Tag Archives: This
This Is Your Kid’s Brain Without Sleep
You know your child needs sleep. But do you know why?
It’s not just that overtired kids are cranky. Not getting enough sleep can hurt their health and ability to make good choices.
How much sleep should your kids get?
You may be surprised by how much they need.
- Toddlers: 12-14 hours
- Preschoolers: 11-13 hours
- School-age kids: 10-11 hours
- Tweens and teens: 8.5-9.25 hours
How Poor Sleep Affects Your Child
Your body uses sleep as a time to repair itself. Even half an hour less each night can derail that process. The effects of not getting enough sleep include:
Weight gain. Lack of sleep can make kids hungrier and drawn to high-calorie foods. When you’re tired, your body makes more of the hormone that makes you hungry, increasing your appetite. And when you’re tired, it makes less of the hormone that tells you you’re full. So not only do you feel hungrier but you may eat more than usual before you realize that you’re full. Plus, lack of sleep also affects your metabolism. Not getting enough sleep raises the risk of diabetes and unhealthy weight gain in kids and adults.
Bad moods. “Kids who don’t get enough sleep have trouble regulating their emotions,” says Jodi A. Mindell, PhD, associate director of the Sleep Disorders Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and author of Sleeping Through the Night. Some of the surliness we associate with teenagers just being teens may actually be because they aren’t getting enough sleep, she says. Overtime, not getting enough sleep can increase risk of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse in teens.
Trouble in school. Sleep is essential for building memory. Without enough, your kids may not recall what they’ve learned, Mindell says.
Accidents. Tired kids are prone to accidents, including sports injuries. More than half of all teen drivers drove drowsy in the past year — and drowsy-driving accidents are most common in people under age 25, Mindell says.
Bad judgment. “Kids who are overtired make worse decisions,” Mindell says. That’s not just a problem during SATs. They may be more likely to post an inappropriate picture on Facebook or get in a car with a kid who’s been drinking.
How to Help Kids Get Enough Sleep
Take bedtime seriously. Set a firm bedtime and stick to it. Don’t let your kids get jobs or take part in after-school activities that keep them out too late. Build your weekly schedules around having enough time for sleep.
Keep gadgets out of the bedroom. That means no TV — and no laptops, phones, or tablets either.
“Have a rule that all gadgets stay plugged in on the kitchen counter at night,” Mindell says. “That goes for the parents too, not just the kids.”
With Testimony Like This – Will Illinois Ever Get Medical Marijuana?
Not all is well in the “Land of Lincoln.”
The Illinois Senate Executive Committee fired up its first round of testimony for their MMJ Bill, HB-1. The intent of House Bill 1 is to legalize the use of medical marijuana for Illinois sick and suffering. While the forward looking bill easily gained acceptance in the House, not everyone felt warm and fuzzy about the idea of medical marijuana.
No doubt, MMJ has its fair share of supporters in the Illinois House of Representatives. But the open and unanswered question remains… with doctors and politicians willing to skew their data towards their speciality, like fear or fighting addictions – who are these lawmakers listing to – then regurgitating as fact?
Let’s listen and find out…
Hawaii decriminalization bill dead for this year
Despite overwhelming public support in favor of the decriminalization of cannabis, Hawaii’s SB472, which would have decriminalized small amounts marijuana in that state, was pronounced dead on arrival yesterday without even being granted a roll call for a vote.
Among the most blue of blue states in the nation, and enjoying Democratic Party-held Senate and House chambers as well as the Governor’s seat, Hawaii seemed poised to follow in the footsteps of 15 other U.S. states that have done away with arrests and jail time for low-level marijuana possession busts, opting to issue nominal fines instead.
SB472, in its latest and ultimately fatal iteration, would have written into state law that anyone over the age of 18 who was caught with under 20 grams of pot would be subject to a $ 100 fine, and avoid any jail time or criminal record. The proceeds of the fines would go into the state’s General Fund, which would be a drop in the bucket compared to what the state could potentially save in prosecution costs.
Sensing a stalemate, proponents of decriminalization even floated the idea of lowering the allowable amount of marijuana carried from 20 grams down to a mere 7 grams, but apparently even that was not enough to sway lawmakers. Instead, the democrats in the Hawaii State Legislature refused to even call a vote on a bill that many of them had previously signed their own name to, citing a lack of support among their colleagues in the House.
Yet, as was pointed out by local cannabis rights advocacy group Fresh Approach Hawaii, 75 percent of voters on all islands polled said that if their state legislator voted in favor of the decriminalization of marijuana, that such a vote would either have no impact on their view of the legislator, or make them more likely to vote for that legislator in the future.
Ignoring poll after poll showing ever-increasing voter support for decriminalization and full recreational legalization similar to what Colorado and Washington achieved last year, legislators instead caved to the same tired arguments from local law enforcement — the bill’s main opponent. They of course leaned heavily on the “It’s still Federally illegal” argument, with a dash of “What about the kids?”, failing to mention that a 2012 study done by the University of Hawaii showed that the prosecution of low-level marijuana possession cases costs the state just under $ 33,000 per day and $ 12 million annually.
