Participants: Agatha Thrash (Host), Don Miller
Series Code: HYTH
Program Code: HYTH000194
|
00:01 Some people blame all their problems on their parents.
00:04 If I had just been reared right, I wouldn't have this problem 00:07 or that problem. 00:08 Sometimes parents are blamable but sometimes they aren't. 00:12 We're going to have a discussion on some of the problems 00:15 that teens have now-a-days, and see if we can't get at the 00:19 cause of some of these so that we can have a remedy. 00:22 We hope that you will join us for this program. 00:44 Welcome to Help Yourself to Health 00:46 with Dr. Agatha Thrash, of Uchee Pines Institute, 00:49 and now here is your host Dr. Thrash. 00:52 There are some problems that youngsters have that 00:58 older people have that can be blamed on their 01:02 parents deficiencies. 01:03 I remember one that a lot of people tell me is that 01:07 Oh, I wish my parents had made me practice the 01:11 certain musical instrument, then I could be quite accomplished 01:15 today, but at it is, I am not accomplished on this instrument 01:19 and if only my parents had done the right thing by me. 01:24 Now sometimes the parents should be blamed, 01:28 but sometimes the child is so resistant to any kind of 01:33 suggestion by the parents that a great deal of maneuvering 01:37 has to occur by the parents in order to acquire cooperation. 01:42 To practice piano was one that I studied a good bit. 01:47 My children didn't want to learn music, 01:51 they wanted to be out of doors, they wanted to be 01:54 doing some other kind of activity, they loved to read, 01:57 they wanted to do library research, 01:59 they did not want practice a musical instrument. 02:02 Well, they had certain chores that they always had to do, 02:05 one of those was clear the table and wash the dishes. 02:09 So I would say to them, now I will do this chore 02:14 for you as long as I hear the piano going, 02:17 but once the piano stops, then you have to come 02:20 and do the chore. 02:21 So you can imagine that I heard a lot of piano practice 02:25 as long as I was still washing dishes, 02:27 but when I got through with the dish washing, 02:29 then the piano stopped too. 02:31 Then with making beds, another of my children had to make 02:36 all of the beds in the house. 02:37 I would make the beds if he would do the piano practice. 02:43 So in this way I maneuvered things so that he would do 02:46 the practicing. 02:47 Now if I had not in some way been able to require my children 02:53 to learn music, they would today not be very musical 02:58 because they were certainly not interested in disciplining 03:01 themselves to do that. 03:03 But there are certain problems that parents need to take more 03:08 action in their children's lives, and one of those is 03:12 the physical problem involving the facial complexion. 03:16 Acne can be to a large degree helped by the kind of program 03:21 that the child is on. 03:22 First if the child is not pushed so that maturity occurs 03:28 to early, there is a good chance that the child will have a 03:33 smooth complexion right from the cradle on. 03:38 How is it that one can slow down the maturation 03:42 of the person? 03:44 Well that will be the subject of some our topics 03:46 in this program. 03:47 Now with acne, once the person has it, then there are 03:53 some things that you can do that will help. 03:55 Eliminate all junk foods, whatever it may be, 03:59 just get rid of them. 04:01 Eliminate all dairy products, I have found that dairy products 04:07 are often involved in a child's acne. 04:10 If it isn't involved if you eliminate the dairy products, 04:13 or any other food, and eliminating it does not cause 04:18 a regression in the pimples or the red spots, 04:21 then you may if you wish to add that back to the diet 04:25 you may go back to it. 04:26 Now with fats, fatty foods, especially things like 04:31 peanut butter, chocolate, hot chocolate, candies 04:37 of various kinds which often have shortening of some kind 04:40 in them. 04:41 All sorts of little snack crackers, those should all be 04:45 eliminated, any kind of junk food, anything that comes from 04:48 a vending machine, most things that come from fast food places, 04:52 all of those should be eliminated. 