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The philosopher wants to bring together leading figures within the porn movement and the arts to identify a “new pornography” which is more socially acceptable and is “fit for thoughtful, good human beings”.

He has put forward the initiative as part of the School of Life movement which he founded as a means of offering advice on how people can lead a fulfilled life in the modern world.

He said society is “awash with porn” which “represents a threat” both to the people who create it and to those who consume it, but he is convinced that it need not be that way and that people can be sexual and virtuous simultaneously.

Pornography as it is presented today is divorced from the values that people generally aspire to for their day-to-day lives, he says. To use pornography is to turn to a brutish and exploitative set of values that bear little relation to the “other concerns which a reasonably sensible, moral, kind and ambitious person might have”.

The Ancient Greeks, he said, understood that there was no need to have to choose between “being human and being sexual”, he said, and maintained that there should be no need to do so in the 21st century.

“Ideally, porn would excite our lusts in contexts which also presented other, elevated sides of human nature – in which people were being witty, forinstance, or showing kindness, or working hard or being clever – so that our sexual excitement could bleed into, and enhance our respect for these other elements of a good life,” he said.

“No longer would sexuality have to be lumped together with stupidity, brutishness, earnestness and exploutation; it could instead be harnessed to what is noblest in us.”

The call for pornography to be re-considered comes at a time when there is concern in society about its easy availability on the internet. Earlier this month the government said it would consult on new attempts to protect children from internet pornography. Under new measures customers would have to opt in to being able to recieve adult content when they sign up for a broadband contract.

The School for Life project will create a ‘Better Porn’ website that is intended to display examples that parents would be comfortable with their children seeing.

De Botton argued: “As currently constituted, pornography asks that we leave behind our ethics, our aesthetic sense, andf our intelligence when we contemplate it.

“Yet it is possible to conceive of a version of pornography which wouldn’t force us to make such a stark choice between sex and virtue – a pornography in which sexual desire would be invited to suppert, rather than to undermine, our higher values.”

Article source: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/alain-de-botton-to-explore-the-consolations-of-pornography-7766850.html

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Some parents swear by fish oil as a treatment for the “tics” caused by Tourette’s disorder, but so far the research evidence is slim.

In a small study of children with Tourette’s, researchers found that omega-3 fatty acids were no better than a placebo at reducing the severity of tics — the sudden, involuntary movements or vocalizations that mark Tourette’s.

On the other hand, children who took omega-3 did show an improvement in the degree to which their tics bothered them, researchers report in the journal Pediatrics.

For now, it’s not clear what to make of the findings, according to lead researcher Dr. Vilma Gabbay, of the NYU Child Study Center in New York City and the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research in Orangeburg, New York.

It’s possible that the omega-3 supplements affected the children’s well-being, said Gabbay.

There is evidence, for example, that omega-3s can help lift depression symptoms.

But the study was small and had other limitations. And the bottom line, Gabbay said, is that larger trials are needed to see whether there might be a role for omega-3 supplements in managing Tourette’s.

The condition, also known as Tourette syndrome, is a neurological disorder that affects about one percent of the population. The characteristic tics usually start in childhood, and include actions like repeated throat-clearing, rapid blinking or mouth twitching.

Despite the popular media image, most people with Tourette’s do not uncontrollably hurl obscenities or slurs.

Many children with Tourette’s do not need any special treatment. But some kids have symptoms that interfere with their daily life, or have additional conditions that may warrant treatment, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder.

“The problem is, the medications currently used are very hard to tolerate, or sometimes just don’t work,” Gabbay told Reuters Health.

Some of those medications include antidepressants, anti-seizure drugs and antipsychotics. Their side effects can range from weight gain to fatigue to depression.

Anecdotally, Gabbay said, some parents have claimed that omega-3 supplements help control their children’s tics.

Omega-3 fatty acids are found largely in oily fish, like salmon, mackerel and tuna — as well as fish oil pills.

There are biological reasons to believe that omega-3s could help quiet Tourette’s tics, Gabbay said. Lab research suggests, for example, that the fats affect certain brain chemicals involved in nerve-cell communication and inflammation, and also thought to be involved in Tourette’s.

But this is the first clinical trial to pit fish oil against a placebo to test it objectively.

