Breast milk Ice Cream

This is a strange one:

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has asked Ben Jerry's to start making its ice cream from breast milk instead of cows milk! PETA says there would be two benefits-it would reduce the suffering of cows and breast milk would be better nutrition for people. Even the La Leche League was taken back by this idea. PETA says cows milk is hazardous and milking them is cruel.

The TIME story posted on CNN goes on to allude that PETA isn't really being serious, the organization is just trying to prove a point that Americans use too much cow's milk. However, PETA says it's something to look into.

Breast milk is for babies, not adults and I am sure most people would say "EWW" to eating breast milk ice cream--although it is sweet!

What do you think about the idea of breast milk ice cream?

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

Methodist Medical Center's new online healthcare program, MyMethodist eHealth, is a proud sponsor of this blog post. MyMethodist eHealth is the secure link to your doctor's office that lets you request appointments, order prescription refills, update your personal health record, and more. Sign up for MyMethodist eHealth here.

HELP! HELP! HELP!

A bunch of us at work are having this discussion and we need some more opinions. Two co-workers are getting married to different people on the same day. I said I was going to try and go to both events. Someone I work with said, "I can only afford to go to one event." I was confused by this. "What do you mean? You will only get a gift for the wedding you attend," I said.

If you are invited to a wedding, I think you are supposed to get a gift for someone even if you can't make the wedding. If you don't get them a small gift you're sending a message. My co-worker said, "I don't think so. If it's a co-worker you don't see outside of work you only give a gift if you attend the wedding. It's not offensive not to."

I need your opinions! If you are invited to a wedding you can't attend, do you still send a gift?

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

Methodist Medical Center's new online healthcare program, MyMethodist eHealth, is a proud sponsor of this blog post. MyMethodist eHealth is the secure link to your doctor's office that lets you request appointments, order prescription refills, update your personal health record, and more. Sign up for MyMethodist eHealth here.

Do teachers know how to treat DYSLEXIA?

I got this email from a concerned viewer who watched the series we did on the news on dyslexia a few months ago. Here's the link to that story.

The teacher is concerned about how schools are not necessarily taking an active role in helping these kids with dyslexia. Many experts believe it's highly underdiagnosed. Here is her letter to me that explains the bigger problem:

Dear Jen,

As a former reading specialist for 32 years at Washington Community High School and currently a tutor of dyslexics using Susan Barton's Orton-Gillingham based system for remediation, I'm familiar with Masonic's Orton-Gillingham and the Wilson Orton-Gillingham-based program. They are all very good. Personally I feel the Barton system is more user friendly and goes further into rules and probabilities in the English language.

One issue that has not been addressed is what role do the teacher universities play? The International Dyslexia Association had as its number one goal for six years to get dyslexia education into teacher curricula--primary, secondary, special education, and master's in reading programs. They have NOT been successful much do their dismay.

Washington High School has two teachers with master's degrees in reading from Illinois State University. They were taught NOTHING about dyslexia. Two years ago, I called the head of the master's program at ISU to find out why the exclusion. She said, "It is not our problem; it's a special education problem." When I told her that special education does not address it from research-based information, she said, "We wouldn't have any place in our curriculum to address dyslexia." I told her that I had looked at her textbooks and could show her where it could be incorporated. She replied, "I'll take it under advisement." I have never heard from her. I asked her to come to our Title 1 classrooms, bring some of her students, and I would show her the dyslexics in my classroom who had fallen through the proverbial cracks, and were never in special education. Of course, that didn't happen either.

The question is--Why are teacher universities not on the cutting edge of the scientifically replicated research on dyslexia from Yale, Johns Hopkins, University of Florida, Florida State University, University of Colorado, University of California Santa Barbara, University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon University, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, among others. Farleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NJ, University of Colorado in Colorado Springs, Neuhaus Education Center in Texas, and Bright Solutions for Dyslexia in California offer a dyslexia specialist certification course in Orton-Gillingham. Notice only two of these are universities. Why aren't other universities addressing dyslexia?

A year ago, I went to Bradley's bookstore and looked through all of the education textbooks that were available at that time, and dyslexia was in one of them--one short paragraph.

