It’s crunch time for decorating, buying, wrapping and baking for the next week 
but nothing says BAH HUMBUG like someone in the family getting sick. Check out my tips to stop sickness from being the scrooge at your holiday.
Dr. Deb’s Healthy Holiday Tips
Every parent dreads that 4-letter word, LICE. Still, 25% of children will get lice each year making it the most common communicable childhood disease after colds. I had dodged the bullet for 11 years of schooling and became a little blasé when a lice note came home that once again a child was infected in the class. I put my daughter’s hair up about a week until she pleaded, “Please let me wear 
my hair down! Look how beautiful I am?” I succumbed and let her clean long hair billow down for that prepuberty beautiful feeling doesn’t last forever, I rationed. It was not 4 hours later when school called and we had the bugs!
After a million loads of laundry and hours of combing hair, I have learned a few things that I will do differently that I would like to share to hopefully keep my and your house free of the louses, (lice).
Head lice are wingless insects that do not carry disease and are mostly harmless unless you are the parent that has to rid your family of them. They must feed multiple times a day and cannot survive off the head for 48 hours. They actually prefer clean hair so it not true that they only live with dirty people. Lice affect all socioeconomic classes. There is no shame in getting lice. The shame is not treating it completely. More information on lice treatment at can be found at the CDC.
This blog is talking about prevention and I am going a little rogue with some tips without the scientific studies but plenty of parental testimony.
One louse can lay 10 eggs or nits per day and they will hatch in about 7-9 days so it is critical to keep lice prevention measures at least 2-3 weeks after lice are noted in the class.
Dr. Deb’s Lice Prevention Tips
Halloween is almost a week away yet many have already hit the candy. Americans consume about 24 pounds of candy per year with Halloween being the largest confectionery holiday. All that sugar contributes to tooth decay and extra pounds but I have some tips prevent Halloween from sticking to both your teeth and hips.
Dr. Deb’s Healthy Halloween Tips
1. Halloween is One Day
Halloween does not start on Labor Day when the candy hits the aisles.
160,000 kids will stay home from school today, not because they are sick, but because they are afraid of being bullied. One in every four kids gets bullied and it takes a village of support to stop it. Tomorrow is Unity Day where we ask you to wear ORANGE to unite and end bullying.
Bullying is not just the big kid that steals lunch money from the nerd at recess.
Bullies come in all shapes and sizes and may even be your own child. It can be the seemingly sweet petite girl that starts rumors or intentionally leaves someone out. Using friendship as a weapon as in, “I won’t be your friend if you don’t ….,” is a form of bullying. Even a “joke” or “I was just kidding,” is an indirect form of bulling. 
Cyberbully or posting mean things online takes bullying to a new level because you don’t see the reaction of the person that you have hurt.
Parents, students and teachers all have a role to play to unite and prevent bulling.
Dr Deb’s Tips to Prevent Bullying
Better late than Never:
Yes, I am a busy Mom of 4 and sometimes things fall through the cracks. I wrote this blog 1 year ago, 9/28/11, but life got in the way and I never posted it. Too many tags and links are hardly an excuse for such an important topic. While it is a year late and my friend is no longer engaged, the information is still important. So here it is and hopefully after reading it you will never have to answer that question to your daughter.
Cancer Sucks. My friend knows only too well as last year his fiancé was diagnosed with cervical cancer and had to undergo a hysterectomy, chemotherapy and radiation to save her life. She is a smart, beautiful healthy young woman who kept up with her pap smears and exams. She is one of the 12,000 American women who contract cervical cancer despite some of the best screening tools. So you can imagine my fury when uninformed politicians call into question the safety of a vaccine that can save millions of lives worldwide based on hearsay and not medical evidence. This same sort of fear mongering headlines led to the unfounded link of autism and the MMR vaccine. That started with a small study from a doctor who falsified his data. Although the doctor has been stripped of his medical license, mistrust of vaccines lingers so much that 11,000 kindergartners in California were exempted by their parents from vaccines this year. The result is that state has seen a huge resurgence in measles and whooping cough from lack of vaccination. I want to help clarify fact from fiction when it comes to the HPV vaccine.
Does the HPV vaccine cause mental retardation?
There is no scientific evidence that the HPV vaccine causes mental retardation. In fact the HPV vaccine is one of the most studied vaccines with over 35 million injections given since Gardasil was approved in May of 2006. There were 30,000 injections were given in the years prior to the introduction and the vaccine has shown to be safe and effective in preventing the most common causes of cervical cancer and genital warts. Only 0.054% of all the women receiving the injection reported a negative side effect and most of these were common after an injection such as headaches, sore arm and fainting.
What is HPV and how does it cause cancer?