Gabbay and her colleagues randomly assigned 33 children and teenagers with Tourette’s to take either fish oil capsules or placebo capsules that contained olive oil. Depending on their age, the kids on fish oil took 500 or 1,000 milligrams of omega-3 a day.

After 20 weeks, the study found, kids in both groups were showing improvements in their tic severity. But the fish-oil group did no better than the placebo group.

However, kids on fish oil were more likely to report improvements in well-being and the impact their tics were having on their lives.

More than half were considered “responders” on that front, versus between one-quarter and one-third of kids in the placebo group.

Exactly what all that means is unclear.

It’s possible, according to Gabbay, that omega-3s affected how kids perceived their tics, even though there was no clear effect on tic severity.

But, she said, “I’m not going to tell parents that omega-3s are the magic pill.”

A larger clinical trial is needed, according to Gabbay. And it would probably be wise to use a different placebo, she noted.

Olive oil is not an ideal placebo, Gabbay explained, because it can indirectly affect the body’s levels of omega-3 fatty acids.

Something like corn oil would be a “better placebo,” she said.

For now, Gabbay recommended that parents pay attention to the amount of omega-3 fatty acids in their children’s diets. If you can get them to eat more fish, that would be a good way to boost their omega-3 intake.

The typical American diet, including that of kids, tends to be low in omega-3 and high in omega-6 fats — which are found in margarine, vegetable oils and an array of snack foods, sweets and fast food. And that imbalance is thought to be generally unhealthy, Gabbay pointed out.

If you can’t get your child with Tourette’s to eat fish, omega-3 capsules might be worth a shot, according to Gabbay. “But don’t have the expectation that it will benefit tic severity,” she said.

A month’s supply of one-gram fish oil capsules can run well over $15.

The supplements seem to be generally safe, Gabbay noted. She and her colleagues found no higher risk of side effects in kids using fish oil compared with the placebo group.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/KfHQAV Pediatrics, online May 14, 2012.

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/fish-oil-shows-little-effect-tourettes-tics-155932566.html

Aimee Copeland, the Georgia student who lost her leg to a rare flesh-eating infection two weeks ago, shed no tears after learning she would lose her remaining foot and both hands, according to her family. Her reaction instead: “Let’s do this.”

The 24-year-old remains in intensive care at an Augusta hospital, still battling the effects of the May 1 zip line accident that cut open her calf and was contaminated by the life-threatening infection. Her breathing tube has been replaced by a tracheostomy, a tube inserted directly into her wind pipe.

Despite showing signs of recovery, Copeland’s hands and right foot will be amputated to prevent the infection from spreading to her blood, according to her father.

“As they usually do, the doctors were presenting us with a medical no-brainer,” he wrote in a blog dedicated to her recovery Thursday. “We had to do what is necessary to save Aimee’s life.”

It’s unclear whether the amputations have already occurred. A spokeswoman at Doctors Hospital in Augusta deferred questions to Andy Copeland’s blog.

Before learning about the amputations, Copeland learned about the kayaking trip on the Little Tallapoosa River, the fall from a homemade zip line, and the wound that wouldn’t heal — events blurred by drugs designed to keep her calm in intensive care. She also learned about the flood of support and well-wishes.

“We told her that the world loved and admired her. We explained that she had become a symbol of hope, love and faith,” Andy Copeland wrote. “Aimee’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped. She was amazed.”

Fears that Copeland would react to the news of her amputations with “horror and depression” quickly faded as she nodded acceptingly and asked about prosthetics.

“We all understood her next three words,” Andy Copeland wrote. “Let’s do this.”

Copeland’s upbeat reaction to the devastating news brought her father to tears.

“I wasn’t crying because Aimee was going to lose her hands and foot, I was crying because in all my 53 years of existence, I have never seen such a strong display of courage,” he wrote. “I was crying because I am a proud father of an incredibly courageous young lady.”

Also Read

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/georgia-woman-flesh-eating-disease-lose-hands-foot-170438570--abc-news-wellness.html

(Reuters) – All baby boomers should be tested at least once for the liver-destroying hepatitis C virus, according to proposed guidelines from U.S. health officials released on Friday.

