Starting school later is healthier for children. A 2006 poll by the National Sleep Foundation found that nearly half of adolescents got less than 8 hours of sleep. In a study done at Hasbro Children’s Hospital, researchers surveyed over 200 students in grades 9-12 before and after their school’s start time was changed from 8 to 8:30 a.m. Overall, fewer students reported feeling unhappy, depressed or irritated; and fewer went to the health center for fatigue-related problems. If adolescents get only 6.5-7 hours of sleep, an extra half hour makes a big difference. It helps prevent “adolescent sleeping sickness”.
To keep children healthy a report in the journal Pediatrics recommends that all children have cholesterol tests. As of 2010, government guidelines recommended testing only children whose parents or grandparents had heart disease or high cholesterol. However, a West Virginia study of 20,000 children over a 5-year period found that 1% of 5th graders had cholesterol levels warranting drug treatment and one-third of those children didn’t have relatives with heart disease or high cholesterol. Considering the risk of developing heart disease from high cholesterol, a cholesterol test is a test parents would want their children to score low on.
Another recommendation to keep children healthy is to keep household chemicals out of their reach. Although injuries from cleaning products dropped from 22,000 in 1990 to 12,000 in 2006, accidents involving spray bottles increased. According to a study published in Pediatrics, three-fourths of the cases were 1-3 years olds and more than half of the injuries were from eating or drinking toxic products – bleach being the toxic product 37% of the time. Because the risk to children is greatest when they start to crawl and walk and are spending most of their time at home, we should spend good “cents” locking up toxic chemicals.
Unfortunately, there are no recommendations for reducing the number of children with food allergies. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number increased 18% from 1997 to 2007. In 2007 approximately 3 million children under age 18 had a food or digestive allergy. There are 2 theories. First, American sanitation and vaccinations have decreased children’s exposure to bacteria, not allowing them to build up immunities. Second, American children aren’t eating common allergens – nuts, shellfish – at an early enough age to avoid developing allergies. However, there isn’t a definite explanation for the “rash” of children’s allergies.
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