THE YOUNG, HEALTHY GUT

by April 5, 2018 Uncategorized

In the development of health and disease there are key moments where future trajectories are established. This early programming sets the stage for long-term health and also the prevention of future diseases. These so called critical windows were originally known as the “Baker Hypothesis” Baker identified an association between fetal malnutrition and hypertension later in […]

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NUTRITION AND EARLY BRAIN DEVELOPMENT

by February 2, 2018 Monthly

THE FIRST 1,000 DAYS A few years ago I found myself in a huge ballroom of a hotel just outside Chicago. It was at a special meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) that I discovered the AAP’s agenda of prioritizing early brain development. The discussions centered on toxic stress (bathing the fetal brain, […]

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LEG AND FEET ISSUES

by January 10, 2018 Monthly

Childhood development can be a time of both excitement and stress. On the one hand it is exciting for parents to document their baby’s progress. Who will forget that first smile or who will delete the video taken when a child took his or her first step? But what if the folks notice that the […]

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SHY CHILDREN

by January 5, 2018 Monthly

Not so long ago I had the opportunity to do a talk at a local high school. They asked me to talk about resilience, and although the main theme revolved around stressed teens, at some point during the question and answer part, the issue of children’s temperaments came up. One of the experts in the […]

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SHY CHILDREN

by January 1, 2018 Monthly

SHY CHILDREN Not so long ago I had the opportunity to do a talk at a local high school. They asked me to talk about resilience, and although the main theme revolved around stressed teens, at some point during the question and answer part, the issue of children’s temperaments came up. One of the experts […]

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PLAYTIME

by December 30, 2017 Uncategorized

Plato once observed that “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” For many parents and social psychologists, the importance of families deliberately making the time to play seems logical and obvious, and yet, in an era where technology has become so dominant in our […]

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HAPPY PARENTING

by June 8, 2017 Weekly

After seeing families for the past 30 years as their doctor and being a parent myself since 1995, I am struggling with a common question: —Can a parent be happy and healthy if the child is not happy and healthy? Recently I did an interview with National TV (CBC Evening News) where we discussed optimal […]

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MENTAL HEALTH OF YOUR DOCTOR

by June 2, 2017 Uncategorized

The suicide rate among doctors remains among the highest in the general population and statistics suggest that male physicians die due to suicide at a rate nearly twice that for other men. For female physicians the risk is three-fold higher. This data may surprise some patients and even some doctors who are enjoying a career […]

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VEGAN DIETS ARE SAFE FOR CHILDREN

by May 9, 2017 Monthly

The exact percentage of children who are raised on a vegan diet is uncertain. Some estimates claim as many as one in 40 adults are vegan. This means that they are very likely, but not absolutely certain, to use a vegan diet in their homes to feed all family members. The interest in going vegan […]

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BABY-LED APPROACH TO EATING SOLIDS

by April 27, 2017 Weekly

It is always interesting to read about parenting trends where parents are influenced by popular books or non-traditional ideas. The level of parental passion determines the speed and magnitude with which trends spread—often globally. What is equally interesting is how fast, or more often how slowly, the medical community catch up with whatever is trending. […]

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