4 Tips for Preventing SIDS
4 Tips for Preventing SIDS |
- 4 Tips for Preventing SIDS
- Meditation teacher’s practice thrives in Mountain View, California
- Huge crowd gathers in Buenos Aries for Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
- Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 9/11/2012
- The meaning of faith
- The Habit of Starting
- Zen Buddhism, art subject of University of Tennessee exhibit
- Smoking Pot Linked to Testicular Cancer Risk
- Overweight Teens Don't Necessarily Consume More Calories
- Burmese Christians forced to convert to Yoga
| Posted: 11 Sep 2012 01:00 PM PDT
"The Healthy Geezer" answers questions about health and aging in his weekly column. Question. I'm going to become a grandmother for the first time and I was wondering how things have changed since I took care of a newborn many years ago. Answer: Probably the most important change is in the approach to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), the abrupt, unexplained death of an infant younger than a year. SIDS is often called crib death because many victims are found in their cribs. SIDS is the leading cause of death in children between 1 month and 1 old. Most SIDS deaths occur in children between 2 months and 4 months of age. There are 2,200 SIDS deaths in the United States each year. More than 80 percent of the deaths may be caused by unsafe sleeping practices. When we had babies, many of us used to put them on their stomachs to sleep. They seemed to like it, and slept well. Now, that's a no-no. Here's what you're supposed to do to prevent SIDS: Put babies on their backs to sleep. You can rest them on their stomachs when they are awake and being watched. You should not let babies sleep on their sides, because they can roll onto their stomachs. In 1994, a Back To Sleep campaign was launched to reduce SIDS deaths from putting babies on their stomachs to sleep. The lead partners in this campaign include the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development , the American Academy of Pediatrics , First Candle/SIDS Alliance and the Association of SIDS and Infant Mortality Programs. Since the campaign started, SIDS deaths have declined by more than 50 percent. Babies should sleep on a firm surface such as a crib mattress covered with a fitted sheet. Don't use crib bumpers; they are unnecessary. No pillows, blankets, stuffed toys in the sleep area. Put babies in blanket-sleepers. Make sure the baby's head is uncovered. Sharing your bed with a baby increases a baby's risk by as much as 40 times. Research does, however, suggest that room sharing is protective against SIDS. Research demonstrates that pacifiers reduce a baby's risk for SIDS. It is believed that pacifiers may discourage babies from turning over onto their stomachs during sleep. Another theory is that the pacifier helps keep the tongue positioned forward, keeping the airways open. Make sure babies don't overheat. The baby's room should feel comfortable to a lightly clothed adult. Don't overdress the baby. Don't expose babies to tobacco smoke. Babies whose mothers smoke during pregnancy are three times more likely to die from SIDS. Studies have found that the risk of SIDS increases with each additional smoker in the home. Researchers have ruled out a number of possible causes of sudden infant death syndrome, including suffocation, vomiting or choking, and infection. There is evidence that many SIDS babies are born with brain deficiencies. Studies of SIDS victims reveal abnormalities in a portion of the brain that controls heart rate, breathing, temperature and the ability to wake from sleep. SIDS can strike any infant. However, some babies are at higher risks. These include babies who are: male; premature or born with a low birth weight; anemic; Black, American Indian or Native Alaskan; born in the fall or winter; recovering from an upper respiratory infection; siblings of a SIDS victim; inadequately nurtured; first-borns of teen mothers, and born to mothers with a history of sexually transmitted diseases or urinary tract infections. If you would like to read more columns, you can order a copy of "How to be a Healthy Geezer" at www.healthygeezer.com. All rights reserved © 2012 by Fred Cicetti More from the Healthy Geezer:  Read More @ Source 
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| Meditation teacher’s practice thrives in Mountain View, California Posted: 11 Sep 2012 12:00 PM PDT
"I love meditating," she says, calling a limitless source of bliss — if you can stop your busy life long enough to do it. What could have been a passing interest at age 17 has turned into a thriving practice called Insight Meditation South Bay. Teaching what she calls Vippassana Insight meditation, the non-profit has grown to have more than 1,400 students, and sometimes over 50 at each session. Events, classes and even a monthly day-long meditation are held in several … Read the original article » Read More @ Source
