Our New Book!

I am excited to announce the release of a spiffy children's book about going to the doctor.  It was written by Shirley Holladay, a retired elementary school teacher, and illustrated by her daughter, Angela Holladay-Jackson.  I provided only the smallest input concerning medical matters...

This refreshing little book provides parents with an entertaining tale they can read to their child who may have a fear of going to the doctor.  Parents of children who have had to undergo a medical procedure or get a "shot in the booty" in the past will welcome this opportunity for their child to see the doctor as a friend, not a threat.

I recommend this little book for any parent who wants to help their child over come fear of the doctor's office, and yes, perhaps even enjoy and learn from the experience.  I don't make a penny from sales of this book; I just welcome the chance to remove some of the fear I see in little eyes when confronted with the scary prospect of being "examined" and "treated" by The Doctor.
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Junk Food is Making Your Kids Dumb!

If you have small children or grand-children, you need to stop what you are doing and read this!

A recent article appearing in the London newspaper The Daily Mail reported the results of a very large study performed in the United Kingdom claiming to show that eating Junk Food prevented children from achieving the IQ they could have otherwise.  As you may know, I am interested in how improving nutrition helps us be better people, so I was intrigued, and read this one with great interest.

The data for this study was harvested from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (Avon=the river/county in England, not the cosmetic).  This huge study looked at many aspects of children, their health, habits and diet.  It took years to compile and sort through all the data they collected during this study.  Researchers are still going through it to discover new information.

The researchers studied 3,966 children over 5-1/2 years and published their findings in The Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.  Now, as a general rule of research, the larger a study is, then the more reliable and trustworthy are the results.  If this had been a study of 29 children, you would not be wasting your time right now reading this post.  But, studying this many kids for this long a time-period gives this study great weight and the findings must be presented.

What they found was that in children, consuming Junk Food (highly-processed,  high-sugar, high-fat) was directly linked to a lowering of IQ (Intelligence Quotient, a standard of measuring a kid's smarts).  They researchers of this study balanced the data so that income, location and family situation would be controlled for, thus taking those factors out of the equation.  They only studied diet in these children and found out what we all already thought we knew was true, Junk Food is just that, JUNK.

Good Book...

Kids eating the most junk food in the study had IQ's up to 5 Points lower than their peers!  Any teacher will tell you 5 points is a really big deal.  5 IQ points can mean the difference between going to that good college or working at the factory (if there still is one to work at).  Kids who ate a healthy, natural diet had higher IQ's in the study.

My generation and the generations since have been brain-washed by TV Commercials to believe that this JUNK food is just a trivial little thing, not harmful, and that you are being a Mean-Parent if you don't let your child have the cereal with the rabbit on the box.  We as parents have been seduced by the friendly clown icon of the largest corporate restaurant chain in the world into believing that processed, fake McFood really won't harm our kids; it's all just fun and games, right?

Well, let me speak plainly...  Pretending that what you put into your child's mouth is trivial or fun, or not really that important, is deluded thinking.  Guess what, everyone likes the taste of sweets and junk food.  The multi-national corporations who run the food industry spend BILLIONS each year on all sorts of chemical taste and color enhancers to make their food look and taste good.  You are not being a good parent if you let your toddler choose what she will eat, just like you are not a good parent if you let your 10 year-old decide to drive on the interstate, or let you 12 year-old decide to smoke.  There are reasons we don't let children Vote, and now you have a proven scientifically valid reason to be the one (the Parent) who choses what your child puts into his/her mouth.

Good Book...

There is a large list of pseudo-food you should Never let your child eat again, here are Three.  Birthday Cake is an occasional treat we eat to celebrate the birth of a loved one.  You, as a parent, or grandparent, must make Junk Food become like birthday cake, an occasional treat; it should Not be a daily food.  That is what your Great-Great-Great Grandmother would do...

Please share this with every parent who is raising and feeding a child you care about.  Although this study looked at children from 3 years old to 8.5 years old, these findings certainly apply to children of all ages, and quite possibly to adults as well.

Please post any questions you have about what "junk food" is or is not...

Shots Hurt Less When You Look?

Here is a fascinating story about a study that seems to prove the opposite of what most of us think.

Injections were found to hurt less if you actually watch; in fact, if the body-part being injected is viewed in a magnifying mirror, the injection hurts even less.  This may explain why a trick we use for kids who have to get routine allergy shots.  We have them blow on the needle as the nurse gives the injection.  This helped my oldest son tremendously when he had to get them as a small child.  Maybe it wasn't the blowing, just the looking.

Who'd have thought it?
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Click on the Nice Nurse to read the article...

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Would Your Great, Great, Great Grandmother Eat That???

Every thing you put in your mouth matters.  A great rule of thumb to use when deciding if you should eat a certain food is, if you offered it to your great, great, great grandmother, what would she say about it?  If she would happily accept your offering (knowing how it was grown and/or made) and gobble it up, then it is probably safe to eat.  If, however, she would turn up her nose and look at it as if it were foreign garbage, then you should reconsider your choice.

This is a simple way of thinking about eating a more Primal diet.  You see, for at least 10,000 years (per strict creationists) or for millions of years (according to the evolutionists) humans have been eating certain things; and almost never ate other things.  Only for the last 1000 years or so have any humans consistently lived on a grain-based diet, and only for the last 75 years have we eaten the Franken-Food processed-style pseudo-food shoved at us through fast-food windows.  For millenia humans ate greens, veggies, berries, nuts, seeds and small game.  By eating what your G-G-G-Gee'maw would eat, you are returning to the dietary roots of your ancestors and your genes. 

There are compelling arguments that the current "epidemic" of autoimmune diseases and cancers are directly or indirectly related to this aweful diet of ours.  While I don't think this has been proven by cold hard science yet, it sure does seem to make a lot of sense.

Let your new pre-meal question be, "W.W.G.G.G.G.M.D?  (What Would Great-Great-Great-Grandmother-Do?)
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