Food & Drink Kids Food Safety Chocolate Before You Give Kids Dark Chocolate, Doctors Want You To Know A Few Things

Dark chocolate is low in sugar, full of antioxidants and has been shown to be good for your heart and brain. These health benefits are likely why one-third of adults say it’s their preferred chocolate, so you might think it’s a great treat for their kids, too.

But pediatricians and nutritionists say there are a few things to know before doling out dark chocolate to your little ones. 

“It would be recommended that the child not eat dark chocolate in excess and avoid providing it before bed,” Amy Reed, a registered dietitian and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, told HuffPost.

The main reason is that dark chocolate contains caffeine, she explained.

While there’s no harm for most kids to eat some dark chocolate (and any other kind of chocolate), moderation is key, explained Anet Piridzhanyan, a clinical dietitian in the Center for Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

All foods, including candy, have a place at the table,” she told HuffPost. But here’s what you should know about giving your kids dark chocolate.

How much caffeine is in dark chocolate — and is it too much for kids?

An ounce of dark chocolate with 60-69% cacao contains 24 mg of caffeine, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s about the same amount as a quarter cup of coffee, Beth Natt, system medical director of pediatrics at Atlantic Health System, told HuffPost.

“Small amounts are likely to be well tolerated,” she said. But larger amounts could bring side effects similar to what adults experience when they have too much caffeine: difficulty sleeping, anxiety, diarrhea, vomiting and elevated heart rate and blood pressure. 

As a stimulant, caffeine often has a bigger impact on growing bodies than on adults, added Piridzhanyan. The Food and Drug Administration recommends that adults limit their caffeine intake to 400 mg a day — but the agency doesn’t have recommendations for kids.

The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests kids avoid caffeine, Natalie Rine, director of the Central Ohio Poison Center at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, told HuffPost. The Canadian Paediatric Society agrees with that recommendation, but since caffeine is found in many foods and beverages, Health Canada has published healthy daily caffeine limits by age:

• Kids 4-6 years: less than 45 mg (the equivalent of about 2 ounces of dark chocolate)

• Kids 7-9 years: less than 62.5 mg

• Kids 10-12 years: less than 85 mg

• Kids 13 and older: less than 2.5 mg per kilogram of body weight

• Adults: less than 400 mg

“If a child is eating dark chocolate in excess, then they could be consuming excess amounts of caffeine,” Reed said. Most likely, they’re not getting all their caffeine from dark chocolate, though, Natt added.

Sodas, energy drinks and other types of candy and sweets also contain caffeine. New guidelines from a coalition of health organizations, including AAP and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, recommended that young people ages 5 to 18 avoid beverages with caffeine and other stimulants.

Does Dark Chocolate Contain Heavy Metals?

In 2023, Consumer Reports released a report stating that some dark chocolate products may contain harmful levels of the heavy metals lead and cadmium. 

However, a 2024 study published in Food Research International found that consuming an ounce of dark chocolate daily posed no adverse risks for adults and only a minor cadmium concern for kids. It also found that chocolates from West Africa and Asia had the lowest amounts of these metals.

The takeaway is that dark chocolate in moderation poses little risk to children, Rine said. Parents can also check the country of origin, too, if they’re concerned, Reed added.

Another thing to note is that the Food Research International study suggested that dark chocolate also contains copper, iron, manganese, magnesium and zinc, which are nutrients that can “restrict the bioavailability” of cadmium and lead — meaning it limits how much can be absorbed by the body.

What type of chocolate should you give your kids?

Dark chocolate typically contains less sugar than milk chocolate. But it might not always be palatable to kids since it’s not as sweet and creamy, Piridzhanyan said. The dark chocolate that they might find tastier may have added sugar.

“Deciding what is safe to feed your child can be overwhelming for parents,” she said.

Check nutrition labels and be mindful about the amount of sugar and number of calories in any chocolate that you choose for your kids, Rine said. Also, dark chocolate with a lower percentage of cacao would likely contain less caffeine and be safer for younger children.

Dark chocolate typically has more antioxidants than milk chocolate and contains iron, Piridzhanyan said. But milk chocolate usually contains calcium, added Reed.

“When eaten in moderation, there is likely not a huge difference between dark and milk chocolate,” Natt said. “Neither should be a substantial part of a child’s diet.”

What’s important is balance, Piridzhanyan said. “Chocolate can be a food they enjoy, just as any other food or candy, if provided in moderation, along with plenty of fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and whole grains, as part of a healthy lifestyle.”

 

 

This is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.   