The often-undiagnosed virus is transmitted through contaminated blood. While infection rates have dropped dramatically since the early 1990s – due in part to the introduction of blood and organ screening – many older adults are still at risk, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which released the draft guidelines.

According to the CDC, one in 30 baby boomers – the generation born from 1945 through 1965 – has been infected with hepatitis C, and most do not know it.

A one-time, cost-effective blood test would “identify hundreds of thousands of hidden infections,” said Dr John Ward, director of CDC’s division of viral hepatitis.

He likened the proposal to existing age-related guidelines on screening for diseases including breast cancer, cervical cancer and high cholesterol.

Hepatitis C causes serious liver diseases, including liver cancer – the fastest-rising cause of cancer-related deaths – and is the leading cause of liver transplants in the United States.

The CDC said it believes routine blood tests will address the largely preventable consequences of the disease, especially in light of newly available therapies that can cure around 75 percent of infections.

The field has attracted broad interest with two new hepatitis C drugs – Incivek from Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc and Merck Co’s Victrelis – reaching the U.S. market in the past year.

Companies including Gilead Sciences Inc and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co aim to improve on those medicines with pills that do not need to be combined with injections of immune system boosters, which have side effects that can deter patients.

More than 15,000 Americans, most of them baby boomers, die each year from hepatitis C-related illness, such as cirrhosis and liver cancer.

Current U.S. guidelines call for testing only individuals with certain known risk factors for hepatitis C infection.

The CDC said it will accept public comment on the draft recommendations from May 22 to June 8.

Final recommendations will be issued later this year.

(Reporting By Deena Beasley in Los Angeles; editing by John Wallace and Matthew Lewis)

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/baby-boomers-hepatitis-c-test-cdc-160730952--finance.html

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Antibiotics are still better than probiotics at preventing urinary tract infections, but at least “good bacteria” don’t add to a person’s antibiotic resistance, a new study concludes.

Recurring UTIs are common among some women and low-dose antibiotics are sometimes used to prevent them. The worry is that overuse of the drugs also reduces their effectiveness by making disease-causing bacteria like E. coli resistant.

“This is an increasing worldwide problem, resulting into less and less treatment options for (severe) bacterial infections in all countries of the world,” Dr. Suzanne Geerlings, from the Academic Medical Center at the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands and one of the new study’s authors, wrote in an email to Reuters Health.

Geerlings and her colleagues recruited 252 women between January 2005 and September 2007 for a trial to compare the use of antibiotics and probiotics to prevent UTIs.

The participants, who lived in communities surrounding the medical center, were all postmenopausal — a time when vulnerability to UTIs increases because of hormonal changes, according to the researchers.

All the participants reported having had at least three UTIs in the year before the trial began, and the average number was seven.

The women were separated into two groups of about the same size. One group took a single dose of the antibiotic co-trimoxazole (Bactrim, Septra and others) every day for twelve months, while the other group took two capsules containing Lactobacillus rhamnosus GR-1 and Lactobacillus reuteri RC-14, both types of beneficial bacteria, daily.

All the participants also took placebo pills so the patients and the people dispensing the pills wouldn’t know who received which treatment — to minimize any influence on the study’s results.

The researchers then tracked how many UTIs occurred in each group of women over a year. They also collected vaginal swabs and samples of the women’s urine and feces every month to test for the presence of good bacteria and infection-causing bacteria like E. coli.

In addition, women took a monthly survey asking about symptoms of UTIs, side effects, other infections and antibiotic use.

Overall, the antibiotics were slightly better at keeping UTIs at bay.

About 69 percent of the women in the group taking the antibiotic had one or more UTIs within the year. On average, the antibiotic group had 2.9 UTIs per woman.

As for the probiotic group, about 79 percent had a UTI within the year, with an average of 3.3 UTIs per woman.

The women taking the antibiotic also seemed to go twice as long without a UTI — six months, compared with three months among women taking the probiotics.

Based on the women’s urine and feces samples, however, resistance to a range of antibiotics seemed to increase within the first month in the antibiotic group.

Before the study, about 20 percent to 40 percent of E. coli in samples from all the women’s bodies were resistant to co-trimoxazole.

At the 12-month mark, between 80 percent and 95 percent of the bacteria were resistant in the women taking the antibiotic.

