Health Wrap - Reports on Calcium, Lawn Moving Accidents, Herbs for lower back pain

A new review of medical literature in the highly regarded Cochrane Library surprisingly casts doubt on the value of supplements and calcium-fortified foods to build stronger bones in kids!

The review shows that supplementing the diet with calcium in healthy children has little benefit for bone health.

They say in the long run, bone mass didn’t improve much.

Pediatricians and parents are concerned with calcium intake because they want to ensure that boys and girls achieve peak bone strength in childhood, a time when kids build bone at an accelerated pace.

Playing into that concern now are many packaged foods marketed to children which are fortified with calcium, including orange juice, graham crackers and chocolate drinks.

Children do need about 1,300 milligrams of calcium each day, according to the national academy of sciences. But a 1994 survey from the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that kids typically get less than 1,000 mg a day, and the average calcium deficiency in girls is even greater.

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Lawnmower injuries are on the rise, according to a new Johns Hopkins study.

Each year, nearly 80,000 Americans require hospital treatment from injuries caused by lawn mowers.

The majority of injuries occur in children under age 15 and adults age 60 and older.

The most common injuries were caused by strikes from debris, such as rocks and branches, propelled by the mower’s spinning blades.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that no one under age 16 should use a riding mower, and no one under age 12 should use a push mower.

Kids should also stay off the lawn when it’s being mowed.

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When your ibuprofen doesn’t work for that low back pain…maybe you’ll want to try devil’s claw…or, perhaps, white willow bark.

A new review says these herbals, along with cayenne plasters, may be as effective as traditional pain medication, and certainly better than placebo, for new onset low back pain, used for four to six weeks.

The authors say the long-term efficacy and safety of the herbal treatments remain uncertain.

Low back pain afflicts eight out of 10 people at some point in their lives, according to the national institute of arthritis and musculoskeletal and skin diseases, and it is the second most frequent cause of work absence in industrialized nations.

In the United States alone, back pain is the most common cause of disability in people under 45 years of age and is responsible for direct costs of $20 billion, the authors report.
Current standard treatments include tissue stimulation, pain medication, exercise and back braces. Drugs and physical activity show the best results, the authors said.
Because herbals often interact with medicines, the authors caution that these treatments should not be tried without the supervision of a qualified medical professional.