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3 Signs Your Doctor Isn’t Taking Your Heart Health Seriously

Gerry Langan, a 34-year-old Asian American mom of twin toddlers, was diagnosed with heart failure due to her pulmonary tension. To monitor her heart and blood vessels, Langan sometimes wears a cardiac catheter inserted directly into her chest—a medical device that nearly cost Langan her life four years ago.¹

It started when Langan noticed pus emerging from the area where her catheter had previously been inserted. She notified her regular cardiologists, who brushed off her concerns. As her symptoms got more severe, Langan was told that all that she needed was a simple antibiotic, even though she reminded them of her condition and voiced how much pain she was in. Infections from cardiac catheters can be deadly, and while an oral antibiotic can be used to treat mild cases, Langan’s infection was particularly intense.

Her condition worsened, and eventually, Langan developed a fever and chills. She was eventually rushed to the hospital where doctors noticed that she was going into septic shock—signified by a super-high fever, shallow breathing, and disorientation—and immediately treated her for the infection.

As frustrating as it is, Langan’s experience with having pain dismissed can be a common ordeal among certain groups of people. Women tend to have worse outcomes than men do overall when they see cardiologists (e.g., their pain intensifies, or their condition deteriorates) and are more likely than men to die after receiving cardiological treatment. Women of color, particularly Black women, fare even worse: While heart disease is the leading cause of death among women of all races in the US, Black women are 2.4 times more likely to develop it than white women “and are more likely to die younger compared to white women,”³ Estelle Jean, MD, a cardiologist, tells SELF. The reasons for this are complex, but institutional sexism and racism—and a lack of access to affordable care—can play a major role.

Doctors are humans too—and some might handle your treatment with certain gender or racial biases (or other limitations), which Langan felt played a role in her case. She now sees a cardiologist she really vibes with and is empathetic to her experience, though she met with a few doctors who weren’t the right fit—and showed some warning signs they weren’t in a position to treat her condition thoroughly—before getting to that point. If you’re looking for a new cardiologist—or are starting to cool on your current one—here are three red flags to watch out for.

They aren’t connecting the dots—or are getting lazy in the discovery process.

Chest pain and shortness of breath can be common signs of a heart attack and heart failure in both men and women, but women may also experience different symptoms, like nausea and fatigue, which doctors can sometimes overlook. (Doctors are trained in spotting these differences, but only an estimated 22% of cardiologists fully implement them when treating women.) “A woman may complain about fatigue and is told to just exercise,” Sharayne Mark, MD, FACC, tells SELF, which could be (potentially) deadly advice if that fatigue stems from an artery blockage.

Without an actual diagnosis, Dr. Jean notes that it also doesn’t hurt to get up to speed on how common cardiac conditions (like heart failure, heart disease, and heart attacks) present themselves if you’re more at risk of having them (say, someone in your immediate family had a heart attack at a young age). That way, if you’re showing symptoms, you can flag them to a doctor right away. “I recommend that women educate themselves about the various ways that heart failure and other serious cardiac conditions can present,” Dr. Jean says.

Also: Your cardiologist should be asking you open-ended questions—something that only one third of docs do when evaluating their patients.⁷ (In other words, they only ask “yes” or “no” questions when discussing symptoms, leaving little room for you to expand on what you’re experiencing.) If your doc is dismissive or just won’t really let you speak, seek a second opinion ASAP. You could also enlist the help of a patient advocate—someone who works within a doctor’s office or hospital and is solely there to help people navigate the health care system—to help. They might be able to assist you in pushing for a new provider (and even work with you to file a complaint, if it comes to that). Not all hospitals or doctor’s offices have them, though, so when you’re looking for a new cardiologist, see if you can confirm that they’re part of an organization that has a patient advocacy program.

They aren’t communicating directly with you.

The catheter infection episode, sadly, wasn’t Langan’s only run-in with shoddy cardiology care—she went through a handful of docs who were straight-up unresponsive in the early phases of her diagnosis. “I would send a message in the [patient] portal and wouldn’t hear back for three days, and it was from a nurse who did not know me,” she recalls. (Langan says she has now found a care team responsive to her needs, but it took some time to get there.)

While nurses, physician assistants, or other staff members will sometimes share info like your vitals and test results, Dr. Jean says your cardiologist should be responding most of the time—or all of the time if your case is really serious. “In most cases, the cardiologist should communicate about critical cardiac conditions,” she says. “They can answer important questions about your diagnosis and treatment plan.”

