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pregnancy

Best friends share their 'miracle' of baby BFFs in the making

By Billie Owens

Photos and information from Kaylynn Hopkins:

My two best friends and I are all pregnant literally days apart from each other. It’s such a miracle so we are sharing it on The Batavian.

McKenrick wrote her friends:

"Who wouldn’t want to share their pregnancy with their best friends!? Who would have thought our babies would be due days apart? I loved growing up with you two and I can’t wait for our babies to have that same friendship!"

Predicted due dates: July 28th (Kaylynn Hopkins), July 30th (Anmarie Maher), and July 31st (Danyelle Brinkman).

#bestfriends #futurebesties #family

Study Links Fluoride to Pre-term Birth and Anemia in Pregnancy

By NYS Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation, Inc.

 Fluoride avoidance reduced anemia in pregnant women, decreased pre-term births and enhanced babies birth-weight, concludes leading fluoride expert, AK Susheela and colleagues, in a study published in Current Science (May 2010). http://www.fluorideandfluorosis.com/Anemia/Current%20Science%20Reprint.pdf


Susheela’s team explains that anemia in pregnancy, which can lead to maternal and infant mortality, continues to plague many countries despite nutritional counseling and maternal iron and folic acid supplementation. This is the first examination of fluoride as an additional risk factor for anemia and low-birth-weight babies.

 
Fluoride chemicals are  added to 70% of US public water supplies.

Anemic pregnant women living in India, whose urine contained 1 mg/L fluoride or more, were separated into two groups.  The experimental group avoided
fluoride in water, food and other sources and ate a nutritious diet per instruction.  The control group received no instructions. Both groups supplemented with iron and folic acid.

Results reveal that anemia was reduced and pre-term and low-birth-weight babies were considerably fewer in the fluoride-avoidance group as compared to the control. Two stillbirths occurred in the control group, none in the experimental group.


Susheela et al. writes, "Maternal and child under-nutrition and anemia
is not necessarily due to insufficient food intake but because of
the derangement of nutrient absorption due to damage caused to GI
 (gastrointestinal) mucosa by ingestion of undesired chemical
substances, viz. fluoride through food, water and other sources."

Fluoride avoidance regenerated the intestinal lining which
enhanced the absorption of nutrients as evidenced by the reduction in
urinary fluoride followed by rise in hemoglobin levels, they report.

Could the same thing be happening in the United States? State University of New York researchers found more premature births in fluoridated than non-fluoridated upstate New York communities, according to a presentation made at the 2009 American Public Health Association’s annual meeting.


Previous published research shows fluoride can
interfere with the reproductive system (http://www.fluoridealert.org/health/repro).

 

Susheela writes in the journal Fluoride“Where the use of fluoride has been promoted, women who are pregnant may find our protocol equally beneficial for preventing anemia and ensuring a normal, healthy birth outcome.” 

 

Current Science reports that adverse reactions of fluoride
consumption are known to occur including
reducing red blood cells, reducing blood folic acid
activity, inhibiting vitamin B12 production and the nonabsorption
of nutrients for hemoglobin biosynthesis.


“Citizens must demand that water fluoridation be stopped,” says attorney Paul Beeber, President, New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation, Inc.  “It’s disturbing that public-health officials and organized dentistry continue to ignore the overwhelming evidence revealing fluoride to be non-nutritive, unnecessary and unsafe,” says Beeber.

 

 

Batavia Nurse talks about teenage pregnancy

By Tasia Boland

Although there has been a decrease in teenage pregnancy rates from 1991-2004 new data shows teenage pregnancy is now rising.

Each year almost 750,000 teenage women aged 15-19 become pregnant. Fifty percent or more of teenage pregnancies end in abortion in New York State, according to the National and Statewide statistics.

Stephanie Loranty, nurse at Batavia High School, said last year there were ten students who were pregnant. Four dropped out, one graduated, and five are still continuing on. Currently, two students are pregnant at the high school and one at the middle school.

27 percent of ninth graders in New York are sexually experienced and 17.4 percent are sexually active.  As seniors 62.6 percent are sexually experienced and 49.1 percent are sexually active.

“It’s scary,” said Loranty on the statistics of sexually active teens, “It’s hard because you are around the kids every day and you know their emotional and insecure at times and you know the choices they make can have consequences on their whole life.”

7.1 percent of ninth graders had four or more partners in New York and 20.1 percent of seniors had four or more partners.

Loranty said she feels students do not understand the seriousness of STDs and there are not many educational opportunities for students besides what they learn in their health class.

When asked about how safe sex is promoted or talked about she said it really isn’t, mostly abstinence is.

 Loranty said she wants to see more programs informing students of the risks of unprotected sex, and the importance of abstinence and safe sex, but it is a sensitive topic. She said this is where it gets hard because the line can easily be crossed with parents.

Loranty thinks a way to help teenagers make the right choice would be to start the health class at the freshman level.

She hopes one day the school budget will be able to afford electronic computer babies (mimics all the behaviors of a real life baby), instead of using flour babies.

Loranty nodded her head and sighed as she said, “It is not effective for them at all, and it just teaches them to be responsible for carrying an extra item around.”
Although these electronic babies would be much more effective, they are too costly.

“They are somewhere around $10, 000,” said Loranty.

Teenage pregnancy is also costly, from a press release teen childbearing in
New York cost taxpayers (federal, state, and local) at least $421 million in 2004.

Loranty’s advice for students who are pressured to be sexually active is, “Talk to someone and really think about your decisions.”

Her advice for parents, “Be involved, there are so many kids out there who don’t have any support.” She said even the little things matter. Just talking to them can create change. She hopes to see more programs implemented into the curriculum that are self-sufficient and involve parents. 

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