I remember how freaked out we used to get before leaving town without our toddlers. Those were the days! We’re now about to leave four teenagers with various friends and family members while we spend several days in Europe, and I only wish we were worrying about who might forget their favorite blanket at day care.
The stuff that could happen while we’re gone this time is likely to end up on our kids’ permanent records. I can hear the Harvard admissions officer now: “Mr. Hill, Abby has almost everything it takes to gain admission, with a full scholarship, if only it hadn’t been for this math test in September of 2014. I have to ask, where were you that week?”
Doug Menuez
Holy smoke...
In the weeds
Just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for teenagers. After all, no one has banned grain alcohol, 5-Hour Energy, or Mustang GT convertibles, but in the hands of a 16-year-old any one of them is a horrible idea, and any combination, well, you can imagine. As more states consider legalizing cannabis, some high-minded researchers publishing in The Lancet Psychiatry thought is was high time to review the literature on what tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) actually does to high schoolers when they get, you know…stoned.
To look at movies, you’d think the effects of frequent marijuana use would mainly involve searching for small hamburgers, bowling in your bathrobe, and stumbling out of low-riders. Based on three large population-based studies in New Zealand and Australia, however, you have to add a lot of less-funny stuff like failing to complete high school (60% less likely for daily users than nonusers), use of other drugs later in life (an eightfold increase), and, most seriously, suicide (a sevenfold increase compared with nonusers). At this point, no one should be laughing, even those actively smoking pot, like, right now.
There is one finding from the analysis that someone is going to have to explain to me, and I swear I’m clean. The authors state that youth who are daily marijuana users face an 18-fold higher risk of cannabis dependence than do nonusers. Is there some reason that number is not, like, infinity? Regardless, the Australian data suggest that when it comes to teens’ life success, marijuana may be the Great Barrier Reefer.
House staph
You know those things that everyone agrees need to go, but no one knows how to get rid of? Like boy bands, infomercials, and the teen years? Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is definitely on that list, and according to a new study in JAMA Pediatrics, it’s in even more places than we thought. Who is spreading this stuff everywhere? I’d like to blame One Direction, but it seems that the vectors are actually (insert spooky music) our own children.
Dr. Stephanie A. Fritz of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and her colleagues identified 50 children recently treated for MRSA infections and got permission from their families to go around their homes swabbing stuff. Not only is this a promising research premise, but I think it could be the next hit reality show: “Wife Swab.” They also asked about home cleaning practices, although the researchers didn’t get specific about the products used (Mr. Clean vs. used Kleenex), and they conceded that, when confronted by a team of white-coated scientists, some parents may have slightly overstated how often they tidied up.
MRSA turned up in nearly half (23) of the households, with bed linens harboring the bug most often (18%) followed by TV remotes (16%) and bathroom hand towels (15%). Even dogs (12%) and cats (7%) were colonized with MRSA, despite the fact that neither animal frequently uses hand towels or TV remotes. What the study could not determine was whether children got MRSA infections from contaminated household surfaces, or whether those surfaces were contaminated because the children had MRSA infections. A 2-year follow-up project hopes to answer that question, but until the results are published, I’m blaming One Direction.
Skin to skin
How often does the medical literature teach you fascinating facts about the habits of exotic peoples in faraway lands? Okay, there’s the occasional mention of kuru or of the ankle injuries specific to Vanuatu land divers, but no one is too worried about Pediatrics stealing market share from National Geographic. That’s why I was shocked to learn from the European Lung Foundation of all places about a bizarre custom that’s apparently popular in Europe and that I completely missed when I was backpacking across the continent as a sophomore: More than half of European newborns apparently sleep on animal skins. I scoured the article, but nowhere does it say whether or not the animals are still using them.