All but lost in the scramble by Hawaiian Democrats to put their names on legislation they have no intention of ever voting on, is the comedic punch line of SB472 which says, even if passed in its entirety, the law would not take effect until July 1st, 2050. Pass me whatever they’re smoking!
Unlike Colorado or Washington, the Hawaii state constitution has no provision for a statewide referendum, instead jamming such matters through the sausage-grinder that is the state legislature. The overall effect of this form of government is that the undeniable will of the people is easily denied by two-faced politicians who are unwilling to take a stand on anything that may raise a tough question from the media, a primary challenger in an election year, or the scorn of a deep-pocketed lobbyist.
They think that this allows them to propose progressive legislation to prop up their liberal street cred, then shoot those bills down through backroom handshakes and insider deals to avoid ever going on the voting record in favor of them. When it dies they point to the other guy. But in Hawaii, they only have themselves to blame.
The bill can be reintroduced in the next legislative session, in 2014, but will need to start over and work its way back through the same Senate and House where it stalled this week. In the meantime, an adult caught with a pipeful of pakalolo can still face a $ 1000 fine, 30 days in jail, and the potential hardship and humiliation attached to each.
More links from around the web!
Give This Plant its Due: Legalize Hemp
As states of a more liberal bent battle the federal government over the legalization of medical and even recreational marijuana, another cannabis battle has reemerged in the farm states. But if pot smoking raises troubling moral and safety questions, industrial hemp does not.
Activists have been struggling to legalize hemp for decades in the U.S., but only recently has the issue seemingly caught fire in Congress. Last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell signed on to legislation that had for years been championed by Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the former GOP presidential contender, and has now been taken up by his son Rand, the Republican senator from Kentucky. It would remove hemp from the federal government’s list of Schedule 1 controlled substances and make it legal to cultivate the plant.
What’s so hep about hemp? Supporters tout it as a wonder fiber with dozens of potential uses that would find a lucrative market in the U.S. But while that may be an exaggeration — hemp is unlikely to become anything more than a specialty crop for a few hundred growers supplying goods to high-end food markets and low-end textile producers — there’s no denying that it’s a highly useful weed. The global market for hemp consists of some 25,000 products, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service, including fabric, paper, rope, auto parts and home furnishings. Hemp seed, meanwhile, is an alternative protein source used in a variety of food and beverages, and can be pressed to make body oils, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.
Despite all this, it is illegal to grow hemp anywhere in the U.S. without permission from the Drug Enforcement Administration. There are currently no active federal licenses, so all hemp products produced here are made from imported material.
Based on its classification under the Controlled Substances Act, one might suspect that hemp provides a cheap high for pot fiends, but one would have to smoke an absurd amount of rope to catch a hemp buzz. The plant seems to have been deemed guilty by association with marijuana because both come from the same species, Cannabis sativa. But just as some mushrooms are magical while others are only good in a salad, not all varieties of cannabis are the same. The intoxicating chemical in marijuana, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), is heavily concentrated in the marijuana plant: anywhere from 10% to 30%. The THC content of hemp, by contrast, is less than 1%, and in the varieties legally cultivated in the European Union and Canada must be less than 0.3%.
Historically, hemp was an important crop in the U.S. before it was caught up in an anti-marijuana crusade in the 1930s. When the Controlled Substances Act was approved in 1970, it took the definition of marijuana from the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, which considered all varieties of Cannabis sativa to be dangerous and narcotic. Despite court challenges, the DEA continues to insist that any plant containing THC, no matter how little, must be tightly controlled.
Legalization opponents, including the California Narcotics Officers Assn., argue that legalizing hemp would complicate the enforcement of laws against cultivating marijuana because the plants are almost indistinguishable from each other; marijuana growers, in other words, could easily conceal their plants in hemp fields. The association opposed a 2011 state bill to create pilot programs for hemp cultivation, which was approved by the Legislature but vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown because hemp production violates federal law.
Of course, few sensible growers of marijuana would raise their plants in a hemp field. The two varieties would cross-pollinate, severely lowering the pot’s THC content and rendering it all but useless medicinally or as a recreational drug.
Reasonable people can disagree about whether marijuana should be legalized. But the dangers of growing industrial hemp are next to nonexistent. To date, nine states have approved its cultivation, but none has any active fields because of a refusal by the DEA to grant growing permits.
Enough. Hemp is a rare issue that Republicans and Democrats, and members of Congress from both rural and urban states, ought to be able to agree on. Legalize it.
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Published: February 25, 2013
Copyright: 2013 Los Angeles Times
Contact: letters@latimes.com
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Cannabis News – Medical Marijuana, Hemp, Marijuana News, Cannabis