Rates of resistant E. coli were slightly lower at 12 months in women taking the probiotics than when the study began.

Similar changes in antibiotic resistance were seen for a range of other antibiotics, including ciprofloxacin and gentamicin, among both groups of women — which the researchers speculate might be because the same mechanism in certain bacteria allows them to resist several different drugs.

The absence of increased resistance among women taking the probiotics means that “lactobacilli may be an acceptable alternative for prevention of UTIs, especially in women who dislike taking antibiotics,” the researchers wrote in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The study, however, had several limitations.

More than 80 women dropped out of the study by the end of the year because of side effects and other reasons. A greater number of those taking the probiotics had diarrhea compared to those taking the antibiotics, for instance. Other reasons for dropping out included the participant not thinking the treatment was working, or she couldn’t adhere to study’s directions.

As a result, the researchers did not have the number of participants in each group they would have liked to give the findings statistical weight.

Despite the study’s weaknesses, a commentary published in the same journal called the findings “exciting and compelling.”

“I think we need to appreciate that the normal flora in our body is another system we need for good health and antibiotics disrupt it and leave lasting effects… We need to think of antibiotics as a situation that has some risk,” Dr. Barbara Trautner, one of the commentary’s authors, told Reuters Health.

Trautner, of the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said that probiotics may be an acceptable alternative but they need further exploration.

Topical estrogen creams are sometimes used to prevent UTIs in menopausal women, but many women prefer to avoid using hormones.

In her commentary, Trautner wrote that 60 percent of women in the United States experience UTIs or bladder infections during their lifetimes, and they recur in about a third of those women.

“We don’t have terrific preventive strategies so a probiotic approach would be beneficial and promising,” Trautner said.

For right now, she said most women with recurring UTIs have exhausted any type of behavioral changes that might help prevent the infections, and are left with low-dose antibiotics as their only recourse.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/JUywUA and http://bit.ly/JUyDzE Archives of Internal Medicine, May 2012.

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/antibiotics-prevent-utis-better-probiotics-210912129.html

ATLANTA (AP) — For the first time, the government is proposing that all baby boomers get tested for hepatitis C.

Anyone born from 1945 to 1965 should get a one-time blood test to see if they have the liver-destroying virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in draft recommendations issued Friday.

Baby boomers account for more than 2 million of the 3.2 million Americans infected with the blood-borne virus. It can take decades to cause liver damage, and many people don’t know they’re infected.

CDC officials believe the new measure could lead 800,000 more baby boomers to get treatment and could save more than 120,000 lives.

“The CDC views hepatitis C as an unrecognized health crisis for the country, and we believe the time is now for a bold response,” said Dr. John W. Ward, the CDC’s hepatitis chief.

Several developments drove the CDC’s push for wider testing, he said.

Recent data has shown that from 1999 to 2007, the number of Americans dying from hepatitis C-related diseases nearly doubled. Also, two drugs hit the market last year that promise to cure many more people than was previously possible.

The virus can gradually scar the liver and lead to cirrhosis or liver cancer, and is the leading cause of liver transplant. It can trigger damage in other parts of the body as well. All told, more than 15,000 Americans die each year from hepatitis C-related illnesses, according to the CDC.

The hepatitis C virus is most commonly spread today through sharing needles to inject drugs. Before widespread screening of blood donations began in 1992, it was also spread through blood transfusions.

Health officials believe hundreds of thousands of new hepatitis C infections were occurring each year in the 1970s and 1980s, most of them in the younger adults of the era — the baby boomers. The hepatitis C virus was first identified in 1989.

Today, about 17,000 infections occur annually, according to CDC estimates.

About 3 percent of baby boomers test positive for the virus, the CDC estimates.

Of those, some manage to clear the infection from their bodies without treatment, but still have lingering antibodies that give a positive initial test result. That’s why confirmatory tests are needed.

Still, only a quarter of infected people are that lucky. Most have active and dangerous infections, Ward said.

The agency’s current guidelines recommend testing people known to be at high risk, including current and past injection drug users.

But as many as a quarter of infected baby boomers say they don’t recall engaging in a risky behavior.