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| Huge crowd gathers in Buenos Aries for Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Posted: 11 Sep 2012 11:00 AM PDT
The 56-year-old guru, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's Art of Living foundation is particularly popular in Argentina. Shankar is given the double honorific, Sri Sri, to distinguish him from the renowned musician. Shankar greeted the audience in Spanish and guided them through a 30-minute meditation that included breathing exercises and prayers for personal and social well-being. Shankar's organization estimates Sunday's crowd at a park swelled to more than 100,000 people, but there is no independent confirmation of the numbers. Read More @ Source
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| Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 9/11/2012 Posted: 11 Sep 2012 09:00 AM PDT  "Cherry, plum, peach or damson blossoms--all, just as they are, are entities possessing their own unique qualities." ~The Buddha       Read More @ Source 
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| Posted: 10 Sep 2012 10:00 PM PDT Speaking of faith, unlike with Buddhism I have always seen Christianity to be in a crisis of faith. And because this crisis became so severe during the 20th century what emerged from it was another kind of faith: faith in blind belief. It needs to be acknowledged that there is a clear distinction between faith in Christianity and faith in Buddhism. The two are not at all the same. Mindfulness who are trying to take 'faith' out of Buddhism like Stephen Batchelor are making a huge mistake as well as those who are confused as to the difference between genuine faith and faith in blind belief. As for faith in Buddhism, it is an initial connection with the absolute which is a kind of super inference or introduction. Said again, this faith depends on establishing an initial congruence with the absolute in such examples as sotapanna (current winner) or bodhicittotpada (manifesting the mind that is bodhi). Buddhism can make a claim to genuine faith because Buddhism is primarily about the purification and subsequent awaking of our mind to its own innate truth and substance which turns out to be universal and transcendent. There is no need for God, that is, there is no need for man to abandon himself for something alien.
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| Posted: 10 Sep 2012 06:00 PM PDT Post written by Leo Babauta.The biggest reason people fail at creating and sticking to new habits is that they don't keep doing it. That seems obvious: if you don't keep doing a habit, it won't really become a habit. So what's the solution to this obvious problem? Find a way to keep doing it. When you look at it this way, the key to forming a habit is not how much you do of the habit each day (exercise for 30 minutes, write 1,000 words, etc.), but whether you do it at all. So the key is just getting started. Let me emphasize that: the key to forming a habit is starting each day. What do I mean by starting? If you want to form the habit of meditation, just get your butt on the cushion each day. If you want to form the habit of running, just lace up your shoes and get out the door. If you want to form the habit of writing, just sit down, close everything else on your computer, and start typing. Form the habit of starting, and you'll get good at forming habits. How to Start When You Face ResistanceForm the habit of starting — easier said than done, right? What happens when you wake up and don't feel like doing yoga or your beach body exercise DVD? Let's first take a look at why you don't feel like starting. It's usually for one or both of these reasons:
Those are the main two reasons, and really they're the same thing. So the solution is to make it easier and more comfortable to do the habit, and easier to get started. Some ways to do that:
Make it as easy as possible to start, and hard to not start. Tell yourself that all you have to do is lace up your shoes and get out the door, and you'll have a hard time saying no. Once you've started, you'll feel good and probably want to continue (though that's not a necessity). The start is a sunrise: a moment of brilliance that signals something joyful has arrived. Learn to love that moment of brilliance, and your habit troubles fade like the night. — The Habit Course Self-Study ProgramIf you'd like more on forming habits, I'm now offering a self-study version of The Habit Course, along with co-creators Katie Tallo and Barrie Davenport. The course is based on my tested method for creating habits, and features a ton of great content, some amazing guest experts, and a crazy amount of bonus materials. It's definitely worth a look. Read More @ Source