04:54 We should build the menu from the ground up 04:57 so that all the dishes are made from the best foods we can find. 05:02 Now modern dermatologists will sometimes tell you that 05:07 food has nothing to do with acne, that it isn't involved 05:09 with it at all. 05:10 In my experience, I say that these are young men and they 05:14 have not yet had enough experience to know that 05:17 foods are sometimes involved in acne, and a person can 05:21 eliminate a certain aspect of their diet and they are 05:26 much better becoming a full vegan vegetarian 05:31 will go far in eliminating acne in some individuals. 05:36 So I recommend that for people who have acne and it can be 05:40 persons who have acne can sometimes be helped remarkably 05:45 by some changes in diet. 05:47 Also by drinking plenty of water, getting good of exercise 05:51 keeping the extremities warm, all of these things can help 05:55 with acne in some individuals, unfortunately not all of them. 05:59 But they may help, it may not totally eliminate 06:03 and so even if they get some benefit, 06:05 that can be very helpful. 06:07 Another problem that children have now-a-days that they didn't 06:11 used to have is intertrigo. 06:13 Intertrigo is a rash where two skin surfaces fit together, 06:19 so between the folds of the buttocks, under the breasts, 06:24 in any place where there are two... under the arms 06:28 where two skin surfaces maybe in close apposition 06:33 to each other. 06:35 In these instances you may have an intertrigo or a rash 06:39 which often has both the sweat as well as some infectious 06:44 agent, it can be a bacterium, it can be fungus involved 06:49 in the intertrigo. 06:50 The important thing is if the person is over weight 06:54 to have the person loose weight and to keep those surfaces 06:58 separated by some kind of fabric or garment that can be 07:04 worn that holds the surfaces apart, and that can be very 07:08 helpful for that. 07:09 One may also need to use an anti fungus remedy 07:13 such as vinegar, plain vinegar may be all that is required 07:17 if the surface is raw. 07:18 I don't have to tell you that the patient won't want you to 07:21 use vinegar and so you should not, unless you dilute it 07:25 really quite a lot such as one tablespoon in a quart 07:30 of water, then you can acidify the skin and that also helps 07:34 quite a lot. 07:36 Now these problems with teens are on the minor side 07:40 but they can be very irritating and annoying, but there is 07:44 another one teens are now involved in, they didn't used to 07:48 be involved in, and that is osteoporosis. 07:50 I have here Dr. Don Miller who is going to talk with us 07:54 about the subject of osteoporosis, 07:56 especially in young people. 07:58 Do you know that I used to play the piano? 08:00 No, I didn't! 08:01 Well, I took the lessons, and Dr. Thrash has mentioned how 08:04 it's usually the child who doesn't really stay with it... 08:08 I played that Pompa Haydenstead and Gone so many times my family 08:12 says quit playing the piano. 08:13 But she mentioned something interesting, 08:16 that her children would rather be outside playing or 08:19 doing other things, or reading. Those are good things too. 08:22 We have a major problem going on today. 08:25 A few years ago I was flying back from Germany, 08:27 and I was reading one of the airline magazines, 08:30 there was a wonderful article, the title was Sick Kids. 08:34 It said that children today have almost all the diseases 08:38 of older people, and osteoporosis was the first thing 08:41 they talked about. 08:42 It mentioned a number of things, basically three main things 08:47 that's causing the osteoporosis today. 08:49 The first thing that they mentioned, 08:51 and you are going to see this in the literature a lot 08:53 is the over use of soft drinks. 08:55 Now they will go on to say it's replacing milk in the diet. 08:59 That's not the problem, it's just the soft drinks themselves, 09:03 high in phosphoric acid, which causes... matter of fact 09:05 I think that's why they call them soft drinks. 09:07 It causes the bones to loose calcium, making them soft 09:11 and making them brittle, causing their bones to become 09:13 osteoporotic at very young ages. 09:16 So it is lots of colas, whatever the sodas are, 09:21 the children need to get off of the sodas and start drinking 09:24 more decent things like water. 09:26 Water is the best thing in the world that they can drink. 09:29 The second thing is, the junk foods that we have. 09:32 Junk foods are going to be high, almost always in sodium. 09:35 Sodium also, when it's high in the body, causes calcium 09:39 to fall, children need to get away from the high sodium foods. 09:43 Also when they eat a lot of meat products, high in protein, 09:47 when the protein goes up, the calcium goes down. 09:50 And now we are into this protein craze... 