It’s possible some people were infected in ways other than injection drug use or long-ago blood transfusions. Some experts say tattoos, piercings, shared razor blades and toothbrushes, manicures and sniffed cocaine may have caused the virus to spread in some cases.

Those kinds of experiences might not raise flags in the minds of many patients or their physicians, experts said.

A recent Harris Interactive survey of 1,000 baby boomers found other forms of ignorance about hepatitis C. Fewer than 20 percent knew they belonged to the generation most likely to be infected, and only a similar percent were aware it can be cured in many patients.

Also, only about 25 percent said they had been tested, according to the survey, done on behalf of the American Gastroenterological Association and Vertex Pharmaceuticals, which makes one of the hepatitis C medications.

Currently, many baby boomers learn of their infection almost by accident, like when they donate blood or get a physical exam for a life insurance policy, said Dr. Ryan Ford, an Emory University physician specializing in hepatitis care.

He and other physicians celebrated the CDC’s announcement.

“It’s a long awaited and very much hoped for development that I believe will save lives,” said Dr. Ira Jacobson, a hepatitis expert at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center

The new testing recommendation is expected to become final later this year.

___

Online:

CDC’s hepatitis page: http://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/C/index.htm

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/cdc-baby-boomers-tested-hepatitis-c-160522730.html

Editor’s Choice
Main Category: Diabetes
Also Included In: Obesity / Weight Loss / Fitness
Article Date: 18 May 2012 – 12:00 PDT

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By the year 2025, researchers predict that 53.1 million individuals in the United States will have diabetes (mainly type 2 diabetes) – a 64% increase from 2010. The study is published in Population Health Management

Diabetes is a life long disease in which there are high levels of glucose in the blood. In type 1 diabetes the body does not produce insulin and in type 2 diabetes the body either produces insufficient amounts of insulin or ignores it.

William Rowley, M.D., and Clement Bezold, Ph.D., Institute for Alternative Futures (Alexandria, VA) projected the dramatic increase using their Diabetes 2025 Model. In addition, the model enables the researchers to estimate the potential benefits of society-wide changes in lifestyle and healthcare delivery systems to reduce the burden of diabetes.

Over the last thirty years, obesity rates in the USA have grown steady, as have rates of diabetes, mainly type 2

Journal Editor-in-Chief David B. Nash, M.D., MBA, Dean, Jefferson School of Population Health, Philadelphia, PA, said:

“Diabetes is now a national security issue as it threatens all aspects
of our nation’s well-being.”

Diabetes Type 2 is mainly a result of becoming overweight/obese and long-term physical inactivity, while Diabetes Type 1 is the result of an autoimmune condition in which the body’s immune system destroys the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas; mistaking them for pathogens (harmful substances or organisms). Diabetes type 2 is a preventable chronic-disease, while diabetes type 1 is not. Diabetes type 1 has nothing to do with lifestyle.

In an Abstract in the same journal, the authors concluded:

“This research is important because little data exist that project the future prevalence and potential costs of diabetes at the state and metro area level. With this data, key stakeholders can make informed decisions concerning diabetes, its impact on their communities, and resource allocation.”

Written By Grace Rattue

Copyright: Medical News Today

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Mom of 3 notes less trepidation from kids, more choices from dentists.

By Serena Gordon
HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, May 18 (HealthDay News) — Stephanie Crowe, a mother of three from Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., still remembers dreading a visit to the dentist as a young girl. It was often a painful experience, and her family’s dentist showed little empathy to his smallest patients.

When Crowe had her first child, she brought her to the dentist that she and her husband were seeing at the time, and was surprised that the dentist suggested she take her young daughter to a pediatric dentist instead.

“He actually said, ‘I don’t think I can work with her.’ It was like he didn’t want to deal with kids,” Crowe recalled. “But I’m glad because it got us to a dentist the kids liked better. It was more like going to a pediatrician’s office.”

It also was a bit fortuitous because her third child, son Justin, ended up needing a lot of dental work.

“He was just 2 or 3 when he needed his first root canal,” Crowe said. “I was shocked when I was brushing his teeth and I saw a hole in his tooth. He’s just much more prone to cavities than my other two children.”

Some of the treatments now offered by her kids’ dentist weren’t available when Crowe was young. She said all of her children had dental sealants on their back teeth to help prevent decay. They also all get fluoride treatments whenever they get their teeth cleaned.

