Unplug During Screen-Free Week


T


he American Academy of Pediatrics recommends zero screen time for children under 2 and less than two hours per day for older children. Yet, the Kaiser Fam-


ily Foundation reports that 40 percent of 3-month-old infants are regular viewers of television and DVDs, and school-age kids spend nearly twice as many hours with screen media such as television, video games, computers and handheld devices as they spend attending school. To help kids, families, schools and communities turn off screens and turn on healthier activities, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) urges everyone to participate in Screen-Free Week, April 30 through May 6.


CCFC is a national coalition of health care professionals, educators,


advocacy groups, parents and individuals, with a mission to reclaim childhood from corporate marketers. “The commercialization of childhood is the link between many of the most serious prob- lems facing children and society today,” advises CCFC Director Susan Linn. “Childhood obesity, eating dis- orders, youth violence, sexualization, family stress, underage alcohol and tobacco use, rampant materialism and the erosion of children’s cre- ative play are all exacerbated by advertis- ing and marketing.” Learn more about the week- long event, efforts to restrict mar- keters’ access to children and how to help, at CommercialFreeChildhood.org.


Recipe for Strong Bones


M


ost Ameri- cans get


more than enough of the calcium they need from food, so taking a supplement can be unnecessary and even danger- ous. What many are not getting are


the essential nutrients and other miner- als that help calcium in its mission to help build strong bones. The lifecycle of bones is not dissimilar to those of other types of cells, except that our ability to rebuild strong bones, called bone remodeling, can diminish with age, resulting in bone loss (known as osteopenia) or osteoporosis. Collagen is the best known


GREEN VEGGIES BOOST IMMUNITY R


esearchers reporting in the journal Cell have found another good reason to fill our plates with plenty of green vegetables like bok choy and broccoli: Tiny


chemical compounds found in these healthful greens interact with the immune cells of the gut, known as intraepithelial lymphocytes (IEL), by effectively protect- ing them and boosting their numbers. IELs, white blood cells that inhabit the lining of many body cavities and structures, are concentrated in the gastrointestinal tract, where their primary purpose is to destroy target cells that are in- fected by pathogens. Because pathogens frequently enter the body via the gastrointestinal tract, a high IEL count benefits overall health.


Source: Babraham Institute, Cambridge, UK


building block for healthy bones, and to build collagen, we need: vitamins C, D and K plus folic acid, magne- sium, potassium, iron, zinc, boron, manganese, phosphorus, copper and strontium. Further, we need them all in correct proportion to optimize their effectiveness without overload- ing the system with excess nutrients, which can cause damage. Data culled from 12,000 participants in the 15-year Women’s Health Initia- tive launched in 1991 and recently re-analyzed at the University of Auckland, in New Zealand, for example, shows that excess calcium can actually cause heart disease and increase the risk of heart attacks. The solution for maintaining strong bones is to look for a high quality supplement that contains all of the aforementioned ingredients with little or no calcium content.


For more information, call 888-465- 4404 or visit NaturesRiteRemedies. com. See ad, page 35.


natural awakenings April 2012 17


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48