“The Talk” isn’t over when your son or daughter says their final “good night” and walks out the door where you’ve been sitting in private discussing the… ahem… “birds and bees” stuff — not, by a long shot!
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I’m sure that Dr. James Tanner didn’t have any idea what would come of it when he took the post that was being offered him by the British Government to continue the Harpenden Orphanage research study in 1948.
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Puberty changes everything for a child and body odors are one of them. A day’s activity for a 6 year old still may enable them to skip a night in the tub now and then; an adolescent… not so much.
Hormonal changes alter the content of perspiration in addition to making it more copious – a breeding ground for the bacteria causing odors. Simple things like bathing every night and wearing only cotton underwear as opposed to silk or synthetics may be all that’s needed for them to skip taunts by their “friends.”
Boys and puberty – what a topic. We’re told that only two people in the history of planet earth got to skip puberty, so it’s obviously a phenomenon which has been afflicting earth children since … forever.
We’re still trying to figure it out, but the task was made much easier around 1948 when Dr. James M. Tanner, a British pediatric endocrinologist trained in the U.S., was asked to Read more→
The original study of childhood growth and maturity done by Dr. Tanner at the Harpenden orphanage in England during WWII has been replicated and verified many times since then.
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Pretty much the second question you field from a parent during your pediatric clerkship in medical school (right after “what’s this yukky looking rash”) is: “Do you think (insert name here) is growing well enough?” or, some equivalent question.
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It’s hard to believe but less than eighty years ago humanity didn’t even have a clue about nutrition let alone what constituted adequate nutrition for a child!
During the war, there were developing so many refugee children that needed to be cared for by institutions that Great Britan decided to undertake a simple study about what “growth” looked like in children. Nothing was known about that of substance either.
Dr. James Mourilyan Tanner was asked to take over a nutrition study of institutionalized children with the intent of seeing to it that the children still grew well—whatever “well” looked like. He agreed to do it, used the scientific method, devised what is now still the definitive study on growth and puberty (the Tanner Scale) and the rest is history.
This series of posts is all about that. What it is, how it came to be, how it’s used and what we know about the study of puberty.
This year (2015) the U.S. has suffered a huge increase in Measles. An increase unlike any other in recent years! The blame for much of it has been directly placed at the feet of California residents who exercised a “personal belief” exemption in the state’s childhood immunization requirements.
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I ran across a poignant article while researching the difficult topic of how parents should use the internet to gain medical information – truly, it sounds simple BUT IT’S NOT.
There is a mind-blowing amount of information exposed by a search on Google for about any medical condition! Unfortunately, there is also an incredible amount of crap exposed in that same search!
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Trying to catch up on all the recent research findings about infant nutrition, specifically breastfeeding, we’ve already described a fair number of new findings. We’ll conclude today with a fairly comprehensive listing of new recommendations. Read more→
One of the most common topics for medical articles these days (besides immunizations) is breast feeding. There’s really a lot of them. It’s almost like people are trying to make a point.
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The most recent research into children’s growth and development these days has given rise to changes in the way we think of nutrition.
Frankly, for those of us with… ahem, a bit of experience, our better tools to measure outcomes have produced findings that are a bit startling; especially as it relates to breastfeeding.
Pediatricians, at least all that I know, have always considered “Breast Is Best” but infant formulas were acceptable alternatives. Then, formulas got even better and better as our understanding of nutrition improved. Then, advances in mass data sharing and long term follow-up studies came into being.
Now, we understand better (in the long term) what some of the benefits are. Bottom line, the topic deserves a series of its own, and begins with reporting the results of an extensive study into the benefits of breastfeeding.