Health: May 2008 Archives

Yep, I spent part of my holiday weekend de-lousing my home and family, and I must say, it was so much work that we may just have to live with the little critters next time.

It all started when another mother at our school emailed me Friday that she had confirmed the presence of lice on her daughter, and that she had it too. Shortly after the message, I started to get that itchy feeling. I am convinced that it wasn't entirely due to the power of suggestion, but that there actually was a science project unfolding on my scalp.

My kids, of course, seemed oblivious. Husband is bald.

SO, I bought the stuff, I did it to my hair, I didn't wear the same clothes after the shampoo with the pesticide. I spent an hour combing out the kids' hair after first plying them with lollipops and morning cartoons and the promise of more candy if they complied.

I did all the right things, in short. But now, a few days later, I still feel a little itchy. Could it be that we actually didn't have lice at all, that I just have an itchy scalp and an overactive imagination, and that I did all that laundry for nothing?

I'll never know for certain, but I have promised myself that I will get a confirmation from an expert (like the school director) next time before going through the whole process. And when I do it, I'll take the suggestion I read on http://www.drgreene.org: "Instead of cleaning every inch of the house, just lock up tight and go on vacation. Get rid of the lice on your heads, and then get out of town. Lice die after 55 hours without a human host. If you can afford to be gone for at least three days, you will return to a lice-free environment.''

Relying on more green beans and carrots to ensure your kid doesn't go through life a shortie? Here's a cool calculator that may take some of the guesswork out of the height question: http://parentcenter.babycenter.com/child-height-predictor

Check out my story today about new fathers putting on weight and how to take it back off: http://www.dailynews.com/search/ci_9153688?IADID

Here's the nuts and bolts that don't appear in the online version:

TOP BUFF DAD TIPS:
• You don't need to work out for two hours a day.
• Work out first thing in the morning. Exercising before breakfast will stimulate your metabolism for the whole day.
• Breakfast is a must. Again, it's that metabolism jumpstart.
• Try to eat the same thing every day.
• Eat six times a day, or every three hours.
• Control portions.
• Stop eating two hours before bed.

Mike's sample menu:
Levinson said he eats this diet Monday through Friday:
Breakfast: egg white company cup - low fat cheese, pita and salsa
Snack: fruit or yogurt or a handful of nuts
Lunch: A sandwich
Snack: Fruit and peanut butter or a protein shake
Dinner: Stir-fried vegetables, sometimes with chicken, and a small dessert.

Want a boy? That may require power breakfasts of morning cereal, according to a new study. Read on:

Mom's diet may play role in whether baby is boy or girl
By LINDSEY TANNER

CHICAGO (AP) -- Snips and snails and puppydog tails ... and cereal and bananas? That could be what little boys are made of, according to surprising new research suggesting that what a woman eats before pregnancy influences the gender of her baby.

Having a hearty appetite, eating potassium-rich foods including bananas, and not skipping breakfast all seemed to raise the odds of having a boy.

The British research is billed as the first in humans to show a link between a woman's diet and whether she has a boy or girl.

It is not proof, but it fits with evidence from test tube fertilization that male embryos thrive best with longer exposure to nutrient-rich lab cultures, said Dr. Tarun Jain. He is a fertility specialist at University of Illinois at Chicago who wasn't involved in the study.

It just might be that it takes more nutrients to build boys than girls, he said.

University of Exeter researcher Fiona Mathews, the study's lead author, said the findings also fit with fertility research showing that male embryos aren't likely to survive in lab cultures with low sugar levels. Skipping meals can result in low blood sugar levels.

Jain said he was skeptical when he first heard about the research. But he said the study was well-done and merits follow-up study to see if the theory proves true.

It's not necessarily as far-fetched as it sounds. While men's sperm determine a baby's gender, it could be that certain nutrients or eating patterns make women's bodies more hospitable to sperm carrying the male chromosome, Jain said.

"It's an interesting question. I'm not aware of anyone else looking at it in this manner," he said.

The study was published Wednesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a British medical journal.

The research involved about 700 first-time pregnant women in the United Kingdom who didn't know the sex of their fetuses. They were asked about their eating habits in the year before getting pregnant.

Among women with the highest calorie intake before pregnancy (but still within a normal, healthy range), 56 percent had boys, versus 45 percent of the women with the lowest calorie intake.

Women who ate at least one bowl of breakfast cereal daily were 87 percent more likely to have boys than those who ate no more than one bowlful per week. Cereal is a typical breakfast in Britain and in the study, eating very little cereal was considered a possible sign of skipping breakfast, Mathews said.

Compared with the women who had girls, those who had boys ate an additional 300 milligrams of potassium daily on average, "which links quite nicely with the old wives' tale that if you eat bananas you'll have a boy," Mathews said.

Women who had boys also ate about 400 calories more daily than those who had girls, on average, she said.

Still, no one's recommending pigging out if you really want a boy or starving yourself if you'd prefer a girl.

Neither style of eating is healthy, and besides all the health risks linked with excess weight, other research suggests obese women have a harder time getting pregnant.

The study results reflect women at opposite ends of a normal eating pattern, not those with extreme habits, Mathews said.

Professor Stuart West of the University of Edinburgh said the results echo research in some animals.

And Dr. Michael Lu, an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and public health at the University of California at Los Angeles, said the results "are certainly plausible from an evolutionary biology perspective." In other words, since boys tend to be bigger, it would make sense that it would take more calories to create them, Lu said.

Still, Lu said a woman's diet before pregnancy may be a marker for other factors in their lives that could influence their baby's gender, including timing of intercourse.

"The bottom line is, we still don't know how to advise patients in how to make boys," he said.