After a new baby arrives, one of the first products a parent uses is the car seat to take them home from the hospital. But while the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration provides information on how car seats perform in crashes, one consumer research group is aiming to provide parents information about the chemicals that may be contained in the seat material. Healthystuff.org, a project of the Michigan-based Ecology Center, looked at more than 150... 

Studies have long shown the benefits of breastfeeding, but a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that less than four percent of U.S. hospitals provide the full support that new mothers need to be able to successfully breastfeed. The report, published in the current issue of the CDC’s Vital Signs, examined data from the National Survey of Maternity Practices in Infant Nutrition and Care, and found that only 14 percent of hospitals... 

Human brains shrink as people grow old, unlike even our closest animal relative, says a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that highlights what researchers call the unique character of human aging, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. The human brain normally can shrink up to 15 percent as it ages, a change linked to dementia, poor memory and depression. Until now, researchers had assumed this gradual brain loss in later years... 

Prader-Willi Syndrome affects thousands of children in the United States, yet is relatively unknown to the general population. This genetic condition, resulting from an abnormality on the 15th chromosome, affects both genders and all races equally, with estimates of 1 in 15,000 children currently living with this condition in the United States. Newborns present with low muscle tone and difficulty feeding. Other physical characteristics include almond-shaped... 

School policies that let parents know when their children are overweight or obese appear to have little impact on the problem, a new study finds. In the last decade, almost all public schools in California collected information about height and weight on kids in the fifth, seventh, and ninth grades, but only some opted to send the results to parents. This gave Dr. Kristine A. Madsen of the University of California, San Francisco, a unique opportunity to evaluate... 

Here are some common-sense issues to be addressed before starting your child on a course of medication for symptoms of ADHD. Is your child overtired? Overscheduled? Overstimulated? Is the home chaotic? Is your child getting enough sleep? Do they have a routine before going to sleep at night? After answering these questions, the next logical question is: Should we stimulate the child more through prescribed medication, or do we perhaps change... 

Even in multicultural settings, preschool children may gravitate toward playing with kids of their own ethnicity, a new study finds. But when kids do engage with playmates of another ethnicity, they show signs of adjusting their play style to match their partner’s, researchers reported in June in the European Journal of Developmental Psychology. Even very young children are influenced by the culture around them, the scientists wrote, and studies in the... 

Last week, I became upset when I heard doctors quoting from an article published in the journal Pediatrics, suggesting that the use of stimulants to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children is a safe practice and we do not need to screen them for heart disease. Shortly afterward, I noticed that Medscape – a website that features peer-reviewed original medical journal articles – published an educational piece for doctors and other... 

What makes a song popular? A teen’s brain seems to know, even if he or she won’t admit to actually liking the song. In a study originally designed to determine the effect of peer pressure on teens’ song choices, Gregory Berns of Emory University asked 27 teens, ages 12 to 17, listen to snippets from 120 unknown artists while he scanned their brains. The music was picked from unsigned artists on MySpace in 2006. It wasn’t... 

Parents, trainers, coaches and athletes emulate many of our high-profile professional athletes. Unfortunately, more harm than good can come from most of these attempts.  In my last column, I reviewed some of the dangers associated with stimulants and products that contain too little water and too much caffeine, salt, sugar and potassium. Now I am turning my sights on companies that are misleading the public into believing that there is...