Does Your Kid Have Lazy Eye?

Lazy eye is a confusing disorder. This is because the eye does not always look 'lazy.' It is a disorder between the coordination of the brain and eye and it usually starts in childhood. It causes the body to favor one eye over the other.
Lazy eye is a disorder of the coordination between the eye and the brain, usually Amblyopia is the medical name for it. The problem is one eye does all the work while the other gets weaker and weaker.

Poor blurry vision in an eye that otherwise seems normal is the main symptom. It is caused by poor transmission of the visual image to the brain from eye in childhood. It is a temporary condition in most cases — thank goodness!

By the way it is possible to suffer form this in both eyes. That is very rare. The one eyed ambyopia is more common. About five percent of kids (one in twenty) might suffer from it. Many people are not even aware they ever have it. This is because it is normal to have slightly stronger vision in one eye.

Sometimes this eye looks so lazy it can actually stray. Mainly it causes poor depth perception. This is rare. Having a crossed eye or turned eye is a completely different eye condition. It is called strabismus. However lazy eye and crossed eyes and turned eyes seem to be used all the time to describe both ambyopia and everything else.

The way to determine whether or not your child has this condition is to take him or her in for a special test called a visual acuity test. It is not done with the letter chart we usually associate with determining eye problems.

A large number of kids with lazy eye go unnoticed until they have their eyes examined when they get older. Therefore, comprehensive vision evaluations by a trained and qualified vision professional are the best idea even for pre-school kids. You don't want your child going through school with undiagnosed compromised vision! Yet it can so easily happen.

Treatment options for lazy eye include glasses, drops, and certain vision therapies, possibly including the use of a patch. Sure you're kid will look like a pirate but at least he will be able to see the chalkboard. Good thing Pirates of the Caribbean was such a hit and pirates are so cool. However expect little girls to have a harder time with corrective eye patch than boys.

You also need to catch this early. Recent research has shown it can be treated until the kid is seventeen. Improvements are possible at any age but the best chance of correcting completely is catching the lazy eye while your child is still a kid.

Parenting Tips
, , , , , , , ,

Get Rid of Still and Standing Water!

There has been a lot of rain this Spring and if you live in certain areas then there are likely to be big pools of still water where kids play. These pools of water could be in the playground or in the parks. They could be in gutters on the road. It is common to find pools of water in your back yard or near eves troughs that have not been fixed. Still water also collects inside of old flowerpots that have been left out and deflated swimming pools.

Still water, which is also stagnant water is a big threat to public health. Yellow fever is a tropical disease that is spread by the yellow fever mosquito in parts of Africa and South America and the disease is spread by still water.

Yellow fever is not to be confused with Jungle Yellow Fever, which is a disease, spread from monkeys to mosquitoes to humans. Sometimes to make the differentiation the kind of yellow fever that is spread by mosquitoes only is referred to as Urban Yellow Fever. Jungle yellow fever is actually quite rare.

Yellow is much more common and it is spread by mosquitoes from human to human. The yellow fever mosquito that carries the disease is known as the Aides Egypt. These urban disease carriers make their home in still water in cities, towns and villages. Anything that can hold water such as discarded oiled drum and tires makes an excellent breeding ground for the yellow fever mosquito. As it rains frequently in both South American and African jungles they breed constantly in muck and puddles of still water.

There is no predicting whether or not a bite from a yellow fever mosquito is going to lead to a mild or life threatening illness. It really depends on the strains of infection that are around that particular year. The good news is that most cases of yellow fever, although uncomfortable are relatively mild.

Yellow fever gets its name from the fact that it can cause jaundice, which causes the whites of the eyes and the skin to turn yellow. Symptoms of a life threatening infection are high fever, headache, chills, backache, headache, muscle aches and vomiting. Sometimes the disease has a cycle where the person appears to get much better after a few days and then takes a severe turn for the worse, which can lead to shock, internal bleeding, liver and kidney favor. However this strain of the infection that is carried by the yellow fever mosquito is a lot rare.

Unfortunately there is no real specific treatment for yellow fever. People who contract it are advised to rest and drink plenty of fluids. Another essential part of the treatment is the use of mosquito repellents and nets to keep female yellow fever mosquitoes from biting the infected individual and spreading it to another human. Of course a big part of prevention is removing still water form the vicinity.

Parenting Tips
, , , , , , , , , ,