09:53 It seems in this country for people who are overweight 09:56 and children are becoming major problems with obesity. 10:01 So we want to get away from the junk foods and 10:04 the high protein foods, get away from the soft drinks, 10:07 and the third thing quite simply get them off the couch 10:11 and out the door, doing something more active. 10:13 We are finding that we are growing a generation, 10:15 maybe even for the last couple of generations, 10:18 that's fixed to the TV, which is fixed to the monitor 10:22 of the computer, which is fixed to the video games, 10:25 and children are no longer getting the exercise that 10:27 they used to get. 10:28 I remember when I was a child, no one stayed in the house 10:32 on a nice day. 10:33 Even when it was a bad day you did not want to stay in 10:36 the house, you are outside playing, whatever it was that 10:39 you were going to play but we were always in the streets. 10:41 Of course back then the streets were a little bit safer, 10:43 and I know that parents are in between a rock and a hard place 10:46 today. 10:47 Send them outside the door, it's no more safer in there 10:50 than maybe it is in front of your television, but find 10:52 a safe place and find some type of activity a child can get 10:57 involved in and this scourge of today's society of 11:03 childhood osteoporosis... 11:05 The last thing the author of this article said in this 11:07 magazine is, parents, your children are just little yous, 11:13 and his recommendation was, clean up your act, 11:16 your children are going to see you, they can do 11:18 exactly what you do. 11:19 Get your life together, show your children a good example 11:25 of health and of a healthy lifestyle, and your children 11:28 will try to emulate that pattern. 11:30 I remember one time I was sitting there at the table 11:33 when I was just a little boy, and my father was eating, 11:35 I wanted to be just like my dad, so every time he put 11:38 that spoon to his mouth, I put the spoon to my mouth 11:41 I was amazed to find out that I finished my bowl of soup 11:44 the same time he finished his bowl of soup. 11:46 Children will look at their parents and try to emulate them, 11:50 give them something to emulate, very few parents today 11:53 Dr. Thrash do that. 11:54 Yes, that is a major problem that the parents do not make 11:58 proper role models. 12:00 Another way that parents need to supervise the work of their 12:05 children is in the way that they brush the teeth. 12:08 They need to teach their child exactly how to brush the teeth, 12:13 and the proper way is with the tooth brush they do a 12:16 jiggling motion at about a 45 degree angle with the teeth. 12:21 so at the gum line, the brushing is done at that area. 12:27 Then some brushing down in this way so that almost 12:31 individual teeth are brushed, that can be very helpful 12:34 as well to remove food particles from between 12:37 the teeth. 12:38 Carious teeth are a serious problem with children 12:42 and as a child grows older, the carious teeth that they 12:46 develop in early childhood can become a thing that 12:51 shortens their life, or makes them more susceptible to 12:54 other kinds of diseases including such things as 12:57 heart disease and strokes. 12:59 The strength of the teeth is an important thing. 13:02 Flossing should never be overlooked once a child is 13:06 old enough and has permanent teeth, they should be taught 13:10 how to take off a piece of dental floss, maybe about 13:14 a foot long, wrap it around the fingers and learn how to 13:19 tease it between the teeth and remove everything that is 13:23 between the teeth, including the plaque that builds up 13:26 between meals and overnight. 13:28 So the floss should actually be rubbed against both tooth 13:33 surfaces in between the teeth, so it is rubbed against this 13:37 tooth and it is rubbed against this tooth to remove the plaque 13:40 that might be building up there. 13:42 Dried fruits are very important as a caries promoter, 13:50 so dried fruit should always be followed by brushing and 13:55 flossing. Dried fruit can be used for a meal 13:59 and two or three times a day should both floss and brush. 14:05 Especially important is that the third meal, if there is a 14:09 third meal of the day, that meal be brushed and flossed 14:14 after so that there will not be a build up overnight 14:17 of acids inside the mouth. 