When I was a kid, my grandfather almost set my cousin and me on fire. It was July 4, and we were huddled post-swim in a blanket on the patio waiting for the traditional family fireworks extravaganza. Grandpa decided to kick things off by lighting up a couple of our favorite treats: sparklers.
As he passed them into our excited little hands, the sparks from said sparklers ignited our blanket, which flamed up and sent us scurrying. We were lucky, and not injured, but it seems families haven’t learned much since those days. About 6,000 children a year in the U.S. suffer firework-related injuries serious enough to send them to the emergency room.
My grandfather used to buy the “safe” fireworks, but experts now tell us there is no such thing. “Every type of legally available firework has been associated with serious injury or death,” says Gary Smith, M.D., director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio. The tip of my childhood favorite, sparklers, can actually burn at 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. And in 25% of cases, the children who are injured in fireworks accidents aren’t even the ones handling the fireworks. They’re just bystanders.
That’s why experts (and I) urge families not to play with fire at home. Pack a picnic and attend a public display by the pros instead. It’s safer, and more sparkly, than anything you can spark up in the back yard.
If you’re pregnant, exposure to even tiny amounts of carbon monoxide – from tobacco smoke, gas heaters, stoves and ovens, etc. – can do permanent damage to your baby’s brain, says a UCLA study published June 22 in the online journal BMC Neuroscience. 
EO Hand Sanitizer 
Another new fave, especially when I hit the yoga mat, is the line of wipe your feet, wipe your hands 
If your teen comes down with unexplained sore throat, fever, aches and pains and your doctor orders an HIV test, it’s worth finding out which kind, according to Allison Agwu, M.D., pediatric infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. Flu-like symptoms are common during the earliest stages of HIV infection, but the most commonly used rapid HIV test often results in false negatives at that stage. Experts estimate that around 14 teens become infected with HIV every day in the U.S. If your teen shows severe flu-like symptoms, and a few pointed questions lead you to believe she or he is sexually active or has used injectible drugs, consider asking your doctor about a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, which can accurately detect the virus during those early weeks. 
Check out some dismal stats about what we’re paying for healthcare:
If you don’t know the difference between “simple carbohydrates” and “complex carbs,” you should. Taking in just a bit more of the complex sort (non-processed foods, beans, oatmeal, whole grains) and less of the simple (soft drinks, processed foods, white bread) could be enough to help you feel fuller and lose weight. University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers presented a study June 11 showing that diets high in carbs, but especially simple carbs, cause insulin levels in the body to spike. This drives blood sugar down (sugar crash), making you feel hungry. But slightly reducing the amount of calories from carbs, and focusing more on complex carbs, kept test subjects’ glucose levels more even and made them feel full longer. 
Dionna Watson writes:
Constipation is common in toddlers and can cause endless problems. If his stool is hard, he won’t want to go in the potty because it hurts. He’ll hold onto his stool, making it larger, harder, and more painful, and potty training will not be successful. Back off on the potty training for a while while you treat his constipation. After a few weeks of having soft stools, he’ll forget that it hurt and you can reintroduce the potty when he is ready.
Don’t eat prepackaged Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough, warn the FDA and CDC. It could be contaminated with E. coli, which causes food borne illness. The agencies have received 66 reports of illness connected with the products since March, including 25 hospitalizations and seven cases of severe complications. Cooking the dough would kill bacteria in the cookies themselves, but working with contaminated dough could spread the bacteria onto your hands and throughout your kitchen, making you and your family ill. Instead, throw these products away if you have them at home.
