Tag: ‘children’

Functional Foods: Fortified For Your Health

Functional Foods

The little time we spend on planning and preparing a healthy and balanced diet, fast food and the tempting choice of snacks of all kinds are to reduce the consumption of fruits and vegetables, among other products essential. This is an increase of cholesterol, obesity and lack of nutrients. The intention to avoid these harmful effects is causing the rise of so-called functional foods, those that provide beneficial substances to the body, such as minerals or vitamins, which have been enriched, apart from its own nutrients.

Emerged in Japan in the 80s: with increasing life expectancy of the population, increased health spending, so it is proposed to help health through food. These serve to prevent various diseases, vitamin deficiencies and mitigate cardiovascular problems and even birth defects. (more…)

Small Is The Color Blind?

a5By the time your child gives color “should not be” on the picture or in coloring books, you should not upset because that’s what kids should do as the instructions to his creativity or your child to freedom of expression. But it also needs to watch out because he might be color blind.

The facts show that 10 million people in America have a problem with color vision. 1 of 12 men in the United States was experiencing it while it was affecting 1% of women in Uncle Sam’s country. Most of the causes of color blindness is a genetic mutation or other reasons such as aging, glaucoma, cataracts or effects of certain medications.

Color blindness affects one in 25 children with 3 main types:

1. Red-green blind: this is the most common type. Difficult to distinguish between red-green color.
2. Yellow-blue blind: difficult to distinguish between blue yellow coloring.
3. Do not see colors: This condition is very rare and usually only see black, white and gray.

So what is the cause of color blindness? In the retina there are millions of cones that allow us to see light and color. There are three types of cones that will about them to light of different colors, red, blue or green. If there is damage to one type of cone is that will cause a mild color blindness. If there is one type of cone is missing, then the color-blindness would be more severe.
There are several ways to tell if your child color blind. Because a child who has color blindness will do the following things:

* Seeing the color, especially the primary colors, with the name of the wrong color.
* Create an image that does not fit like a black tree trunk or brown grass.
* The color pink or light green and white will tend to be called.
* Seeing red or green color is almost similar.

If you see signs like this, you should consult your pediatrician. Blind test of the most common color is Ishihara. Children will be shown a set of discs each with numbers or symbols hidden in the circle of dots. These symbols will be easily seen by normal vision, but not by those who seem color blind. By using this test, the doctor will know what kind of color blindness suffered by your child.

This condition will indeed affect your children. He may be a little frustrated, but will be able to adjust. It’s just that your child will find the problems as follows:

* Choosing a color crayon or marker
* Choosing a dress with matching color
* Reading a map or a color chart
* Not knowing when the meat has been cooked
* Lack of understanding signs traffic
* Must be a career that uses normal vision

You do not need to worry too much with this condition, because of course you can help your child in a color blind problem. Be sure to teach your child that color blindness is not an obstacle, but it is a unique trait. You can also separately adjust help themselves by:

* Accept your child color the call.
* Describing an object without mentioning the color.
* Propose a selection clothes that are not in accordance withcaution.
* Expressing your child’s condition to the teacher.
* Talk with your child about his future that some jobs require a vision of a good color.

Until now I have found no drug that can cure color blind. But recently researchers at the University of Washington to do gene therapy for color blindness 2 monkeys in order to restore their vision of the color. This study gives hope that one day the drug from color blindness or other vision abnormalities can be found.