14:20 Now an appeal for a two meal plan for children, most children 14:25 in today's world need only two meals a day, 14:28 that's at beginning about the age of two or three. 14:32 You can train the child to a two meal plan that instantly 14:37 diminishes the risk of getting cavities. 14:40 The more times a day that a person eats, the greater the 14:43 risk of getting cavities. 14:45 This can be minimized by flossing and brushing 14:49 that a person can do. 14:51 It's an important thing for us to know that our children 14:58 today are very much overweight, parents in fact they control 15:05 the weight of the child, and they should be assertive 15:10 in this area and make certain that their children are not 15:13 overweight, so I've asked Dr. Miller to talk with you 15:16 about this problem in teens and children. 15:19 I remember when I was in grade school there was 15:21 a very fleeting instance of an overweight child 15:26 and they were always the brunt of all of the jokes and they are 15:31 always on the low side of the pecking order, which was really 15:34 unfortunate things for the poor children. 15:36 Things haven't changed as much as being on the lower end 15:40 of the pecking order, but it certainly has changed in 15:43 how many people fall into that category now in our schools. 15:46 Young people are plagued today, it is a pandemic, of basically 15:51 a problem with the western world of obesity in children. 15:54 Of course that opens the door to many many other problems 15:58 and they are going to come down the line. 15:59 What causes obesity in children, well, it basically takes it's 16:03 very beginning in infancy, the way a child is fed. 16:07 It seems like mothers now are going more and more away from 16:11 breast feeding and going into putting them on to the formulas 16:15 and the formulas are often based on some animal products 16:19 in there which is going to accelerate the growth 16:20 and as the child grows more they are weaned on to more 16:24 animal products, which are all basically made. 16:27 You think back in the 1950's the average cow was producing 16:32 about 12 quarts of milk per day, now it's up to around 16:35 23 or 24 quarts a day. 16:38 There is something that has changed drastically, 16:40 in the 50's the 12 quart of milk cow was one of the champion 16:45 cows, it was more like 8 to 9 quarts. 16:47 All of these growth hormones are passing into the child 16:52 causing them to get more weight, also the junk foods of today, 16:57 they are empty calories, they have a lot of calories, 17:00 they are going to go straight to the wrong places of the body, 17:03 we need to get away from there. 17:04 But another one of the main problems is the way they spend 17:08 their lives, they spend their lives in front of monitors 17:12 basically television and computer monitors. 17:14 They have found that children who watch television have a 17:19 slower metabolism, than a child who is sort of sitting down 17:23 doing nothing else besides watching television. 17:26 Metabolism gets very slow, which means that you are going to 17:29 start getting very large. 17:31 I've often been asked this question after I've said 17:35 something like this, well do you mean watching 3ABN 17:38 is not good for my child? 17:40 I want you to do a little experiment, watch this program 17:44 and mark on a piece of paper for the time that you are 17:48 watching this half hour, how many times the scene changes, 17:52 then the next time that you are in a department store that 17:55 has one of those big banks of televisions, 17:58 I want you to stand back so you aren't infected by 18:01 what they are showing, and mark down, have a stop watch 18:05 or a watch with a second hand, and see how many times the scene 18:09 changes in even one minute. 18:11 You are going to find the scene changes many many times 18:15 sometimes every three to four seconds you have a different 18:17 scene, a different shot, a different camera, 18:19 a different whole situation, and when this happens 18:22 the mind finally gets to the point where it says, 18:24 we are out of here, it goes into a sort of delta wave 18:29 pattern, you are not processing the information which sometimes 18:34 is good, but the bad part of it is, if you are seeing it 18:37 it is going somewhere in this head. 18:39 When you watch your television like this, it slows down your 18:43 process and you start getting a larger frame, but also 18:47 as you are watching these programs they are advertising 18:50 things that are made to promote obesity. 