Energy Drinks' Health Hazards For Adolescents

Many energy drinks have ingredients which can have a harmful effect on adolescent health, especially when mixed with alcohol, says a news report published in Pediatrics in Review.

The article - "Energy Drinks: What Teenagers (and Their Doctors) Should Know," - summarizes recent evidence regarding the content, benefits and risks of energy drinks which are consumed by teenagers.

Energy drinks are beverages with caffeine added to them. They are advertised as a means to enhance performance, boost the immune system, or create a "buzz".

The most popular energy drinks contain elevated, unregulated quantities of caffeine and other stimulants which give the caffeine an extra kick.

Caffeine is known to produce detrimental health effects in adolescents, including dehydration, digestive problems, obesity, anxiety, insomnia, and tachycardia.

Some energy drinks contain alcohol. Sometimes, people mix them with alcoholic drinks.

When energy drinks are mixed with alcohol, the potential dangers for adolescent health are much greater; there is also a risk of abuse.

The authors advise health care professionals to ask their adolescent patients whether they consume energy drinks. They should explain what the dangers of consuming both energy drinks alone or with alcohol are. Doctors should become aware of the signs and symptoms of energy drink consumption.

The authors say that teenagers are no strangers to energy drinks. Over the last 24 months, the media has heightened the awareness of doctors, lawmakers and parents.


About 66% of energy drink consumers are aged between 13 and 35.

Lead author Dr. Kwabena Blankson, a U.S. Air Force major and an adolescent medicine specialist at the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, Virginia, said regarding energy drinks:

"They contain too much caffeine and other additives that we don't know enough about. Healthy eating, exercise and adequate sleep are better ways to get energy."

In 2010, nine students at Washington State University were admitted to the hospital. Doctors attributed their illness to fruit-flavored caffeinated alcoholic drinks. One of the students nearly died. Twenty-three students were hospitalized one month later in New Jersey after drinking the same combination as the Washington students.

Energy drinks mask the effects of consuming alcohol

When we mix energy drinks with alcohol, the "cocktail" can make us feel less drunk than we actually are. Many adolescents are not aware of this, the researchers explained. Consuming just one energy drink with alcohol may be equivalent to drinking a whole bottle of wine and several cups of coffee.

The average cup of coffee has approximately 100 milligrams of caffeine, compared to 160 milligrams in a 16-ounce energy drink.

According to Dr. Blankson, teenagers should consume a maximum of 100 milligrams of coffee per day. Other ingredients found in energy drinks increase caffeine's potency, such as guarana and ginseng.

According to a US government report issued in January 2013, twice as many people visited hospital emergency rooms because of energy drink consumption in 2011 compared to 2007. The majority of hospital visits were by teenagers and young adults, said the SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) report.

Approximately 42% of emergency room cases in 2011 involved energy drinks mixed with either alcohol or medications, such as Ritalin or Adderall.

Believe it or not, the human body knows when and how much alcohol it is drinking and emits cues when the person should stop for the evening and get some rest. Some people try to overcome these cues by mixing energy drinks with alcohol.

A study carried out by Cecile Marczinski, a psychologist at Northern Kentucky University, found that combining energy drinks with alcohol removes our built-in checks that stop us from overindulging.

Marczinski said:

"Even with just alcohol alone, young, underage drinkers are bad at deciding how safe a driver they are, but I think this (mixing alcohol with energy drinks) would make that situation far worse."

Nine years ago, the French government banned the sale of Red Bull, a popular energy drink. The French Scientific Committee on Human Nutrition found that Red Bull had too much caffeine, it also raised concerns about the beverage's other ingredients, taurine, an amino acid which Red Bull promoters say can "kick-start" the metabolism, and glucuronolactone, acarbohydrate.

After an appeal, Europe's highest court upheld the French Red Bull ban.

In this latest report, the authors say that the readers should be able to:

• Understand how large the energy drink market is, as well as recognize the most common brands


• Realize that teenagers are great consumers of energy drinks, which they use as performance enhancers


• Know what the ingredients of energy drinks are, and how they may impact negatively on health


• Understand that energy drinks can cause obesity, high blood pressure, tachycardia and other medical problems in teenagers


• Understand how dangerous it is to mix energy drinks with alcohol


• Understand the relationship between alcohol tolerance/dependence and caffeine tolerance/dependence


• Understand how important it is to screen adolescents for energy drink consumption, and offer suitable counseling.

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Mother's Kiss To Dislodge Objects Stuck In Kid's Nose

What do you do when a toddler or small child sticks something up his nose? This is a problem many parents and guardians have to face. Do you call someone, do you look for some tweezers, or take the child to hospital?

Dr. Stephanie Cook, a GP (general practitioner, primary care physician) at Buxted Medical Center in East Sussex, England, reported in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) that foreign bodies getting stuck in the nasal cavity can be resolved with the "Mother's Kiss", a remedy that has been around at least since 1965. 

Dr. Cook and colleagues set out to determine how safe the technique is.

What is the Mother's Kiss?

You have a child with a foreign body lodged in his nose.

