1 April 2020
WEDNESDAY, April 1, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- A new study dispels a common belief about how stimulants such as Ritalin and Adderall work in the brain.
The drugs are usually prescribed to people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but are sometimes used by otherwise healthy people to boost their thinking.
Many assume these drugs improve focus, but researchers found that they actually get the brain to emphasize the benefits, rather than the costs, of demanding tasks.
"People tend to think, 'Ritalin and Adderall help me focus,'" said study co-senior author Michael Frank, a professor of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences at Brown University.
"And they do, in some sense. But what this study shows is that they do so by increasing your cognitive [thinking]...
24 March 2020
TUESDAY, March 24, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Despite some improvements, more than half of America's youth still aren't eating right, a new study finds.
Researchers analyzed data on the diets of more than 31,000 children and teens, ageD 2 to 19, who took part in a nationwide health and nutrition survey between 1999 and 2016.
Over the 18-year study period, the percentage of kids with poor diets declined from 77% to 56%. The proportion with intermediate diets rose from 23% to 44%.
In 2016, 67% of adolescents had a poor diet, compared with 53% of 6- to 11-year-olds and 40% of children 5 years and younger.
And significant disparities persisted. For example, 65% of kids from the lowest-income families had a poor diet in 2016, compared with 47% from the highest-income households.
"This is...
23 March 2020
MONDAY, March 23, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Everyone is glued to some sort of media these days, but for young kids, that screen time could delay or limit their language skills, a new research review suggests.
"Our findings are really consistent with the guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics [AAP], and the bottom line is that kids should use screens in moderation and parents should try to prioritize using screens together with their kids," said the study's lead author, Sheri Madigan. She's a child development expert from the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada.
Madigan also noted that for kids under 2 years of age, there's little benefit to any screen time, even educational viewing.
"The majority of language learning [in the youngest children] comes from...
8 March 2020
SUNDAY, March 8, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Kids get more calories from the snacks they eat after sports than they burn while playing, which could add up to thousands of extra calories a year, a new study warns.
"So many kids are at games just to get their treat afterwards, which really isn't helping to develop healthy habits long term," said senior study author Lori Spruance, an assistant professor of public health at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah. "The reward should be, 'I got to have fun, I got to run around with my friend or score a goal.'"
For the study, Spruance and her team tracked the activity levels of third- and fourth-graders during 189 games of soccer, flag football, baseball and softball, along with their post-game snacks.
The researchers noted that...