Like other parents, Crowe said, she brushed her kids’ teeth for them when they were young, and once they were old enough to take care of their own teeth, she continued to remind them to brush. Her two oldest are 18 and 22, so they’re on their own as far as their oral hygiene is concerned, but Crowe said she still has to remind her 13-year-old to brush his teeth.

All three children have had braces, and her oldest had her wisdom teeth removed recently.

“They weren’t causing problems yet, but the dentist told me that if they came in more, it could cause her teeth to shift and ruin what had been done by her braces,” she explained. For the same reason, she expects that her second son will probably have his wisdom teeth out soon.

Overall, Crowe said, her experiences with her children’s dental health professionals have been much more positive than what she experienced as a child. And, she’s glad her children don’t have a lingering sense of trepidation about going to the dentist like she had.

More information

A companion article offers more on what’s new in pediatric dentistry.  

(SOURCE: Stephanie Crowe, Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.)

Copyright © 2012
HealthDay.  All rights reserved.

HealthDayNews articles are derived from
various sources and do not reflect federal policy. healthfinder.gov
does not endorse opinions, products, or services that
may appear in news stories. For more information on
health topics in the news, visit
Health News on healthfinder.gov.

Article source: http://www.healthfinder.gov/news/newsstory.aspx?Docid=660253

Options for kids now include sealants and early removal of wisdom teeth.

By Serena Gordon
HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, May 18 (HealthDay News) — If you’ve been to the dentist with your children recently, you may have noticed that things have changed since you were a kid.

Many dental offices are more kid-friendly these days, offering books and toys to pass the time in the waiting room and maybe even TV or videos to watch while they’re getting dental work.

But, there have also been changes in the actual practice of children’s dentistry. You probably never got dental sealants as a child, or had topical fluoride treatments. If you had your wisdom teeth removed, more than likely it was because they were causing a problem, but today those teeth may come out sooner to reduce the risk for complications.

Here’s a sampling of what’s new in pediatric dentistry:

Dental Sealants

Many teeth have rough surfaces that are hard to clean. When applied to these surfaces, a dental sealant makes the pitted and grooved area of a tooth smooth and easy to clean.

“Back teeth have a biting surface and crevices that are hard to clean,” said Dr. Larry Kronenberg, a pediatric dentist affiliated with Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco, N.Y. “Depending on the depth of the crevice, bacteria and food can get lodged in the tooth and cause cavities.”

“If your child has shallow crevices, sealants probably aren’t indicated,” he said. “But if you’ve ever given your child a pretzel and later saw that the food was still stuck on the teeth, your child could benefit from sealants.”

Sealants are easy to apply. The dentist brushes them onto the teeth, and the sealant bonds with the tooth’s enamel, according to the American Dental Association (ADA). Sometimes a curing light is used to help the sealants dry faster.

Fluoride Treatments

“Ingested fluoride works on teeth that haven’t yet come into the mouth, those that haven’t erupted yet, but it has no effect on the teeth already in the mouth,” Kronenberg said. “A fluoride treatment using a gel or varnish incorporates the fluoride into the surface outer layer of the tooth. It has to be repeated because it gets worn off.”

Fluoride is applied using a cotton swab or brush, or it’s placed in a tray that the child bites down on and then holds in the mouth for several minutes. Once a fluoride treatment is done, there should be no eating or drinking for 30 minutes to allow the fluoride to soak into the teeth, according to the ADA.

Kronenberg explained that the difference between the fluoride contained in toothpaste and fluoride treatments is the concentration. The fluoride in toothpaste is much less concentrated, he noted.

Wisdom Teeth

Should they stay or should they go? That’s the question kids and parents face.

Kronenberg said that most dentists start to look at a kid’s wisdom teeth at about age 16 or 17 to see if there’s room for the teeth to come in properly, without causing problems. If a tooth looks like it won’t come in properly, some dentists now suggest removing these teeth sooner rather than later to make the removal easier. The less chance the tooth has to develop, the shallower the roots will be, explained Kronenberg.

But not everyone is practicing early removal.

