pretty extensive therapies to overcome some of those sensory food intolerances, but it was an extremely slow process — one that we still continue to struggle with today, at age 8. Of course, we complied with the rule without question, but I would be lying if I didn’t say that I didn’t have some resentment. That resentment would never translate to the child, as it’s not his fault, but a resentment that something couldn’t be worked out where my son could eat his sandwich in a different room or something. I’m pretty sure our son didn’t eat lunch at school for a whole year he was under the PB&J spell.

I also refrain from having the little boy over because we have too many nut products in my home to allow him to come over safely. While some parents have created nut free environments at their homes in order to accommodate playdates, I have enough going on in my life that I simply cannot make my home an allergy free zone. We have a cat and a dog too, which eliminates another child who is extremely allergic to cats from coming over and I have to say, I’m okay with that.

Again, with food allergies on the rise, there needs to be other solutions other than the total elimination of all potential allergens and triggers. I don’t know what the answer is and hopefully we’ll find a cure sooner rather than later, but if we are going to accommodate some children and not others, there needs to be viable alternatives. As it stands now, it simply isn’t fair to all children to limit their diets. Parents of children with food allergies admit the stress it imposes on them, why extend that stress to all children and parents?

The post Is your child a victim of another child’s food allergy? appeared first on Imperfect Parent.

Photo by Aneta Blaszczyk

Recently, no other than the bastion of freedom and liberty everywhere — San Francisco — is proposing a law which would render circumcision illegal and punishable by penalties of up to a year in prison or $1,000 fine.

Seriously???

This is actually making its way onto the ballot at the end of the year.

The irony is that recent data has come out about the benefits of circumcision. ABC reports that circumcision significantly reduces the chances of HIV and HPV transmission. Furthermore, circumcision vastly reduces the chance (if not completely eliminating the risk) of penile cancer. Scientists now believe that an uncircumcised foreskin may breed a higher rate of infection, which is why the procedure may have started to begin with, noted as early as thousands of years BC.

While many of these so called “intactivists” (intactivism refers to those who advocate that baby boys foreskin remain “intact”) wish for the procedure to be banned, deny much of the medical benefits even as studies continue to grow in favor of circumcision. They go as far as to call it genital mutilation and claiming that the act is excruciatingly painful, however, if we defer to the “intactivists” wishes, we would let all men decide for themselves at the age 18 when the procedure is significantly more complicated and painful. Circumcision opponents also propose the same penalties be imposed for those who do it for religious reasons. (Now, if that isn’t intolerant, what is??) So, if this circumcision ban passes in San Francisco, mohels who are Jews trained in performing circumcisions, could be imprisoned for their religious ceremonies.

“Intactivists” also claim that a man’s sexual pleasure is greatly diminished when circumcised. (Oh, those poor circumcised men who just loathe sex, isn’t it a pity?)

The trend in the U.S. is largely moving away from circumcision and I speak as a mother who decided against circumcising her two sons, yet ardently respect and protect the rights of parents to make that choice for their own sons. I have no right to say that what’s right for my family is right for my neighbors. Who am I to say or impose my values on everyone else?

When done in a safe, sterile environment, circumcision is extremely safe and provides some compelling evidence of protection. Comparing it to genital mutilation is pure hyperbole. It’s like saying that getting your ears pierced is the same as cutting off your arm.

The American Academy of Pediatrics urges parents to choose what is best for their child as it relates to the decision to circumcise, however, it does preface that with a veiled ‘warning’ that “there is Scientific studies show some medical benefits of circumcision. How­ever, these benefits are not sufficient for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to recommend that all infant boys be circumcised.”

“Intactivists” have hijacked this statement to further their agenda. While the AAP doesn’t recommend the procedure, they aren’t telling parents NOT to circumcise their sons either. Why? Because it’s a personal choice.

Intactivists really need to stop obsessing about safe, medically advantageous procedures to baby boys penises. In a world gone mad, aren’t there far more pressing issues to take up? So, to this end, I extend an olive branch — you stay out of my son’s pants and I won’t expound on how borderline-creepy your obsession is. Deal?

The post ‘Intactivist'; anti circumcision activists want to outlaw circumcision appeared first on Imperfect Parent.

Some of these women, or their families, are taking action against the companies that make the oral contraceptives. One woman in Maryland is suing Bayer because she ended up with a major bloodclot and had to be hospitalized and is requesting the pills be taken off the market.

She was sent home but a few hours later got so sick, she could hardly breathe. She took a cab to hospital where a pulmonologist found the real problem. Blood clots in her lungs.

“He said ‘You have the largest clog I’ve ever seen in my 30 years of practice.’ He said I was very lucky that it didn’t break up and kill me by going to my brain or heart,” said Green.

The woman’s lawyer “represents about 65 Maryland women suing Bayer over YAZ and Yasmin. There are about 3,000 such lawsuits across the country.”

Now, not to sound blase about the whole thing, and these situations are indeed tragic, but YAZ’s website clearly states there are risks associated (specifically with blood clots) in taking YAZ and oral contraceptives in general:

OCs can be associated with an increased risk of several serious cardiovascular side effects, including blood clots, stroke, and heart attack.

They even highlight it on this website. And Seasonique website. And, on the Ortho-Evra patch website. Apparently, you have a 60% chance increase for stroke and blood clots while using this contraceptive.

