April 2013

Keeping in Touch is a newsletter service provided by the Learning Connections Centre. We aim to provide current information on child development issues to the community.

Contents

1. From Great Grandma to You!

2. Diagnosing the Wrong Deficit

3. Quick Food Facts

4. Training Dates and Places

1. From Great Grandma to You! Susan Murphy, a researcher at Duke University, studies links between a mother’s diet and chemical exposures during pregnancy with the child’s later health. She and others have established that the womb is the antithesis of Las Vegas; what happens there not only doesn’t stay there, it can influence a child’s health for life. Now animal studies and a smattering of human data suggest prenatal effects could reach farther down the family tree. The vices, virtues, inadvertent actions and accidental exposures of a pregnant mother may pose health consequences for her grandchildren and great grand children, and perhaps even their offspring. Scientists have long known that radiation or certain chemicals can cause typos in a developing fetus’s genome – his or her genetic instruction book. Such mutations can get passed along to future generations in the DNA of sperm or egg cells. While exposure to sex hormones or a high fat diet in the womb doesn’t directly change or damage DNA, those sorts of exposures can induce scribbling in the genomes margins that can be passed down.

The resulting health effects are not produced by altering DNA itself. Rather they stem from changes in chemical tags or DNA or it’s associated proteins, or to actions by RNA, another type of genetic molecule. All of these are exactly the types of changes that scientists have always assumed cannot be inherited. Their very name, epigenetics, literally means “over and above” or “beyond” genetics.

When those changes are inherited, scientists have found the implications can be staggering. Part of your risk of disease may be determined by what your great grandparents ate, not just the genes they have passed on. Some researchers even believe that the long lasting effects of these chemical marks helped shape human evolution. Download the full report from: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/349076/description/From_Great_Grandma_to_You

2. Diagnosing the Wrong Deficit Vatsal G. Thakkar, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at the N.Y.U. School of Medicine, states that many theories are thrown around to explain the rise in the diagnosis and treatment of A.D.H.D. in children and adults. According to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, 11 percent of school-age children have now received a diagnosis of the condition. I don’t doubt that many people do, in fact, have A.D.H.D.; I regularly diagnose and treat it in adults. But what if a substantial proportion of cases are really sleep disorders in disguise? For some people - especially children - sleep deprivation does not necessarily cause lethargy; instead they become hyperactive and unfocused. We all get less sleep than we used to. The number of adults who reported sleeping fewer than seven hours each night went from some 2 percent in 1960 to more than 35 percent in 2011. Sleep is even more crucial for children, who need delta sleep — the deep, rejuvenating, slow-wave kind — for proper growth and development. Yet today’s youngsters sleep more than an hour less than they did a hundred years ago. And for all ages, contemporary daytime activities — marked by nonstop 14-hour schedules and inescapable melatonin-inhibiting iDevices — often impair sleep. A number of studies have shown that a huge proportion of children with an A.D.H.D. diagnosis also have sleep-disordered breathing like apnea or snoring, restless leg syndrome or non-restorative sleep, in which delta sleep is frequently interrupted. One study, published in 2004 in the journal Sleep, looked at 34 children with A.D.H.D. Every one of them showed a deficit of delta sleep, compared with only a handful of the 32 control subjects. But it’s also possible that A.D.H.D.-like symptoms can persist even after a sleeping problem is resolved. Consider a long-term study of more than 11,000 children in Britain published last year, also in Pediatrics. Mothers were asked about symptoms of sleep-disordered breathing in their infants when they were 6 months old. Then, when the children were 4 and 7 years old, the mothers completed a behavioral questionnaire to gauge their children’s levels of inattention, hyperactivity, anxiety, depression and problems with peers, conduct and social skills. The study found that children who suffered from sleep-disordered breathing in infancy were more likely to have behavioural difficulties later in life — they were 20 to 60 percent more likely to have behavioural problems at age 4, and 40 to 100 percent more likely to have such problems at age 7. Interestingly, these problems occurred

even if the disordered breathing had abated, implying that an infant breathing problem might cause some kind of potentially irreversible neurological injury.

The New York Times, April 27, 2013

3. Quick food Facts It seems many Australians enjoy a glass of milk. The average consumption per person is 230kg. That is almost THREE times the world average and more than twice that of New Zealand! Our Kiwi neighbours eat more vegetables than the average Australian – more than 200kg of starchy root and other vegetables compared with our 153kg! Prawns aren’t the only sea creatures Australians throw on the Barbie. Seafood consumption is about 25kg per person per year, above the world average of 17kg but less than half that of Japan.

4. Training Dates and Places Training in the Learning Connections School Program:

o Brisbane – 4th and 5th July 2013 o Sunshine Coast – 9th and 10th July 2013 o Sydney – to be advised o Cairns – to be advised

Training in the Learning Connections New Activate Program!!!!!!!:

o Brisbane – 3rd July 2013

We can come to your school as well!

Great discounts for teachers who would like a refresher!

Call Dianne for more information on 07 33691011.

Learning Connections Ph: (07) 3369 1011 Fax: (07) 3367 2242

Email info@learningconnections.com.au www.learningconnections.com.au

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