• Place your mouth over the child's mouth


• Hold the unaffected nostril, effectively closing it with one finger


• Blow into the child's mouth


• Air will push through the nostril that has the foreign body stuck in it; this may force it out

The researchers searched through Embase, CINAHL, MEDLINE, AMED Complementary and Allied Medicine, and the British Nursing Index for articles that mentioned Mother's Kiss. They excluded articles that dealt only with animals.

Their primary outcomes were how successful the technique was at extracting the foreign object from the child's nasal cavity, as well as any reported adverse events.

They checked for factors which might predict the chance of success of Mother's Technique.

The researchers eventually had eight published articles which met their inclusion criteria. Using Mother's Kiss was found to have an overall success rate of 59.9%. There were no reported adverse effects.

Dr. Cook concluded:

"Evidence from case reports and case series suggests that the mother's kiss technique is a useful and safe first-line option for the removal of foreign bodies from the nasal cavities of children."

The advantage of Mother's Kiss is that it appears to have a high success rate and virtually no adverse effects. In fact, the worst that can occur is that the object stays stuck where it is.

Doctors say they often use this technique in emergency departments, and children do not find them scary or uncomfortable. It depends on whether the emergency doctor can persuade the parent to do it.

Most health care professionals advise parents and guardians only to perform Mother's Kiss with a doctor present. It is important that it is done correctly and that the object does not get stuck more, or makes its way into the lungs.

Most experts agree that Mother's Kiss is preferable to using suction, forceps, hooks or sedation to remove foreign object from the nose. However, if the technique does not work, something more invasive will need to be done.


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First Successful Treatment for Progeria, Rare Childhood Disease

Results of the first clinical drug trial for children with a rare rapid-aging disease, known as Progeria, has shown successfulness with a farnesyltransferase inhibitor (FTI), a drug first used to treat cancer.

The clinical trial results showed significant improvements in bone structure, weight gain, and most importantly, the cardiovascular system, according to new research published in Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences.

Also known as Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome (HGPS), Progeria is a rare and fatal genetic disease displaying an appearance of rapid aging in children. The disease becomes fatal when those affected develop the same heart disease (atherosclerosis), as millions of normal aging adults. Instead of this occurring at 60 or 70 years of age, children with Progeria can suffer heart attacks or strokes starting at the age of 5, with the average age of death being 13.

Leslie Gordon, MD, PhD, lead author of the study, medical director for PRF, and mother of a child with Progeria, says:

"To discover that some aspects of damage to the blood vessels in Progeria can not only be slowed by the FTI called lonafarnib, but even partially reversed within just 2.5 years of treatment is a tremendous breakthrough, because cardiovascular disease is the ultimate cause of death in children with Progeria."

Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome is a childhood disorder caused by mutations in one of the major architectural proteins of the cell nucleus.

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Photo source: The Cell Nucleus and Aging: Tantalizing Clues and Hopeful Promises. Scaffidi P, Gordon L, Misteli T. PLoS Biology Vol. 3/11/2005, e395

The two and a half year drug study consisted of 28 children from 16 different countries, accounting for 75 percent of Progeria cases worldwide. Twenty-six of the 28 children had the classic form of the disease. All 28 children traveled to Boston every four months to receive extensive medical testing through Children's Hospital's Clinical and Translational Study Unit.

The oral medication, the FTI lonafarnib, was given twice daily over the course of the study. The research team assessed the children's rate of weight gain, compared to their pre-study rate. They viewed this as the primary outcome because these kids suffer from critical failure to thrive, characterized by extremely slow weight gain over time. Researchers also inspected stiffness of the arteries (a predictor of heart attack and stroke), as well as bone rigidity and density (a predictor of osteoporosis). Every child participating in the study showed significant improvement in weight gain ability, bone structure, or flexibility of blood vessels.

Noteworthy Improvements

• Weight: One in three children demonstrated a greater than 50 percent increase in annual rate of weight gain, or switched from weight loss to weight gain, because of increased muscle and bone mass.
• Bone Structure: Bone rigidity improved to normal levels after FTI treatment.
• Cardiovascular: Arterial stiffness, associated with atherosclerosis, decreased by 35 percent. Vessel wall density also improved.

A Blueprint For Progeria Treatment

After the discovery of the gene that causes Progeria, FTIs were suggested as a potential drug treatment. These kids have a genetic mutation that produces the protein progerin, which is responsible for the disease. Progerin blocks normal cell function and causes harm to the body via a farnesyl group, a molecule that attaches itself to the protein. FTIs prevent this attachment from happening.

Mark Kieran, MD, PhD, the study's senior author and associate professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School explains:

"In the early stages of planning for this clinical trial, we realized that my team's experience using FTIs to treat children with brain cancer could bring together PRF's preclinical research efforts and the expertise we needed to study the drug in children with Progeria. The premise behind studying this drug was that by stopping the attachment of the farnesyl group onto progerin in children with Progeria, progerin may be inactivated, reducing some effects of the disease."

The results of this study are extremely encouraging. A second clinical trial funded by the Progeria Research Foundation and the National Institutes of Health is under way, while more are expected to follow.

