Helen Jaques

A new study has found that giving children up to one year old a sweet solution before jabs reduces the pain of the immunisation, providing a scientific basis for Mary Poppins’ maxim that “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” The meta-analysis looked at fourteen randomised controlled trials that assessed the effects of [...]

Don’t leave your young kids unsupervised with your laundry. Not just because they might start mixing with your carefully separated piles of whites and darks, but because they might injure their eyes playing with the brightly coloured liquid detergent capsules. A letter to the BMJ, ophthalmologists at the Western Eye Hospital in London have highlighted [...]

A third of Chinese children experience high levels of school-related stress, and these kids are about five times more likely to have the physical symptoms of stress – that is, headache or abdominal pain – then their less frazzled peers. Thanks to the combination of China’s recent economic growth – with the increased opportunities for [...]

I recently blogged about the alarming rates of obesity among children in England, with one in four 4-5 year old children and one in three 10-11 year olds in this country obese or overweight. The Foresight report, published in 2007, ominously predicts that by 2050 90% of British children will be overweight or obese. The [...]

One in four 4-5 year old children and one in three 10-11 year olds in England are obese or overweight, according to data from the 2007/08 National Child Measurement Program published by the NHS Information Centre.  The North East, the West Midlands and London are particular obesity blackspots, and boys are more likely to be [...]