I have never been able to use oral contraceptives because of certain health issues, but I don’t know that I would. There are other birth control options besides oral contraceptives. They are by no means risk-free, but no type of birth control is truly risk-free.

What do you all think about these people suing various oral contraceptive companies for ‘wrongful death’ or ‘misleading the public’, when side effects are clearly stated on websites, commercials, etc.?  Isn’t it our responsibility to inform ourselves, as patients, about the risks of prescription drugs, etc.? Finally, what have your experiences been if you take The Pill? Anything out of the ordinary/very serious?

The post Bayer (and others) Face Numerous Lawsuits Over Birth Control Pills appeared first on Imperfect Parent.

So what’s the deal with Nutmeg in particular?

Nutmeg contains myristicin, a natural compound that has mind-altering effects if ingested in large doses. The buzz can last one to two days and can be hallucinogenic, much like LSD.

Side effects can be severe, if enough is ingested (or smoked): dizziness, nausea, convulsions, hallucinations. Apparently, the high isn’t even worth it. So why do it in the first place?

This article suggests how we can keep our kids safe from the malicious spice. Look, I understand consuming absurd amounts of nutmeg can mess you up, but is it so hard to tell your kids not to snort it so you don’t have to resort to this: “Only buy nutmeg in small quantities. Instead of investing in mega-jars, buy the smallest ones you can find. This way there is never enough nutmeg in the house to be consumed.” ?  I’d be a little more concerned about the medicine cabinet.

Is this just a fad, or something like a fear tactic? Interesting that there is a media frenzy just in time for the holidays!

I’m not too worried about it, personally.

I’ll be making some Nutmeg cookies this weekend. They’re tasty. The recipe calls for two whole Tablespoons of nutmeg! I’m pretty sure I won’t be getting high off them.

‘Tis the season!!

The post Nutmeg Frenzy appeared first on Imperfect Parent.

….new research has uncovered some less obvious differences between the sexes—specifically, our responses to drugs. Men and women have variations in every organ of the body, says Marianne Legato, M.D., director of Columbia University’s Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine. For starters, our livers produce different versions of enzymes (the chemicals that break down medication), which affects the way we process drugs.

There have been studies done on men where the results have been assumed the same for women. This is unfair and harmful.

The article targets five specific drug groups that affect women differently: Acetaminophen (Tylenol), Antidepressants (MAOI’s vs. SSRI’s), Benzodiazepines (Kolonipin, Valium and Xanax),  Erythmocin (basically used to treat bacterial infections) and Prednisolone (a steroid treatment for asthma).

What are your experiences? Have you noticed some drugs don’t work as well for you as your male counterpart?  What do you think?

The post Drugs, Side Effects and Women appeared first on Imperfect Parent.

Awhile ago, I read Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer, by Shannon Brownlee.

You absolutely must have a strong stomach to read this. As it is, mine has been turned several times already and I’m only on page 80. So why are you reading it? I hear you ask. I’m just interested in that sort of stuff, even if it makes me cringe and my stomach turn.

America supposedly has the best medical care, hospitals, doctors, specialists, etc., etc., in the world yet 100,000 patients die each year from medical error alone. We’re talking wrong drugs administered, something going wrong in the operating room, and something as simple as a mix-up concerning a patient’s chart.

Nearly 300,000 die each year from what is termed as ‘unnecessary care’. Brownlee puts this in stunning perspective by comparing it to “the equivalent of a 747 airliner crashing and killing everyone aboard at least once a week.” (p.6)  That would be entirely unacceptable and cause severe public outrage and uprising.

Why are we not outraged?

This book gets into the underbelly of medical practice, revealing facts, sometimes tragic errors and doctors for profit the medical industry would rather keep under the radar, as well as the fact that most of us are ‘overtreated’-receiving far more care than is necessary, which in turn, costs more. More care is not necessarily better care, as most people in America seem to think, and this is what is at the core of Overtreated.

There is a lot more to this book and is worth the read if you can stomach it.

In the same ‘Vein’, I ran across an article in the Women’s Review of Books titled Modern Childbirth: Failure To Progress, reviewed by Sarah Blustain (July/Aug 07) in which three separate books were being reviewed, specifically about women and the medical industry (who have thought it okay to  mess with again and again apparently) :

Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternal Care by Jennifer Block

Born In the USA: How A Broken Maternity System Must Be Fixed to Put Women and Children First by Marsden Wagner and

Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born by Tina Cassidy

Previously at Moms Speak Up

The post Recommended Books (to put on your ‘To Read’ list if you can stomach them) appeared first on Imperfect Parent.

Hoarding: Buried Alive TLC

This season, TLC has taken their freak show one step further. They have started to feature hoarders with children. Small children. Children forced to climb Mount Everest just to get some shut eye. Children who have to find a small cubby just to eat a sloppily prepared meal. Children who never get to ask other children to come over. Children who live in a prison of filth and the hoarding parents who are clearly neglecting their emotional well being.

I mentioned to my husband the other day while watching the show — the damage these people bestow upon their kids must be similar to that of an alcoholic, in which he replied, “It’s worse.”

How can any parent do this to their children and if they’re too sick to provide a safe environment for their kids (and if they truly loved them), why continue to torture them? Even after the mess is cleaned up, the psychological effects have to linger for years and years.

So, what do you think? Should these parents have their children taken away indefinitely?

The post ‘Hoarding: Buried Alive’ — child abuse? appeared first on Imperfect Parent.