A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (August) has found that children gained excess body weight during the Covid-19 pandemic, especially those in the five-11 years age group. “When we compared the weight gain among children from 2019 to 2020, we found that there was more weight gained during the pandemic for youth of all ages,” says lead researcher Corinna Koebnick of the Kaiser Permanente Southern California’s Department of Research & Evaluation. Researchers analysed the electronic health records of 191,509 children in the five-17 age group from March 1, 2019, to January 31, 2021. They found that children between five-11 years gained 5.07 pounds additional weight during the pandemic than during the same time period before Covid-19, while 12-15 year-olds and 16-17 year-olds gained an excess of 5.1 pounds and 2.26 pounds, respectively. “As children go back to school it will be important to focus on health and physical activity to help children not carry unwanted extra weight into adulthood. We need to immediately begin to invest in monitoring the worsening obesity epidemic and develop diet and activity interventions to help children achieve and maintain healthy weight,” says Koebnick. Green living cuts heart disease risk Living in a green neighbourhood lowers the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases, says a study presented at the ESC Congress 2021. The study highlighted that residents of “high greenness blocks” had 16 percent less chance of developing new cardiovascular conditions compared to those living in “low greenness blocks”. For the study, researchers studied 243,558 US Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 and older who lived in the same area of Miami from 2011 to 2016. Participants were categorised based on whether they lived in low, medium or high greenness blocks. Greenness is a measure of trees, shrubs and grass assessed by NASA imaging of the Earth and other technologies. “We found that areas with better air quality have higher greenness, and that higher greenness in turn, is related to lower rates of deaths from heart disease,” says William Aitken, a cardiology fellow at the University of Miami. Bed-sharing doesn’t improve mother-child bonding Bed-sharing has no impact on infant attachment and/or maternal bonding, says a recently published research paper in the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics (May). Many parents share their bed with infants for reasons such as practicality and breastfeeding, or because they believe in ‘attachment parenting’. However this study conducted by University of Kent, UK, which analysed data of 178 infants and their parents at birth, three, six and 18 months of age, found no correlation between bed sharing during the first six months and infant-mother attachment or infant behavioral outcomes. Similarly, sharing a bed had no impact on maternal bonding and sensitivity in interacting with infants at any of the assessment stages. “A lot of people believe that bed sharing is necessary to promote secure attachment with infants. However, there is little research in this area and quite mixed evidence. More investigation of outcomes of bed sharing is required to…