I went to a conference at Harvard a year and a half ago called "Learning and the Brain" chiefly about dyslexia and autism. I wanted to make sure that the training that I had gotten through Bright Solutions in California was appropriate for individuals with dyslexia. I spoke with Sally Shaywitz who wrote Overcoming Dyslexia and spearheaded the research at Yale. I went to all the workshops I could fit in in three days to listen to the top researchers in the field and learned that with the simultaneous, multi-sensory, systematic, and cumulative program for teaching reading and spelling that I was planning on using was absolutely appropriate.

I am currently tutoring 18 dyslexics from the area and having great success because Orton-Gillingham is the right method. There is a huge need not being met in public education, and I feel our teacher universities are one entity in this failure that has not been pursued. Please feel free to contact me about this matter.

Sincerely,

Joanna Roper

Metamora, IL

I hope posting her letter brings the issue to light. I know this topic struck a cord with a lot of people when we first aired the story.

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

Methodist Medical Center's new online healthcare program, MyMethodist eHealth, is a proud sponsor of this blog post. MyMethodist eHealth is the secure link to your doctor's office that lets you request appointments, order prescription refills, update your personal health record, and more. Sign up for MyMethodist eHealth here.

Will you get the flu shot?

From CNN: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says too few Americans are getting flu shots each winter. The CDC wants to get 30 million more school-age children vaccinated.

The head of the agency says virtually every child from six months to 18 years old should be vaccinated unless they have a serious egg allergy. The new recommendations were announced during a news conference today in Washington.

The agency says there is an ample supply, up to 146-million doses, more than ever before. Doctor Julie Gerberding says 261-million Americans qualify to get the shots. However, last year only 113-million of the 140-million doses produced were used.

Are you or your kids getting the flu shot?

-NewsAnchorMomJen

Methodist Medical Center's new online healthcare program, MyMethodist eHealth, is a proud sponsor of this blog post. MyMethodist eHealth is the secure link to your doctor's office that lets you request appointments, order prescription refills, update your personal health record, and more. Sign up for MyMethodist eHealth here.

Stay-at-home moms go to work

Moms who choose to stay-at-home with their kids are having to change the family dynamic. What would you do if you husband lost his job? With all the lay-offs happening lately, it's a scary reality.

From ABC:

From Wall Street to Main Street, the slumping economy is being felt everywhere. The reality is forcing many families to make tough choices and even forcing some stay-at-home moms back to the workforce.

Working at a Maryland hospital is how Anne Calladonato spends most of her day, but at home is where she used to work and where she'd like to be now. She said, "Everything's gone up, from milk to diapers to gas, to our electric bill, and so I needed to go back to work and I didn't necessarily want to but it was almost like we didn't have a choice. We laid out the bills and we said, our options aren't many."

This stay-at-home mom of two turned working mom after three years away. Calladonato says she had to because the household income dropped by more than 60-thousand dollars, virtually overnight. My husband's job was alleviated, and it was two weeks before our second child was born. And granted he found a job quickly, but it was significantly less salary.

The Calladonatos aren't alone. The latest Labor Department numbers show the unemployment rate spiked to just over 6 percent in August, an increase for the eighth straight month. What you're looking at these days is all kinds of working mothers perhaps going from part time to full time work, or perhaps taking on a kind of moonlighting job at night or on the weekend.

And that is extremely hard on families. Experts say stay-at-home moms trying to re-enter the work force face an extra challenge: the longer they've been out, the less they make when they jump back in.

The reality is that it's hard to get back in. For instance if you're a college grad, you actually lose about 37 percent of your earning power if you take 3 years out. That's the case for the Calladonatos. Anne is making less now than she used to. But she's keeping it in perspective. "I mean, life changes, you just have to accept it, and you have to try to make the best of it," she said.

Is anyone struggling with this? I know my bills have gone up significantly and I'm at Wal-Mart instead of Kroger and Schnucks a lot more often!

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

Methodist Medical Center's new online healthcare program, MyMethodist eHealth, is a proud sponsor of this blog post. MyMethodist eHealth is the secure link to your doctor's office that lets you request appointments, order prescription refills, update your personal health record, and more. Sign up for MyMethodist eHealth here.

