Birth Rates of Teens and Unwed Women Increases

For the first time in years, rates of birth to teens and unwed women are on the increase.  Alarmingly, low birth weight is at its highest level in four decades.  Pre-term babies have increased some 20%, the highest since 1990.  The study concludes that black and Hispanic women are typically disadvantaged relative to their white counterparts.

Steep increases since 1990 in the percentage of mothers who gained too little or too much weight (less than 16 pounds or more than 40) during pregnancy – up from 24 percent to 33 percent of all births.

Mental Disorders Cost Nation $193 Billion

The cost of mental illness is only sure to rise.

Major mental disorders cost the nation at least $193 billion annually
in lost earnings alone, according to a new study funded by the National
Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). The
study was published in the May 2008 issue of the American Journal of
Psychiatry.

“The results of this study confirm the belief that mental disorders
contribute to enormous losses of human productivity,” said Kessler.
“Yet this estimate is probably conservative because the NCS-R did not
assess people in hospitals or prisons, and included very few
participants with autism, schizophrenia or other chronic illnesses that
are known to greatly affect a person’s ability to work. The actual
costs are probably higher than what we have estimated.”

Breast milk-It’s good for you

The following is a press release from the National Institute of Health (NIH):

Extremely low birth weight premature infants who received breast
milk shortly after birth, while still in intensive care units,
had greater mental development scores at 30 months than did infants
who were not fed breast milk, reported researchers in an NIH network.
Moreover, infants fed breast milk were less likely to have been
re-hospitalized after their initial discharge than were the infants
not fed breast milk.

Unconventional fight in L.A.

Because of rising syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea rates in Los Angeles County, public health officials are beginning a new campaign to fight these STDs. This new campaign is not using traditional advertising methods, instead public health officials will be using drink coasters, murals, and sidewalk chalk.

Syphilis in gay and bisexual men in Los Angeles County increased by 365% between 2001 and 2005, officials said.

In 2005, gay and bisexual men made up more than two-thirds of the county’s roughly 1,200 syphilis cases.

Also in Los Angeles County, 67% of the 30,000 women with chlamydia and 65% of the 5,000 women reported to have gonorrhea were African American or Latinas, officials said.

Chronic health conditions on the rise

Chronic health conditions among this country’s children is raising. This is according to report issued by the Journal of American Medical Association. The report states that right now, 6.5 million children and adolescents have a chronic condition. The top three conditions are obesity, asthma and ADHD.

If children with chronic conditions not severe enough to be disabling are counted, chronic conditions affect about 18% of American teens and children in all, Perrin says.

Death by sand

Summer is upon us. Who does not want to relax at the beach?  Be warned…it’s not sharks to worry about…it is the sand that can kill you.

Waves and sharks aren’t the only dangers at the beach. More than two dozen young people have been killed over the last decade when sand holes collapsed on them, report father-and-son doctors who have made warning of the risk their personal campaign.

Since 1985, at least 20 children and young adults in the United States have died in beach or backyard sand submersions. And at least eight others died in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, according to a letter from the doctors published in this week’s issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

College students not healthy

Todays college students look to be following a path of chronic illness. The University of New Hampshire has found that todays college students are not as healthy as they think.

The UNH data, collected from more than 800 undergraduates enrolled in a general-education nutrition course, find that at least one-third of UNH students are overweight or obese, 8 percent of men had metabolic syndrome, 60 percent of men had high blood pressure, and more than two-thirds of women are not meeting their nutritional needs for iron,calcium or folate.