Whenever possible, Dr. Jean recommends asking your cardiologist for thorough post-visit notes—“including a summary of what was discussed, test results, the treatment plan, and educational material,” she says—so you can review them later and prepare follow-up questions. If your cardiologist’s office is slow to get them to you, or their notes are hard to follow or don’t seem personalized to you, let them know how you’d prefer to communicate (and be communicated with). If it’s still not working for you from there, consider seeing someone else.

They don’t believe you.

Prior to getting diagnosed with heart failure, one doctor suggested that Langan was using drugs because she had an elevated heart rate on her EKG reading—even when she repeatedly told them she wasn’t high. (FYI: An elevated EKG reading, which records electrical signals from your heart, can sometimes happen for people with heart failure.) They made this assumption because she was in her 20s, and most people with the condition are diagnosed in their 60s or 70s. Though doctors are usually trained to spot signs of drug use (and to know when it makes sense to test for it), not being believed as a woman in a medical setting can be (unfortunately) common: One study found that when both male and female patients flagged their heart disease symptoms, the cardiologists assessing them were more likely to diagnose women with gastrointestinal or mental health disorders.

Again, a patient advocate could be helpful when you feel like you’re not being heard, but bringing a loved one who’s got your back with you to an appointment can also give you some confidence—and support. If you still feel like your cardiologist isn’t on the same page as you, Dr. Mark says that is a clear sign that it is time to go elsewhere. Of course, finding a new-to-you qualified doc isn’t the easiest task. If you’re insured, you can either call your insurance company for referrals or search through their online network of affiliated doctors, if they offer that option. If not, getting recommendations from people you know or reading online reviews can go a long way: Sites like ZocDoc or Yelp can also come in handy if you don’t have a direct referral, or you could search “[your city] + cardiologist recommendations” on Reddit to see if you get any leads.

Ultimately, your doctor is on your team—their sole goal should be to help you get better. But cardiologists are people too—meaning they’re imperfect, whether that’s due to bias or other limitations, and not every one of them will be able to meet you where you’re at. Continue to advocate for yourself and loop in a loved one if things feel frustrating or you get stuck. Even if the process takes some time, you’re going to get the care you need—and deserve.

 

This is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.   

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How To Protect Your Mental Health During The Coronavirus Pandemic, According To Psychologists

As news about the coronavirus outbreak continues to dominate the headlines and millions of people—in the U.S. and the world over—are being asked to self-quarantine, it has become increasingly significant to pay as much attention to our mental health as we do to our physical health.

"Pandemics such as the one we are currently grappling with often ignite fear, anxiety and erratic behaviors," says Dr. Kelly Vincent, a licensed clinical psychologist practicing in Encinitas, California. "When fear takes control, both our nervous system and emotional part of our brain go into overdrive. This response can lead to impulsiveness, panic and feeling out of control emotionally," she explains. "If a person has a preexisting mental illness or history with anxiety and depression, it can often worsen and intensify during times such as these," Dr. Vincent points out. And if the stress and anxiety worsen, "it may trigger negative physical symptoms such as an elevated heart rate, insomnia, digestive issues, weakness and fatigue," tells Dr. Janine Kreft, an Austin-based clinical psychologist.

If you've been feeling anxious, frustrated, angry or downright confused lately, know that you're not alone—we are all in this together. So take a deep breath and follow these handy, expert-backed strategies to improve your mental and emotional well-being:

Cut back news and social media intake. "I would encourage everyone to limit their exposure to the news and to customize their social media feeds—by following more accounts and pages that make them feel good—regardless of the current pandemic," says Dr. Kreft. "Your brain is built to problem solve. And when you are already feeling fearful, it naturally seeks out stimuli in your external environment to reinforce the feeling of fear. The brain then deletes, distorts and generalizes all incoming information that does not align with your current emotional state or beliefs. So if you spend a significant amount of time following the news, it reinforces more reason to worry— thus creating a vicious cycle," explains the mental health expert. To keep fear and panic at bay, Dr. Kreft recommends limiting your news consumption to about five to ten minutes per day and setting a similar time limit for checking your social media accounts. In addition, if someone you follow is sharing posts that are often inaccurate or perturbing, try muting their posts to stop seeing their updates. 

Get information from only reliable sources. Some legitimate and reliable sources of COVID-19-related news and updates include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), World Health Organization (WHO), John Hopkins' Coronavirus Resource Center and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). "It is helpful to adopt a more analytical approach as you follow news reports about the coronavirus. You will also want to verify information that you receive from family, friends or social media," says the American Psychological Association (APA). Moreover, "consume only what you need to know, what’s most relevant to you and particularly what is happening or anticipated in your own community," suggests the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). 