18:53 They are not going to say eat these things and it is going to 18:55 make you fat, no that's not what they are saying, 18:57 but they are going to make you fat, they are going to be high 18:59 in fat, high in sugar, high in sodium, high is whatever it is 19:04 that causes our bodies to grow larger. 19:07 So we need to stay away from those types of things that 19:09 causes a child... I've been in grocery stores 19:11 and you see the mother pushing the child through the isles 19:15 and pretty soon they come to a certain product that 19:17 apparently that child saw on cartoons just this morning, 19:20 I WANT THAT, and they will throw a tantrum until the mother 19:23 puts two boxes of it into the cart, and the child is now 19:27 satisfied. 19:28 The trouble is that very food is going to cause them to be 19:32 obese, which is going to make them handicapped in many ways 19:37 for the rest of their lives, both psychologically, 19:40 emotionally, socially, physically, every way that 19:45 you can think of. 19:46 Obesity is not a good thing, now if you are trying to go 19:49 assume a wrestler, go right ahead, but I would suggest 19:52 that we do not turn our children into Sumo wrestlers in their 19:56 infancy and in their childhood and in their teen years, 19:58 you are just short changing them in their lives, 20:01 so get them out exercising, get them on good food 20:04 and we might eliminate this problem. 20:06 It would certainly go far toward helping with that. 20:09 While I have not seen a child have a heart attack, I have seen 20:15 children with hardening of the arteries at a very early age. 20:20 We used to say that hardening of the arteries was a problem 20:23 with advanced old age, but now we are seeing it in children. 20:29 In fact, even in World War II there was not an autopsy done 20:34 on an American soldier that didn't show rather advanced 20:38 hardening of the arteries, reports are rather stunning 20:42 in this regard. 20:44 We want to do what we can to keep our children from getting 20:48 heart disease later in life. 20:49 We are seeing heart attacks earlier and earlier, 20:54 and the more the person weighs, the greater the chance is that 20:57 they will get both the heart attack and a stroke, 21:00 so we are combating that by combating the wrong habits 21:05 in childhood. 21:06 Make certain that your child's cholesterol is not high, 21:09 that the triglycerides are not high, blood sugar is not high, 21:13 and that their homocysteine level is not high, they can get 21:17 high homocysteine even very early in life. 21:23 There also may be some other markers of potential problems 21:27 in the future, Fibrinogen may be high, C-reactive protein 21:32 may be high, these are all laboratory tests, 21:35 one can easily obtain these from ordinary clinical 21:41 laboratories, such as in a hospital, or one of the 21:44 stand alone laboratories that are very freely available 21:48 now-a-days. 21:50 Now along with these dietary problems and physical problems 21:55 comes some mental problems such as depression. 21:58 Depression is childhood is becoming far more common, 22:01 even in infancy, and I would like Dr. Miller to talk with us 22:05 a little bit about the subject of Depression in Childhood. 22:08 I mentioned a little bit ago about this article I read 22:11 in this magazine in the airline flying out of Germany. 22:14 One of the thing that he mentioned was depression, 22:17 and he said something so startling in this article 22:20 he said that children today... your average child out there 22:23 in the homes has more anxiety than a child who is a 22:27 psychiatric patient in the 1950's, 22:30 there is something gone wrong with our society. 22:33 I read an interesting book a few years ago and it's... 22:36 Forgive the subject, or the title, it's called On Killing, 22:40 basically it was a book on the subject of killing, 22:43 not murder, but basically the mindset of the 22:48 military man going to the Revolutionary War up to Vietnam. 22:53 I would say that now it goes beyond Vietnam to the 22:55 other wars that have come since then, and basically 22:59 what they found out is back in the Revolutionary War, 23:02 the war of 1812, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, 23:07 even Korean War, that only about 10% of the soldiers 23:11 in combat actually aimed their gun with the intent to take 23:14 a man's life, because there is something in a human body 23:19 that says this isn't what I want to be doing right now. 23:22 They found in Vietnam it was reversed 90% did. 23:26 What made the difference in all these years? 