Do you have Asthma?

As of September 2008, 22 million people have asthma; 6 million of them are children. Have you ever been checked for it? Asthma is a chronic disease many people suffer from; a lot of people have it and don't even know. It can affect people of all ages, but often starts during childhood. The difference between a person with asthma to a person without is their airways. The purpose of airways is to pump air in and out of the lungs. When a person has asthma there airway is inflamed and often very sensitive. Since the airway is so sensitive a person with asthma will have a strong reaction to certain stimulus.

Some stimuli can be: poor air quality, cigarette smoke, pollen, food allergies, smog, mould, perfumes, some medicines, hormonal changes, cleaning products, dust, stress and exercise.

So what do you do if you have asthma? Prevention is key. Find out what triggers your asthma and avoid it. For example if cat hair, or cleaning products make you wheeze or cough.... avoid it! Another was to control asthma is by using an inhaler; it helps with the wheezing and coughing.

Websites:
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/asthma/article_em.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/conditions/asthma1.shtml

Videos:
http://www.blogger.com/Understanding%20Asthma

Mobile Phone Dermatitis???

Ever get a rash on your ear? I haven't, but if you have, it could be due to your cell phone! Never thought of that, did you? It could be due to nickel on the surface of your phone. Nickel is a metallic chemical element which is found on the periodic table. The national skin center isn't sure what causes the allergy, but people who are hairdressers, nurses or bankers are more susceptible to the allergy. It looks like any other rash, red and itchy. Usually people notice this rash if you take off a watch or bracelet of some sort and it’s red due to irritation. That is the first sign of the allergy. The body parts most likely to obtain this rash are face, ears, neck, wrist and hands. The rash can become infected if it is not treated properly.

1 in 10 people obtain rashes from long use on their cell phones due to their nickel allergy. If this happens you need to get a new cell phone! To know if your cell phone has nickel in it or not you need to order a kit and test it! Its simple; all you do is dip a Q tip in the solution provided and, if it turns pink, you have nickel in your phone. If for some reason you can't get a new cell phone you can put something over it, use speaker phone or use the head phones they give you. If you do get the rash, all you need to do is get some hydrocortisone and it'll take it right away. The best thing to do is to prevent it once you know you have the allergy. So, if you get a rash near the ear you use your cell phone the most, don't panic, it's easy to treat and very preventable.

Here are some websites; the last one also has a movie.
http://www.blogger.com/Cell%20phone%20allergy?

http://www.blogger.com/National%20Skin%20Center

http://www.blogger.com/Are%20you%20allergic%20to%20your%20cell%20phone

Having a lazy teen could cause more than obesity

We often talk about how much time teenagers and children spend on the couch. We're mostly concerned about their activity levels in fear of them becoming overweight or even obese. Who knew inactivity could also lead to behavioral issues. Now it’s not saying that every child or teenager who spends time in front of the TV will have behavioral issues, just the ones who don't exercise at all. I must say I myself spend a good deal watching TV and movies when I go home, so why do I not have behavioral issues? Answer for me personally is because I'm a collegiate cross country runner; therefore, exercise is not a problem in the least.

In a recent study of children and teens at ages 9-11 the children in the study were moving around for about an hour a day. At age 15, however, only 31% of those surveyed met the guidelines of the government for moving about an hour a day. Just 17% exercised on weekends! In a study I found of over 7,000 teenagers, boys who reported less than 1 hour of activity a week had more symptoms of anxiety, depression and withdrawal than boys who met the guidelines. Inactive girls also had problems with anxiety and depression. Also inactive girls were more likely than the inactive boys to say they had sleeping issues and rule-breaking issues. Also they found that less active teenagers have more social and attention problems.

So why do teenagers become so lazy when only a couple years earlier they couldn't get enough of running around outside playing kickball? Well, here are a couple reasons they no longer have recess after elementary school, and they don’t have a lot of opportunity for spontaneous exercise, and of course, TV and video games are a huge role in the inactivity of teens.So now the question is how do you fix it? Not so hard to figure out the answer, is it? Get those teens out of the house! Sign them up for after school sports or just get them interested in something!

