We all know that plastic pollution is a huge problem. It’s in our oceans, our landfills, and now, according to a new study, it’s in our breast milk. That’s right—researchers have found microplastics in human breast milk for the first time. And while we don’t yet know the full extent of the health impacts of…
Research Of Interest
Studies finds EPA and GLA more important than DHA for cognition
The results of the current research reveal that 26 wk of supplementation with EPA-rich oil improved global cognitive function in terms of both speed and accuracy, compared with placebo and DHA-rich oil. EPA-rich oil also significantly increased the accuracy of performing all the memory tasks compared with the DHA-rich oil. he American Journal of Clinical…
Heavy Metals In (Just?) Baby Food
While there is a focus on infant and toddler food, heavy metal contamination, including lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury, is relatively common across the food supply Helena Bottemiller Evich, Policito 2021 ‘Parents Erupt Over FDA Failure To Regulate Toxic Metals in Food Lead, arsenic and cadmium are commonly found in baby foods, but also in…
Fungi in Gut Linked to Mild Cognitive Decline Can Be Reduced Through Modified Mediterranean Diet
Specific fungi in the gut associated with a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease and found in people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) can be altered in a beneficial manner by eating a modified Mediterranean diet, researchers at Wake Forest School of Medicine have found. The small study is published in the current online edition of…
Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood
“IQ is considered to be the strongest predictor of symptom severity for children with autism, As IQ scores increased from age 3 to age 6, symptom severity levels decreased” Waizbard-Bartov et al. (2020). UC Davis MIND Institute study Around 30 percent of young children with autism have less severe autism symptoms at age 6 than…
Vitamin D3 and COVID-19
Vitamin D3 deficiency is suspected to raise the risk of more severe complications or death from COVID-19 such as cytokine storms which can happen to adults and is suspected to be the cause of the multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, Not only does vitamin D enhance our innate immune systems, but it also prevents our…
Why It’s Smart School’s Out For Coronavirus
“We do not know why children under 9 do not have issues with the virus. They have very high concentrations of the virus and there’s no obvious reason they should not transmit efficiently … X-rays of children’s lungs show that they’re clearly diseased & clearly infected, but they don’t show any symptoms” Ralph Baric, Ph.D….
Eating fruit during pregnancy boosts babies’ brain development, new study confirms
” The idea that nutrition may also impact mental health and cognition has only recently started to gain traction,” Rachel Ward-Flanagan co author of study University of Alberta A follow-up to a University of Alberta study done in 2016 confirms that pregnant women who eat more fruit during pregnancy may be giving their babies’ cognitive development a…
Learn Parentese For Chattier Children
“We’ve known for some time that the use of parentese is associated with improved language outcomes,” Patricia Kuhl, I-LABS co-director and professor of speech and hearing sciences at the UW Babies benefit when parents are fluent in baby talk referred to as motherese or parentese (to be referred to as parentese). At 18 months, children of coached…
Study: Toddlers using ‘screens’ more than 1 hour a day may have lower speech skills
“In addition to the MRI results, excessive screen time was significantly associated with poorer emerging literacy skills and ability to use expressive language, as well as testing lower on the ability to rapidly name objects on cognitive tests” Associations Between Screen-Based Media Use and Brain White Matter Integrity in Preschool-Aged Children John Hutton MD JAMA…