23:29 There is one instance in this book, it talked about a 23:33 Civil War Confederate soldier who was at the 23:37 Battle of Gettysburg. 23:39 As he was marching through that field, across that 23:42 long field, up to that wall, they said that upon his death, 23:47 because he was killed in this battle, they checked his weapon 23:50 and they found 26 loads in his weapon. 23:54 That means that he would walk a ways, stop and ram another 23:57 one down there, walk a ways, stop, ram another one, 24:00 he never fired his gun one time. 24:03 Something has changed, we feel like the depression we have 24:08 right now is because we have changed in our whole society. 24:12 We have things called situational ethics today, 24:15 it depends on the situation, how you are going to respond 24:18 to something. 24:19 We find that most teenagers feel like sometimes lying 24:25 is necessary, it depends on the situation, they find that 24:29 suicide is a viable option for their problems. 24:33 There are these things creeping into the society today, 24:36 and I believe it's the society at fault because we are giving 24:39 them false messages. 24:41 They are watching lifestyles on television which are totally 24:45 aberrant, totally foreign to the human organism, 24:49 you see, there is something inside this body that says 24:52 do this, do this right, but they receive these mixed signals. 24:55 A number of years ago when I was in the Marine Corp we 24:59 had a video monitor rolled into our office because they 25:04 had made an advertisement for the Marine Corp, and we wanted 25:08 to watch it to see how it was because I was in Public Affairs, 25:11 it was in the middle of the day, and you know what is on in the 25:14 middle of the day on anything besides 3ABN, it's Soap Operas. 25:18 They filmed this thing... so they put the video into the 25:23 machine, and we watched, of course we got a big section of 25:27 Soap Opera before the add came on because they didn't 25:29 know exactly when it was going to come on, so we sat there, 25:32 it was about 5 minutes worth of Soap Opera before it came on. 25:36 What I saw in that 5 minutes did not leave me for months 25:41 afterwards, there was one bad situation after another 25:44 bad situation, and it made me depressed just to watch it. 25:48 We find that the atmosphere of society that the person is 25:53 growing up in today is depressing. 25:55 Food is depressing, the lifestyle is depressing, 25:58 the fact that there is just no ambition, no drive to get on, 26:02 there is nothing better. 26:03 We are finding today that God has been taken out of the 26:06 schools, out of the homes, out of everywhere, 26:08 and when you are in that situation you cannot help 26:12 but be depressed, so what we need to do is get children back 26:16 in to knowing that there is someone out there that 26:18 really does care. 26:19 We've got to many broken homes, I'm from a broken home, 26:21 broken homes cause a child to loose their bearings, 26:25 and if they have no place else to turn to, 26:27 they are going to turn to things, and we have been seeing 26:29 a lot in the press in the last months about what's happening 26:33 with the anti-depressive drugs for children. 26:36 They are leading them to suicide, which they already 26:39 feel as a viable option Dr. Thrash, 26:41 depression is a major problem with children today. 26:44 Yes it is, and one good thing that we know that can help 26:47 depression is exercise. 26:49 If a person gets out in the sunshine and exercises 26:53 vigorously, that goes far toward taking away the depression, 26:58 and if a person eats a very simple diet, that goes far 27:02 toward taking away the depression. 27:04 If the relationship between the parents and the child 27:08 is a very good one, that also goes far toward helping a person 27:12 to get rid of a depression. 27:14 Now parents sometimes feel that they have no control 27:19 over these matters, but often it is because they 27:23 don't really try. 27:24 I you will make an attempt to get close to your child, 27:29 to have your child to love you, and that you obviously love them 27:34 and that what you are doing for them, the council that you 27:37 give them is for their good, they will often be very 27:41 cooperative with any kind of suggestion that you give. 27:46 If your child loves you, they will usually want to do 27:49 what you want them to do. 27:51 I hope that some of these suggestions will find a good 27:54 lodging for you, and it will help you with your child. |
Revised 2014-12-17