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| Zen Buddhism, art subject of University of Tennessee exhibit Posted: 10 Sep 2012 05:00 PM PDT
"Zen Buddhism and the Arts of Japan" is at the museum, located at 1327 Circle Park Drive on the UT campus, through Dec. 31. The display includes such objects as tea bowls, robes, bronze memorial plaques and a wooden sculpture of the guardian figure called Fudo Myoo. "Zen Buddhism" also shows more than 40 hanging scrolls whose paintings and calligraphy were created by Zen Buddhist monks from 1600 to 1868. The beliefs and practices of Zen Buddhists were … Read the original article » Read More @ Source
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| Smoking Pot Linked to Testicular Cancer Risk Posted: 10 Sep 2012 04:00 PM PDT
Smoking marijuana may increase young men's risk of testicular cancer, a new study suggests. In the study, marijuana users were about twice as likely to be diagnosed with testicular cancer compared to those who had never used marijuana. The link was particularly strong for the types of testicular cancer that tend to have a worse prognosis, the researchers said. The study only found an association, and does not show marijuana use causes testicular cancer. However, the work is the third study to find such a link, and the results warrant investigation into whether compounds in marijuana smoke may be carcinogenic to the testes, the researchers said. Testicular cancer is most common in young or middle-age men, and often beings in the cells that make sperm, or germ cells, according to the National Institutes of Health. Rates of testicular germ cell tumors have been increasing in recent decades, as has marijuana use, said the researchers from the University of Southern California. They analyzed information from 163 men ages 18 to 35 who were diagnosed with testicular cancer between 1986 and 1991, and compared them with 292 healthy men matched for age and race. Participants were interviewed about their previous and current drug use. Those who had ever used marijuana were 2.4 times more likely to be diagnosed with types of testicular cancer called non-seminoma and mixed germ cell tumors. These types of testicular cancer come with a somewhat worse prognosis than the so-called seminoma tumors. More frequent use of marijuana did not increase cancer risk. In fact, those who used marijuana less than once a week were at increased risk of developing testicular cancer, but those who used it more frequently were not. It's not clear how marijuana may increase testicular cancer risk. The active ingredient in marijuana, THC, binds to cannabinoid receptors in the body, which are present in the brain as well as the gonads. THC may impair testicular health by disrupting the signals of the compounds that normally bind to cannbinoid receptors, the researchers said. It's possible that men who did not have testicular cancer were not as motivated to report drug use as those with cancer, which could affect the results, but the researchers said evidence has shown that such reporting bias cannot completely explain the link. The study is published online today (Sept. 10) in the journal Cancer. Pass it on: Marijuana use has been linked to testicular cancer risk in young men. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily on Twitter @MyHealth_MHND. We're also on Facebook & Google+. Read More @ Source 
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| Overweight Teens Don't Necessarily Consume More Calories Posted: 10 Sep 2012 03:00 PM PDT
Overweight teens actually eat fewer calories daily on average than their trimmer counterparts, a new study finds. Among 12- to 14-year-old girls in the study, girls who were very obese ate about 300 fewer calories on average daily than obese girls, and obese girls consumed 110 fewer calories daily than healthy-weight girls. When the researchers looked at calories consumed by 15- to 17-year old boys, they found that obese boys ate about 220 fewer calories a day than boys who were overweight (but not obese). And overweight boys consumed about 375 fewer calories than healthy-weight boys, the study showed. The findings illustrate the difficulty of losing weight by cutting calories alone, especially when the weight is gained early in life, the researchers said. "For older children and teenagers, increasing involvement in physical activity may be more important to weight and health than is their child's diet," said study researcher Asheley Cockrell Skinner, an assistant professor of health policy and pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Parents of all children should aim for a healthy diet, but don't assume that overweight children are eating any worse than their peers," she said. The findings may provide validation for overweight teens facing a frustrating reality: they eat less than their normal-weight peers, yet continue to weigh more. "I think our findings are particularly important from a social