Studies: Pacifier use can mar development
You might want to think twice before sticking that pacifier back in your baby boy's mouth: Three new studies, published as a single research report, find that heavy pacifier use leads to stunted emotional development among males.
The researchers, led by University of Wisconsin scientists, did not spend the years it would take to track a group of kids from infancy through adulthood. Instead, they conducted three separate experiments that tried to get at the same developmental stages.
First, they found that 6- and 7-year-old boys who had used pacifiers often when they were younger were less likely than other boys to mimic the smiles and frowns of faces on a video screen in front of them — a test of kids' interpersonal empathy.
The next two studies used the age-old psychology research study group: college students. The researchers, whose work was published in the journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology, asked the students (who likely asked their parents) how often they used pacifiers when they were little. They then gave the students a test of what's called "perspective taking," which is the ability to assume someone else's point of view and is often stunted in people with autism. Finally, they also gave the students a test of emotional intelligence, which required them to make decisions that relied on understanding the feelings of others.
In both cases, heavy pacifier use was associated with poor scores.
Sleep aids weight loss, experts write
Experts have some new weight-loss advice that's sure to be welcome news: Sleep can be just as important to a successful diet as healthful eating and exercise.
"Chronic sleep restriction is pervasive in modern societies, and there is robust evidence supporting the role of reduced sleep as contributing to the current obesity epidemic," a pair of obesity experts reported in the new edition of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
That evidence includes findings that overtired brains prompt people to eat more, and that some hormones that regulate appetite and metabolism don't work properly in people who don't get enough sleep.
The authors of the CMAJ commentary cite an experiment reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2010. Two groups of overweight adults were put on a diet that forced them to cut 680 calories per day. In addition, one group slept for 8.5 hours per night and the other slept only 5.5 hours per night. After two weeks, study volunteers in the sleep-deprived group had lost 55 percent less body fat than their well-rested counterparts. They had also lost 60 percent more lean body mass.
The researchers concluded that when the body is tired, holding on to fat becomes a priority.
Acupuncture, chronic pain
Acupuncture eases some kinds of chronic pain — and it's not just a placebo effect at work, researchers who looked at data from nearly 18,000 patients found.
An estimated 3 million U.S. adults get acupuncture treatments annually; still, there "remains considerable controversy as to its value," researchers wrote in a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
But they found that for back and neck pain, chronic headache, osteoarthritis, and shoulder pain, acupuncture works better than no treatment and better than "sham" acupuncture — done, for example, with needles inserted superficially.
"Although the data indicate that acupuncture is more than a placebo, the differences between true and sham acupuncture are relatively modest, suggesting that factors in addition to the specific effects of needling are important contributors to therapeutic effects," they said.
Study: Pediatricians often skip blood pressure checks
Despite recommendations to check children's blood pressure, pediatricians might often skip it, a U.S. study suggests.
Using government survey data, researchers found that pediatricians failed to take children's blood pressure during about one-third of routine checkups from 2000 to 2009.