**I am reposting this from last October because of the FDA finally taking a look at the dangers of BPA {Bisphenol A}. BPA is a chemical in certain types of hard plastics. It is especially common in baby bottles. Please read this post & send to your friends! xoxo, Alli**
I recently read a wonderful book by family physician, research psychologist, and best selling author Dr. Leonard Sax. His new book, Boys Adrift, answered many of the questions that many mothers of boys have. The most important one being, why in the world do today's boys and young men seem so unmotivated and uninterested in school? How could thing have changed so much in one generation? Why is this not happening in other western nations?
endocrine disruptors because our bodies read them as a hormone- ESTROGEN! Imagine if we purposely gave our sons excess estrogen? Dr. Sax said, "There is really a huge and rapidly-growing body of evidence now linking these endocrine disruptors, these environmental estrogens, to many of the phenomena I describe in the book: boys being less motivated, young men having more problems with erectile dysfunction, boys breaking their bones more easily than boys did a generation ago, and so forth." He also said that he prescribes more Viagra for men under 30 than he does for men over 40.
Dr. Sax identifies five factors that work together to put young boys at risk-
1. Changes in education over the past three decades. How has kindergarten changed? Thirty years ago, kindergarten was primarily about socialization. Typical activities then would have included finger-painting, singing in rounds, playing duck-duck-goose, etc. Not any more. Today, kindergarten is first and foremost about teaching literacy and learning basic arithmetic. In 2007, the kindergarten curriculum at most American schools, both public and private, looks very much like the first-grade curriculum of 1977. Nowadays, it’s all about learning to read and write. I have yet to find any replicable studies that prove early forced learning has any long-term benefit at all.
It’s a bad thing because girls’ and boys’ brains develop differently, and for many boys, it’s simply not developmentally appropriate to ask them to learn to read at age five. A distinguished team of 15 neuroscientists, based primarily at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, MD, recently published a remarkable account of the development of the human brain (see “Recommended Reading”). Since the early 1990s, these investigators have been doing MRI scans on young children’s brains. The team’s July 2007 report was its most definitive account yet. Among the most striking findings were the differences in the developmental trajectories of girls and boys. These researchers have found that the various regions of the brain develop in a different sequence and tempo in girls compared with boys.
It now appears that the brain’s language centers in many five-year-old boys look like the language centers in the brains of the average three-and-a-half-year-old girl. Have you ever tried to teach a three-year-old girl to read? It’s frustrating, both for the teacher and the child. It’s simply not developmentally appropriate, to use the jargon of early childhood educators. You’re asking a young girl to do something that her brain is just not yet ready to do.
Trying to teach many five-year-old boys to read and write may be just as inappropriate. These boys aren’t dumb, any more than three-year-old girls are dumb. Timing is everything—in education as in many other fields. It’s not enough to teach well. You have to do the right thing at the right time. Asking five-year-old boys to learn to read—when they’d rather be running around or playing games—may be the worst possible introduction to school, at least for some boys.
2. Video games. Recent scholarly work demonstrates clearly that some of the most popular video games are distracting boys from real-world pursuits. Many boys spend up to 5 hours a day (school-days) playing these supa-fab realistic games on plasma TVs. Of course, real life gets boring.
3. Medications for ADHD. Medications such as Adderall, Ritalin, Concerta, and Metadate, which are over prescribed, may be causing irreversible damage to the motivational centers of boys’ brains.
4. Endocrine disruptors. Environmental estrogens from plastic bottles and other sources may be throwing boys’ endocrine systems out of whack. Here is a quick intro. to the wonderful world of endocrine disruptors.
5. Devaluation of masculinity. Shifts in popular culture have transformed the role models of manhood. Forty years ago, we had Father Knows Best; today we have The Simpsons. Have y'all noticed that every commercial and sit-com shows the father as a big doofus, and mom being the all-knowing boss? This is especially true for those "kiddie cartoons" on the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon. Every kid is a smartypants genius and the parents are all idiots. I don't allow any of these shows, except Hannah Montana. That one is OK. Sorry, off on a tangent.....Where's my Ritalin? Just kidding!
Any mother of a son over 10 can tell many stories of boys, her own or not, who seem absolutely hostile to school, obsessed with his video games, and lacks a strong connection with an adult male role- models (Father, Coach, etc...) Many times, these boys are put on ADD "academic steroids" medication and a general listlessness takes over. It is this sort of 'common sense observations' which made the book resonate with me.
Here are a few quick facts-
- The United States has about 5% of the world's population but consumes about 90% of the total global production of ADHD medications such as Adderall, Ritalin, Concerta, and Metadate. (Please see chapter 4 of Boys Adrift for more facts and figures about the overdiagnosis and over-prescribing of medications for ADHD in the United States.)
- In some suburban schools, more than half of the boys are being treated with medications for ADHD."Boys in 2007 are thirty times more likely to be taking these medications compared with boys in 1987," Sax writes. He notes the distressing new research indicating that even low doses of these drugs permanently alter the nucleus accumbens, an area of the brain associated with motivation.
- Certain types of plastics (BPa) leach chemicals into our food and water. There actually are a number of studies which show that substances found in common plastics can act as estrogens in animals and can even decrease those animal's testosterone levels and sperm production. The estrogens effect the male brain differently, by attacking the brain centers that affect motivation. In females, this brain center is not effected. Excess estrogen cause early onset puberty. It's not the hormones in meat, peoples, it's estrogen mimic chemicals that leach out of PBa plastics!
- This increase in estrogen in women not only causes early onset puberty, but puts women at an increased risk of developing breast cancer.
- Over the last 20 years during which we've seen an acceleration and intensification of the early elementary curriculum, there has been an explosion in the number of kids, especially boys, being diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder. Hmmmm!
- He points out that Finland, which doesn't start education until age 7, has some of the highest test scores in the world.
- In public schools, not so much in the elite private schools, recess has been cut back. There's less music, less art, less physical education, and more reading drills, writing drills, and arithmetic exercises. (This is often done in an ill-advised way to ensure more federal funding.) When you turn elementary school into year-round test-prep, you will see test scores rise. But that improvement comes at a price. Some students, especially boys, tune out. They lose interest. They no longer read for fun. (See chapter 2 of Boys Adrift for documentation of the lower propensity of boys to read for fun today compared with 1980.)
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Because I aim to please......
My Dr. Oz post
Pass on the Plastic from Blissfully Domestic
The Boys Adrift Website
A wonderful podcast interview with Dr. Sax complete with Q&A call-ins!
A Washington Post Op-Ed by Dr. Sax
National Review interview with Dr. Sax
Read this about what endocrine disruptors do to your body.
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Alarmed about plastics? Join the club....
As a quick rule of thumb- Look at the recycling codes on the bottom of all your plastics. The code inside the three recycling arrows are important.
Here is what I know about what brands (sippy cups/bottles) use the type of plastic that leaches PBa's-
Unsafe plastics-
#3- PVC
#6-PS
#7-Polycarbonate {the jury is still out on this one}
Look for-
#1-PETE
#2-HDPE
#4-LDPE
#5-PP
BPA is in the canned food liners and plastic utensils. Be careful.
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Love to you all,
Alli