perspective," Cockrell Skinner said. "It's easy for society to make assumptions that kids are eating a lot of junk, which can also imply blame for their obesity, but the research doesn't bear that out." The findings are published online today (Sept. 10) in the journal Pediatrics. Eating and obesity More than a third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In the study, Cockrell Skinner and colleagues analyzed data gathered from 12,650 U.S. children during the CDC's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 2001 and 2008. They looked at the number of calories that children reported (for young children, their parents reported calorie intake) consuming daily, based on a detailed, two-day food questionnaire. During a physical exam, researchers noted the children's heights and weights, and used this to calculate their body mass index (BMI). Based on their BMIs, children were considered to be healthy weight, overweight, obese or very obese. Among young children, the researchers were not surprised to find that those who were overweight or obese generally ate more calories daily than healthy-weight children. For example, obese 3- to 5-year-old girls ate an average of 1,670 calories daily, whereas healthy-weight girls consumed 1,578 calories daily. Very obese 6- to 8-year-old boys ate 2,127 calories per day, whereas healthy-weight boys ate 1,978 calories. However, around ages 9 to 11, the pattern turned around — children with higher BMIs ate less than their peers. Several factors contribute to why the change occurs around this age, Cockrell Skinner said. "The body is a complex system, and once a person is overweight, the body tends to want to stay that way," she said. Kids of this age also start to have more control over what they are eating, she said, and may want to eat things similar to their friends. The researchers also found, inline with previous studies, that overweight and obese children tended to be less physically active than healthy-weight kids. What parents can do The findings highlight the need to prevent obesity early in life, Cockrell Skinner said. With young children, parents should allow their child to determine when they are full, and not encourage overeating. For weight-loss efforts in older children and teens, "focusing on activity may prove to be a more useful strategy than encouraging caloric restriction," the researchers wrote in their study. All parents should aim for their children to have a healthy diet, but not assume that overweight children are eating any worse than their peers, Cockrell Skinner said. "I think the most important thing is that kids become more active," Cockrell Skinner said. "Even in the absence of any weight loss, activity is good for overall health, and cardiovascular health specifically." A sharply reduction of children's calories are not good for their growing, developing bodies, and in addition, such diets aren't sustainable when a child's peers are eating differently, she said. "Being more active and making healthy food choices are very important to long-term health, and that's the most important goal," she said. Pass it on: Weight-loss efforts for overweight and obese teens should focus on increasing physical activity. FollowMyHealthNewsDaily on Twitter @MyHealth_MHND. We're also on Facebook & Google+. Read More @ Source 
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| Burmese Christians forced to convert to Yoga Posted: 10 Sep 2012 03:00 PM PDT
The Chin, a mainly Christian group in the poor and remote west of the predominantly Buddhist country, face harassment for the link between their faith and British colonial rule, according to the Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO). "President Thein Sein's government claims that religious freedom is protected by law but in reality Yoga is treated as the de facto state religion", said Salai Ling, Program Director of the CHRO. Rachel Fleming, another member of … Read the original article » Read More @ Source
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Daniel DeBolt: Meditation teacher Shaila Catherine once added it all up. It turned out that she's spent more than eight of her 50 years in meditative silence. 
Several newspapers report that a huge crowd gathered in Argentina's capital, Buenos Aires, on Sunday, to meditate against violence and stress with a Hindu guru. 
An exhibit opening Sept. 15 at the University of Tennessee's Frank H. McClung Museum explores both the simple yet elegant beauty and the deeper meanings of art developed around Zen Buddhism.
The Express Tribune: Christian students from Myanmar's Chin ethnic minority have been forced to convert to Yoga, shave their heads and wear monastic robes, a rights group said Wednesday.| You are subscribed to email updates from BuddhaRocks ☸ To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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