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Home > Portable Practical Pediatrics > Child Health News June 2017 (Pedcast)
Podcast: Portable Practical Pediatrics
Episode:

Child Health News June 2017 (Pedcast)
Category: Kids & family
Duration: 00:00:00
Publish Date: 2017-06-18 21:17:34
Description:   Introduction: From gestation to graduation, if it involves kids, you've tuned into the right place. I'm your host, Doc Smo, a board certified pediatrician with 35 years of experience and a whole lot to say. It's been a while since I have done a child health news update and there has been some very interesting stuff coming down the pipe recently. My journals have actually had some new studies that I thought you might be interested to hear about. Today, I thought I would bring my listeners some of this interesting new research and throw some ideas at you that might improve both your knowledge and just maybe, your children's health.   What are the experts thinking about and which child health issues are getting attention in the world of pediatrics?  Stay tuned to find out. You don't want to miss today's post, so warm up your mp3 player, turn up the volume of those buds, and get ready for the next edition of Portable Practical Pediatrics. Musical introduction Study #1- The Continuing Saga of Fruit Juice Fruit juice has gotten a bad reputation in the U.S. despite its heavy marketing by the fruit juice industry. It is considered a sugary drink that many researchers believe is at ground zero of the obesity epidemic in the U.S.  I've been preaching about the evils of fruit juice for years. I have been telling my patients and their families that eating fruit is healthy and great, but concentrating the sugar from fruit into juice and separating the sugar contained in the fruits from the fiber of the fruit is quite harmful. Fruit juice, I would tell them, contains way more sugar than eating the whole fruit since multiple pieces of fruit needed to be used to make one cup of fruit juice. The juice contains the sugar of many pieces of fruit! That was my story until April 2017, when, to my surprise, I opened my journal from the Academy of Pediatrics and see a meta analysis (that's a retrospective look at many studies combined) that concluded that fruit juice, in moderation, after a child's first birthday, that is not consumed in excess of six ounces/day, that is pasteurized, and not used as a frequent hydration source that could lead to dental decay, may not be harmful to a child's health.  Now, my eyes are falling out of my head when I read that 100% fruit juice may actually be considered a health enhancement in a child's diet, serving as a source of real fruit. This is heresy I say! This is way afield of the pediatric playbook!  I remember all the studies in the 1980's that showed malnutrition in toddlers consuming apple juice, albeit excessive quantities of apple juice. Have these authors forgotten about the pesticide Alar in apples that sent public health officials into cataclysmic spasms?  Could apple juice actually be a healthy food??? First, there was a study that showed that diluted apple juice is actually better at preventing dehydration in children with diarrhea than scientifically formulated rehydration drinks ***.   Now fruit juice is considered a healthy nutrient!  What planet am I on? Could the manufacturers of fruit juice actually have been right all these years? The debate continues so stay tuned- time will tell us. Study #2- Does Today's Whooping Cough Vaccine (Tdap) Effectively Prevent Whooping Cough? Followers of Portable Practical Pediatrics will be familiar with this important topic. I have done many posts on the subject in the past. *** It has becoming obvious to researchers who do vaccine research that the conjugated whooping cough vaccine that we currently use called Tdap is not protecting today's children the way the older whole cell vaccine did. This fact has been graphically demonstrated in a new study from Kaiser Permanente published in March of 2017. From their data, they found that the effectiveness of the Tdap vaccine in 10 year olds who received it was between 60-76% in the first year and rapidly fell to 9% effective by the fourth year. Recall, that older children only get one of these vaccines eve...
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