Weekly Health Tips

New Year’s Eve is one of the biggest celebrations of the year.  Think about it -- Times Square, the New Year’s Eve Ball Drop, champagne toasts, old classic movies, midnight kisses, and endless parties.  But after all the partying is over, reality sinks in and we enter the first month of a brand new year.  What a difference a day makes! 

A common focus of the holiday season is to share and celebrate family togetherness.  Even extended families, normally separated from each other throughout the year, manage to somehow reconnect during the holidays.  This is the spirit that defines the season.  So for many military families, where a loved one may be absent due to military deployment, truly being able to enjoy season’s festivities may be more difficult.

Many health professionals recommend seasonal influenza (flu) vaccines as a preventive measure. But are they safe? Are they necessary? Do they actually work? Or are they a shot in the dark? The debate rages on, but the U.S. Center for Disease Control still urges families to get vaccinated against flu every year -- not only to safeguard their own health, but to prevent a large scale epidemic from taking hold in the U.S.  

The Center for Science in the Public Interest reports that today’s school meals include more fruits and vegetables, more whole grains, low-fat instead of high-fat milk, and sensible limits on calories, unhealthy fats, and salt. This is because nutritional standards have been revamped to ensure better nutrition for all of the 31 million children attending school in this country today. 

As parents, we often minimize the importance of teen stress and simply attribute it to over-active hormones, the search for popularity and peer pressure.  However, recent studies have shown that teenagers actually do have a lot on their minds, even if parents only perceive their stress as “melodrama”. The fact is, many teens are stressed, maybe as much so or more than their parents.