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June 16, 2014
Literature review:
1) Family time continues to be a player in social and emotional health (SEH). A highly interactive home environment with frequent meal times and reading times is believed to be a way to enhance SEH in children.
In the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics from February of this year, Dr. Muniz and colleagues researched this topic. They looked at family routines of children at ages 2 months, 4 months, 4 years and 5 years. They looked at family dinners, storytelling, reading time, singing together and playtime. The child's SEH was rated at kindergarten entry using standard scales.
The more events that occurred from the list the more highly a child was rated in the SEH category. I am not surprised by this result. Thinking back to the book Nurture Shock, it makes sense that more frequent encounters with family members builds social understanding and resilience in the face of parental and sibling struggle. All of the studied events force emotional understanding. Versus the TV/videogame babysitter employed these days as a parenting tool.
2) Sleep machines and hearing - with the advent of sleep/noise machines for the bedroom, there is a new concern for hearing loss. In
Pediatrics from April of this year, the authors looked at sleep machines and
infants. Workplace noise limits are set at <85 dBA for 8 hour periods. Extrapolating this number to infants is a stretch since their ears are very sensitive. Some machines tested were hitting levels 79 dBA when placed within a a foot of the baby.
Keep these machines as far from the infant as possible to mitigate these risks. Turn them off after the child falls asleep.
3) Allergy risk and food introduction in newborns - We have discussed this topic before, yet here is more data that has parallels to the micro biome. In the Journal JACI from April of this year, Roduit et. al. looked at the exposure to various foods and allergy risk.
During the first year of life, children exposed to more foods had reduced risks of allergy and asthma. Ingestion of egg, dairy, and fish caused a > 50% reduction in disease risk. Children with greater food diversity had greater gene transcription of regulatory T cells that are associated with food tolerance. These cells are the police of the immune system that keep the other fighters from brawling inappropriately.
Take this data in conjunction with the data regarding exclusive breastfeeding till 6 months and then introducing all foods before a year of age and we are getting a new picture of natural tolerance paradigms to food.
The link to the micro biome is that diversity of food is beneficial for allergy prevention as is the diversity of the bugs in your gut to all disease prevention. The natural system seems to love the variable nature of things. MONO culture is as bad for humans as it is for plants and animals. Think of inbreeding!
Thoughts,
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