Tylenol Danger

I do my best not to give my kids medicine unless they really need it, which isn't very often. However, the ones I give the most are Tylenol and Motrin or their generic equivalents. Now one of the most common medications for kids-Tylenol-is under scrutiny. I guess the old adage "Everything in Moderation" is key.

From ABC: When babies run a high fever, the medicine most pediatricians recommend is children's Tylenol or a similar product containing acetaminophen. But a new study links acetaminophen to an increased risk of asthma, allergies, and eczema in children. The headline sounds alarming, but experts say parents shouldn't be too concerned just yet.

The study is impressive, spanning 31 countries and including more than 200,000 children. And at first blush, the results seem concerning - babies given acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, had an increased risk for developing asthma by age 6.

Compared to infants who never received the painkiller, those who received acetaminophen in their first year of life had a 58 per cent higher risk for developing early childhood asthma. Babies receiving the drug also had more symptoms of eczema and nasal allergies.

But most experts say it's too soon to blame the medication for children's illnesses. The infants who took acetaminophen were already sick with fever, and it may be that the underlying infections were the determining factor for their greater asthma risk.

The authors say parents should still use acetaminophen to treat children's fevers - never aspirin, which can cause a potentially fatal condition called Reye's syndrome.

However, they recommend reserving Tylenol for high fevers only - those that are greater than 101 degrees Fahrenheit.

Source: Published in Lancet by a team of International Researchers (headed by New Zealand)

How often do you give your kids acetaminophen/Tylenol?

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

Methodist Medical Center's new online healthcare program, MyMethodist eHealth, is a proud sponsor of this blog post. MyMethodist eHealth is the secure link to your doctor's office that lets you request appointments, order prescription refills, update your personal health record, and more. Sign up for MyMethodist eHealth here.

More China Woes

From ABC:

Poisonous milk formula has now affected more than 50-thousand children in
China. Four have died. Chinese companies were adding the industrial chemical melamine to their milk products to make them appear more nutritious. This could be the worst yet in a string of scandals involving products made in China.

Officials are hoping 25 newly opened, free testing clinics will help ease fears for tens of thousands of anxious parents. They can only wait and see if their children are suffering from drinking milk they thought was safe. "The people who contaminated the milk have no conscience this father said. It is unbearable." Unbearable and hard to believe.

China's premiere Wen Jiabao is vowing to tighten food regulations. His government announced that the toxic chemical melamine has been found in nearly *ten percent* of milk products from three major Chinese companies. It can cause kidney failure. 104 children are in serious condition.

Most children consumed formula from the manufacturer SANLU. Today the government said the company *knew about the problem* and *did not disclose it* for a month. Now China must oversee the destruction of milk produced across the vast country. At this milk farm in Yuanshi county, farmers are facing bankruptcy after the owner was arrested and the price of milk sank.

Some are still selling milk at a cheap price to villagers. They say it's clean but it's impossible to be sure. China's export market is already being hit. Markets in Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and more are banning all milk products from China with no word on when that might change.

I feel so bad for these parents. That would be awful!

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

Methodist Medical Center's new online healthcare program, MyMethodist eHealth, is a proud sponsor of this blog post. MyMethodist eHealth is the secure link to your doctor's office that lets you request appointments, order prescription refills, update your personal health record, and more. Sign up for MyMethodist eHealth here.

Your Home Video for College Money

If you have a funny home video of your kids when they are "out of control" it could earn you $1000 toward their college fund. Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias is asking parents to send in their raw footage that would fit with this line:

"(Fill in the blank)" is hard. College savings doesn't have to be.

The contest runs through September 30th.

The contest winner will receive a $1000 Bright Start account and the commercial will air on television stations across the state in December. The footage needs to be :30 seconds to two minutes long. The winner will be announced October 31st.

You can submit your video at brightstartsavings.com.

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

Methodist Medical Center's new online healthcare program, MyMethodist eHealth, is a proud sponsor of this blog post. MyMethodist eHealth is the secure link to your doctor's office that lets you request appointments, order prescription refills, update your personal health record, and more. Sign up for MyMethodist eHealth here.