Puberty Vids from the BBC

Flash animations on puberty
These are just great and made me giggle. Why didn't they have things like this when I was at school?

Orthotic Shoes

From the guideance (link to pdf) given by the Rehabilitation Technology Services Advisory Group (now there's a snappy title):

"2. Supply of Prescription Footwear

2.1 Two main criteria may be employed to justify the supply of prescription footwear
2.1.1 those patients who are unable to be acceptably fitted with standard footwear due to abnormal foot shape;
2.1.2 those patients for whom standard footwear cannot accommodate a prescribed orthotic device;
2.1.3 other requests will be individually assessed.

2.2 Non-ambulant light user patients or children will normally receive only one pair.

2.3 Ambulant patients will normally receive a duplicate issue of the first prescription."

So; if your child has a condition meaning that standard shoes are not suitable then they can only have one pair of shoes at a time. Did the people who wrote this guidance not meet any children? There are plenty of possible conditions that will leave you needing specialised footwear, but also leave you entirely capable of jumping into puddles. A relatively sedentary adult will qualify for two pairs, but a highly active child only for one. Yes, parents can buy an extra pair - but these shoes can cost well over £100 a pair.

Milk with your melatonin?

Some background; in the UK melatonin is an unlicensed drug, meaning that it can only be acquired by prescription, and then only on a 'named patient' basis. However, the fact that it is used in children's sleep problems (especially in children with ASD or AD/HD) is becoming more widely known.

So in steps 'Night Time Milk'

All milk contains some melatonin, but Night Time milk has more than most because it is collected from the morning milking from a small number of Somerset dairy herds that have been specially selected to provide milk that is rich in melatonin.

Sleep expert Dr Chris Idzikowski comments "Melatonin is the brain's way of telling the body that it is night time. It helps to reduce the body temperature which is necessary for a good night's sleep. A bedtime drink that provides the brain and body with additional melatonin has a theoretical reason for aiding sleep."

Weirdly, this isn't as bizarre as it first sounds. There are a couple of studies on melatonin in cow's milk:
Diurnal rhythm of melatonin in young calves and intake of melatonin in milk
Diurnal rhythm of melatonin in bovine milk: pharmacokinetics of exogenous melatonin in lactating cows and goats.
Milking cows at the 'right' time will increase the amount of melatonin in the milk. (Incidentally, there's also melatonin in rat milk, but they're much harder to milk, and the marketing to get people to drink 'Night Time Rat Milk' would have to be fairly strenuous)

So far so good. But then we come to the amounts of melatonin in the milk. The first study gives an amount of 40 picograms per millilitre; the second gives a 'high' melatonin level of 26 picograms per millilitre (+/-7pg). Accosting a passing doctor I'm told that an 'average' dose for sleep problems in children (with obvious variations for size of child and so on) would be 3mg. Mathematics is not my strong suit, and I welcome corrections, but if we use the figure of 40pg/ml that would mean that a child would have to drink 75 litres of 'Night Time Milk' to get this dosage. At 91p per 750ml that would be £91 of milk.

Even if forcing a child to drink 75l of milk wasn't child abuse of itself, it wouldn't work as a sleep aid anyway: five minutes in bed and they'd be up to use the loo.

Aspergers and Armed Forces

Something I've had to look up recently: does Aspergers bar you from serving in the armed forces? All the answers have come from coversations with the people on the relevant recruiting phone lines.

Army: Diagnosis of Aspergers is an automatic bar to service.
RAF: Ditto.
Navy: Diagnosis is not an automatic bar, but you would have to convince those at recruitment testing/medical that it would not affect your ability to do your job. Personally, I think that it would be hard for someone with AS to convince a Navy medic of this, but probably not impossible.

This, of course, tells you nothing about undiagnosed aspies in the forces.

Fighting Obesity the eco-way

A great idea: involve overweight children in environmental projects as a way to get them to exercise. Declaration of competing interests: I am an overweight adult; I was an overweight child. I also hated sport with a passion. Projects to get children more active tend to focus on sport, without actually thinking about it; the children who like sport aren't the ones who are overweight. It's the ones who would do almost anything than get invloved in a game of football/netball who are overweight. There's this obsession with competitve sports as exercise, when those who are not already fit know that all that lies at the end of that is losing and being humiliated. Promote going out and doing environmental volunteering, going for walks, taking salsa classes; anything, please but more school sport!

More on alternative medicine...

I just can't keep away from this subject can I? From the Guardian:

The latest research is a triumph for conventional medicine, because only its methodology enables us to say with any conviction that these treatments work and why. The reasons the new evidence provide in support of alternative treatments are precisely the same reasons for at least suspending judgment on countless others. That is why the sign outside the Royal London homoeopathic hospital is as bad for my blood pressure as meditation is good for it. The truth is that among the scientific community, almost everyone believes homeopathy not only doesn't work but cannot work. Yet the Royal London receives NHS funding. Why? Surely because the public demands it. This is doubly scandalous: the treatments don't work, and we give people the impression that they do by officially sanctioning them.

Nothing about the election tomorrow; as far as I can see, almost all the issues that concern children with special needs in Scotland are devolved issues.

Cannabis and Mental Health

Young Minds on the subject of cannabis and mental health.

Cannabis use often comes wrapped up in a parcel where it’s hard to disentangle cause and effect because cannabis is often used by young people trying to manage psychological problems, as a form of self-medication. Nick Kerry a ‘substance misuse officer’ in a child and adolescent mental health team says, “those already suffering from mental health problems are the most likely to turn to cannabis to manage feelings. But the stuff they are trying to manage is also a factor in making them more at risk from the effects of the drug.” Dr Young agrees. “Cannabis can help manage social situations, and difficult feelings. But a significant proportion of users are susceptible because of a genetic tendency to psychosis or other mental health pressures.”

These would be the sort of grey areas that are totally missed in this run up to a general election.