Keep things in perspective. "Take a deep breath and remind yourself that most people who contract COVID-19 will only experience mild symptoms," says APA. "Work is being done to help people who may be more vulnerable to the coronavirus, such as senior citizens and those with underlying health conditions," it adds. The most important thing you can do to help yourself and your loved ones is to take all the precautions, including washing hands and practicing social distancing. 

Stay connected with your family and friends. "Maintaining social networks can foster a sense of normality and provide valuable outlets for sharing feelings and relieving stress," states APA. "You can maintain these connections without increasing your risk of getting the virus by talking on the phone, texting or chatting with people on social media platforms," it adds. In addition, you can take virtual tours together of museums, national parks and other sites via Google Arts & Culture, tune in to live-streamed concerts and other events or play online games with friends, suggests NAMI.

Simply breathe. Practicing deep breathing or meditation are also great ways to alleviate stress and anxiety. Deep breathing helps you regulate your emotions by activating your parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS)—which helps slow the heart rate and restore the feeling of calm, tells Dr. Vincent. Similarly, meditating for just five to ten minutes every morning can also prove to be beneficial, says Dr. Kreft. Here are some easy-to-do breathing exercises that can help you relax in ten minutes or less. 

Keep yourself busy. Engaging in activities that distract you from current events can also be helpful, suggests NAMI. You can watch your favorite movies and TV shows, pick up a new hobby like baking or DIY crafts, join an online fitness class or enroll in a free online university course. "You can also currently stream the Met Opera for free," notes NAMI. What's more, "the NFL and NBA are also offering complimentary access to online streaming platforms," it adds. Meanwhile, it's also important to establish a daily routine and "continue to maintain it as best as you can," Dr. Vincent advises. 

Move around. Physical activity helps ease anxiety and improve your mood by producing stress-relieving hormones called endorphins. In fact, according to a 2018 study published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, exercising for as little as ten minutes can boost happiness. Here's a no-equipment, full-body workout you can easily do at home. 

Make time for self-care. "When stress heightens, it is easy for us to let go of our positive self-care practices, prioritizing other activities—like work and household chores. Yet this is the time we ought to practice self-care the most," tells Dr. Kreft. So carve out some time for yourself every day, even when you're hunkered down, to do something that makes you feel good. Whether it's journaling, reading a book, playing with your pet or listening to music or your favorite podcast. Also, don't forget the critical self-care activities like eating healthy, getting adequate sleep and regular physical activity, adds NAMI. 

Check your thoughts. "Fear feeds off of negative thoughts and beliefs. So try reframing your thoughts to manage your emotions better," says Dr. Vincent. For example, "this is a scary time right now, but I choose to focus on what I can control—like washing my hands, avoiding going outside and engaging in self-care activities." "Writing down positive affirmations right when you wake up or before going to bed can also be very powerful in rewiring your mindset," tells Dr. Kreft. 

Communicate with your kids. It's important to take care of your kids' mental and emotional health as well. "Be honest and open with your children. And give them space to process their feelings, especially feelings of fear and anxiety," tells Dr. Vincent. Besides, "modeling self-care for your kids is also imperative. When they see you doing it, they will often take interest and follow as well," says Dr. Kreft. So engage in self-care activities with them like washing hands, eating healthy meals, exercising or meditating together, limiting social media exposure, etc. Additionally, "try to maintain a normal routine as much as possible—because kids thrive off of a schedule of some kind," suggests Dr. Vincent. "It can be disorienting and confusing for them if routines are thrown off," she tells.

Be there for others. The "helper" therapy principle shows that helping others is also a benefit to the helper, states NAMI. In Spain, group exercise classes are being conducted for quarantined residents on their balconies. While in the UK, a retired carer is delivering food parcels to the elderly. Similarly, Canadians have kickstarted the 'caremongering' trend—where people volunteer to run errands and do chores for those in need. Here are some humanitarian aid organizations in the U.S. that you can get involved with.

If the symptoms of stress and anxiety worsen and you feel it is impairing your ability to function, please speak to an experienced mental health professional at the earliest.  "For anyone who is unsure about attending therapy sessions outside the home, especially those who the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has described as being at higher risk, you can ask your health care provider about tele-therapy or mental health services online," notes NAMI.

This is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.     

https://gscrochetdesigns.blogspot.com. one can see my crochet creations  
https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com. feel free to view for easy, simple and healthy recipes    
https://kneereplacement-stickclub.blogspot.com. for info on knee replacement