Previous research has shown that progerin is produced in all humans and increases in the body with age. Several earlier studies have seen associations with normal aging and progerin, including a link between progerin and genetic instability. Investigators plan to continue researching FTIs and their effects, which may help lead to more information about cardiovascular disease as well as the normal aging process that affects every population.


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Music Lessons Early In Life Increase Brain Development

Playing the recorder in kindergarten, piano lessons in first grade, clapping to the rhythm throughout elementary school music class, all of these can contribute to developing the brain.

The new findings, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, reveal that musical training earlier than the age of seven has a significant impact on the development of the brain. Those who began musical training early had more powerful connections between motor regions - the parts of the brain that aid in planning and executing movements.

The study was conducted in a laboratory at Concordia University and led by professor Virginia Penhune.

The findings reveal significant evidence that the years between ages six and eight are an extra sensitive time when musical training combines with normal brain development to create deep-rooted changes in motor abilities and brain structure.

Penhune commented:

"Learning to play an instrument requires coordination between hands and with visual or auditory stimuli. Practicing an instrument before age seven likely boosts the normal maturation of connections between motor and sensory regions of the brain, creating a framework upon which ongoing training can build."

The researchers tested 36 adult musicians on a movement task and then scanned their brains.

Half of the participants started their musical education prior to age seven, while the other half started at a later age. Both groups had identical numbers of years of musical training and experience.

Both groups were also compared to people with little or no official musical training.

When analyzing motor skills of the two groups, musicians who started before the age of seven showed more accurate timing, even following two days of practice.

In the area of brain structure, musicians who were musically educated early showed heightened white matter in the corpus callosum - a bundle of nerve fibers that links the left and right motor areas of the brain.

Most notably, the authors found that the younger a musician began their training, the greater the connectivity. However, the brain scans showed no significant difference between the non-musicians and the musicians who started their training later in life. This finding reveals that the brain developments involved occur early or not at all.

The findings also suggest that the advantages of early musical training reach beyond the ability to play an instrument, because the test given to the participants was a non-musical motor skill task.

Penhune concluded:

"It's important to remember that what we are showing is that early starters have some specific skills and differences in the brain that go along with that. But, these things don't necessarily make them better musicians. Musical performance is about skill, but it is also about communication, enthusiasm, style, and many other things that we don't measure. So, while starting early may help you express your genius, it probably won't make you a genius."

A study done last year by University Hospital San Raffaele (Milan, Italy), revealed that musical training increases skills and development of the brain. The musical stimuli caused a reconstruction of gray matter in those brain regions that are involved in coordinated movement. Findings showed the more complex the task was, the better.

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Excessive TV Watching During Childhood Linked To Criminal Behavior Risk Later

Watching a lot of television as a kid may lead to violent behavior later in life, according to a new study carried out by researchers from the University of Otago. 

The study, published in the journalPediatrics, identified that children and adolescents who spend an excessive amount of time watching television are more likely to express antisocial behaviors, as well as involve themselves in criminal activity when they are adults. 

A total of 1000 children who were born between 1972-73 were included in the study. From the age of 5 to 15 the children were regularly asked - every two years - about the number of hours they spent watching TV. 

The results indicate that the more TV children watch the higher the likelihood of them having antisocial personality traits later in life. 

The researchers found that for every additional hour that children spent watching TV per week, there was a 30% increase in their risk of being criminally convicted by early adulthood. 

In addition, those who watched a lot of TV during childhood showed more aggressive personality traits as adults and were at a higher risk of antisocial personality disorder. 

While there have been previous studies that have similarly identified the link between television watching and violent behavior, this study is the first of its kind to actually show a cause-and-effect sequence. It achieved this by asking detailed questions about television watching during youth, and then observing any antisocial behavior that manifests itself during adulthood.

However, given that this is an observational study, it cannot prove that television watching is the actual cause of violent behavior - it simply shows a cause-and-effect sequence. However, it does provide additional evidence to suggest that there are long-term consequences associated with watching too much TV during childhood. 

Associate Professor Hancox, said: 

"Antisocial behavior is a major problem for society. While we're not saying that television causes all antisocial behavior, our findings do suggest that reducing TV viewing could go some way towards reducing rates of antisocial behavior in society."

The abstract concludes: 

"Excessive television viewing in childhood and adolescence is associated with increased antisocial behavior in early adulthood. The findings are consistent with a causal association and support the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation that children should watch no more than 1 to 2 hours of television each day."

Parents should control how much TV their children watch

The finding highlights the need for parents to control the amount of television their children watch. Currently, the American Academy of Pediatrics says that parents should limit the amount of television their kids watch to no more than 2 hours per day and try and encourage pro-social programs.

Television's huge impact over children was also explored in another study published inPediatrics, which revealed that reducing exposure to screen violence among preschool children and substituting it with pro-social programming instead, can actually impact children's behavior in a positive way. 

This suggests that good quality programming - shows that encourage diversity and teach important life lessons - can influence children in a good way and that parents should try and steer their children away from shows that are considered violent. 

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