Newstory
Kids&Health

Second- Hand Smoking

Personally, I find smoking a disgusting addiction however; there are 47 million people out there smoking everyday. What's worse than them hurting themselves is the fact that every time they smoke they're affecting everyone by second-hand smoke.  Second-Hand smoke is a mixture of the smoke that is given off by the burning end of a cigarette,pipe or cigar and the smoke exhaled from the lungs of smokers. Thi

s is involuntarily inhaled by non-smokers. 

There are 599 ingredients in a cigarette. I won't bore you by listing all of them. A few key ones are nicotine,tar,carbon monoxide,formaldehyde,ammonia,hydrogen cyanide and arsenic. What makes smoking so hard to give up is the nicotine. Nicotine is highly addictive, it is inhaled directly into your lungs and reaches your brain in only 6 seconds. 

On to second-hand smoke, its the cause of 53,800 deaths in the United States each year. All these deaths per year are people who thought they didn't need to worry about it since they didn't smoke themselves. What they didn't realize is

 just because your not physically putting that cigarette in your mouth, your still inhaling the smoke from smokers. Smoke lingers in the air for hours after the cigarette has been smoked. There are 43 known cancer causing ingredients in a cigarette. This explain why smoking causes 3,400 lung cancer deaths per year. Heart disease is also caused by smoking/second hand smoking, 22,700 - 69,600 deaths occur because of heart disease. 

One of the worst parts of second-hand smoking is when a parent smokes with there child around. I can personally  relate to this because a good number of people on my dad's side of the family are smokers. My dad himself smokes, how

ever he never smoked with myself or my sister anywhere near him. My grandmother however would always smoke in the house with all the windows closed and didn't seem to care. 

In the US 21 million children live in homes where residents.visitor's smoke in the home on a regular basis. As a result, between 150,000 and 300,000 lower respiratory tract infections affect infants and children. This results in 7500-15000 hospitalization's and 430 sudden infant death syndromes (SIDS) in the US annually. 

So my advice to you is if someone's smoking anywhere near you get as far away as you can, never inhale it, and if you do smoke stop! 

A website & 2 video's : 
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/secondhandsmoke.html
Secondhand Smoke: Triumphs & Tragedies 

The World 's Most Powerful Commercial : Smoking 

Child obesity and Youth Sports

          Obesity is defined as " The condition of being obese; increased body weight caused by excessive accumulation of fat" (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/obesity). 18% of children today are obese. On the other hand most children are involved in some type of youth sport like pop warner, soccer and very recently lacrosse. In 1987 15 million children played town, club or recreation soccer, in 2002 it went up to 17.5 million. Oner the last 15 years pop warner football has doubled from 130,000 to 260,000! Lastly, in 2005 there was a count of 205,000 youth lacrosse players.

What I'm wondering is, with such a rise in youth sport why is there such a large increase in child obesity?  I remember back when I played town soccer it wasn't vigorous or to competitive but, it was a great was to stay active and have fun with kids your own age. If you think about it they have practice 2 - 3 times a week about 1.5 - 2 hours each time. An hour of casual soccer for kids burns between 300 -  350 calories depending how hard the playing is. Playing pop warner football isn't exactly a cake walk itself, about an hour of that can burn more than 400 calories.

So how can kids be obese while burning so much in just an hour? Well first off not all kids participate in youth sports. However why are those who do having such health problems especially with there weight? 

For the most part, I consider parents and video games the biggest suspects. Just like youth sport and obesity video games have become more and more popular over the years. In August 2008 1.08 billion dollers worth of hardware, software and accessories were sold. Of course not all of this is being used by just children. Before the days of video games children used to go outside and play instead of sitting in front of the coach playing games and eating all day. The other reason I think children are obese is because of parents. Not all parents know how to eat properly themselves, so how are they supposed to teach their children to eat correctly. Granted the world isn't one day going to be filled with fit people who eat right and exercise regularly, but hopefully we can at least start with the children and get the statistics back the where they should be. There is no reason 18% of children should be obese.