Your health

Told you, Mom

You might not want your tween or teen to read this: Using cell phones and playing video games may not be as harmful to children's academic performance as we thought.

All that chatting and texting on their cell phones had no effect on how well 12-year-old students in a Michigan State University study did in school. And while playing video games was linked to lower grade point averages overall, it didn't hurt math skills and had a positive impact on visual-spatial skills.

Girls used cell phones more, while boys played more video games - and that could give the boys a leg up in math, science and engineering.

Researchers would like to see fewer video games that involve shooting and blowing things up, and more that help develop visual-spatial skills, especially for girls.

"Girls are at a disadvantage by not having that three-dimensional experience," said lead researcher Linda Jackson. "So when they get to medical school and they're doing surgery in the virtual world, they're not used to it."

Family conference

Patients and their families can get help in coping with inflammatory bowel disorders such as Crohn's and colitis at a conference Saturday, April 4, at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont. Dr. Tarun B. Mullick of Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield and Delnor-Community Hospital in Geneva is one of the moderators.

Along with scientific sessions on the latest surgical and medical approaches for managing IBD, there are workshops for parents, teens and children on such topics as insurance issues and school advocacy, nutrition, navigating a teenage social life with IBD and children's yoga and music therapy.

Last year, more than 600 patients and their families attended. Visit imedex.com to check availability and to register.

Super foods

There's more evidence of the cancer-fighting properties of a diet rich in fish and soy - such as the typical Asian diet.

The type of fatty acids found in dark fish such as salmon appear to protect against advanced prostate cancer, according to a report in the journal Clinical Cancer Research. Men who ate the highest amount of long chain Omega-3 fatty acids had a 63 percent reduced risk of aggressive prostate cancer compared to the men who ate the least.

In another study, Asian-American women who ate higher amounts of soy when they were children had a 58 percent reduced risk of breast cancer. A high level of soy intake in adolescence and adulthood reduced risk by 20 to 25 percent.

"Childhood soy intake was significantly associated with breast cancer risk in our study, suggesting that the timing of soy intake may be especially critical," said Larissa Korde, the study's lead investigator.

Researchers don't know why, but suspect the soy isoflavones may cause changes in breast tissue to make it more cancer resistant. But it's too soon to make a public health recommendation on soy intake for young girls, they said.

The study is published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.