“There’s no cut-and-dried protocol saying that all wisdom teeth have to be extracted,” said Dr. Joshua Verona from the division of dental medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. “If they don’t affect function or appearance, we just leave them in. We only extract wisdom teeth when they’re symptomatic.”

Parents should discuss with their family dentist the risks and benefits associated with leaving wisdom teeth in or taking them out.

Reducing Anxiety

Kronenberg said that pediatric dentists are seeing patients at a younger and younger age. Some recommend that well-dental visits, much like well-child visits at the pediatrician, start at age 1 so that dentists can discuss the importance of diet and oral hygiene with the parents. But more importantly, he said, early visits “help start a relationship between the child and the dentist at an early age, and generally if you’ve built a positive relationship, children are more willing to accept necessary treatments in the future.”

More information

The Nemours Foundation KidsHealth website has more on good oral hygiene.  

A companion article recounts changes in pediatric dentistry from one generation to the next.

(SOURCES: Larry Kronenberg, D.D.S., pediatric dentist, Northern Westchester Hospital, Mount Kisco, N.Y.; Joshua D. Verona, D.D.S., division of dental medicine, Beth Israel Medical Center, New York City
)

Copyright © 2012
HealthDay.  All rights reserved.

HealthDayNews articles are derived from
various sources and do not reflect federal policy. healthfinder.gov
does not endorse opinions, products, or services that
may appear in news stories. For more information on
health topics in the news, visit
Health News on healthfinder.gov.

Article source: http://www.healthfinder.gov/news/newsstory.aspx?Docid=660252

Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by the editors of HealthDay:

Psychiatrist Apologizes for Study Supporting Therapy to ‘Cure’ Gays

A man considered by some to be the father of modern psychiatry has apologized for his 2001 study that supported the use of so-called reparative therapy to “cure” gay people who were strongly motivated to change their sexual orientation.

Dr. Robert L. Spitzer’s apology appears in a short letter to be published this month in Archives of Sexual Behavior, the journal that published the original study, The New York Times reported.

“I believe I owe the gay community an apology,” his letter concludes.

Reparative therapy, also called sexual reorientation or conversion therapy is a theory promoted by social conservatives, who used Spitzer’s study to push the idea that homosexuality is a choice and can be cured.

That idea is rejected by psychiatric experts, and a World Health Organization report calls the therapy “a serious threat to the health and well-being — even the lives — of affected people,” The Times reported.

—–

U.S. Panel Mulls Bioterrorism Protection for Children

The question of whether the anthrax vaccine and other treatments being stockpiled in case of a bioterror attack should be tested on children is being considered by the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

“We can’t just assume that what we have for adults works for children,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told the commission Thursday, the Associated Press reported.

The panel began discussing the issue Thursday and its recommendations are expected by the end of the year.

“There are serious ethical issues around the development of medical countermeasures for children in general,” Sebelius said, the AP reported.

While it is important to develop ways to protect children from bioterror attacks, it must be done in a way that puts “our children’s safety as our highest priority,” she noted.

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Stem Cell-Based Drug Approved in Canada

The first manufactured drug based on stem cells has been approved by Canadian regulators.

The drug Prochymal was approved to treat children suffering from graft-versusu-host disease, a potentially deadly complication of bone marrow transplantation. The drug is made by Osiris Therapeutics of Columbia, Md., The New York Times reported.

The approval is seen as a boost for the field of regenerative medicine.

“It’s really a good day for the concept and the hope behind stem cell therapies becoming a reality,” C. Randal Mills, the chief executive of Osiris, told The Times.

The company plans to apply later this year for U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of the drug.

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Consumers Should Avoid South Korean Shellfish: FDA

U.S. federal and state officials are warning consumers against eating shellfish from South Korea and say that retailers should stop selling it.

A Food and Drug Administration analysis of the South Korean shellfish program found unacceptable water pollution levels in shellfish-growing areas and periodic presence of norovirus, which can cause gastroenteritis (stomach flu), the Washington Post reported.

On May 1, the FDA removed firms that transports South Korean shellfish off its list of approves shippers and said it may launch a recall of South Korean shellfish, specifically fresh, frozen or processed oysters, clams, mussels and scallops.

The FDA advisory does not affect South Korean crab or shrimp, or any shellfish grown and produced in the U.S., the Post reported.

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