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With a rise in flu cases, what can be done to prevent, treat it?

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  • Dr. Ken Haller addressed how to navigate the flu including the symptoms, treatment and prevention.

    Dr. Ken Haller addressed how to navigate the flu including the symptoms, treatment and prevention.
    LARA HAMDAN | ST. LOUIS PUBLIC RADIO

The St. Louis County Department of Public Health reports 1,282 cases of influenza in the first week of January. The illness is also causing a low blood supply at local hospitals.

On Monday’s St. Louis on the Air, host Don Marsh discussed why the flu is so prevalent in St. Louis. Joining him for the discussion was Ken Haller, SLUCare pediatrician at SSM Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital and professor at Saint Louis University.

Haller addressed how to navigate the flu including the symptoms, treatment and prevention, period of contagion and effectiveness of the flu vaccine.

Q: Why has it been a bad flu season?

A: Frankly, this is a particularly bad strain of flu. This strain is called H3N2 and it seems to be the bad one hitting us this year. Unfortunately, the vaccine that was created for the United States does not hit that one directly.

Q: Does that mean that this year’s vaccines are ineffective?

A: It’s not totally ineffective and we still recommend getting it. The thing is, even if you get the H3N2 strain, [the shot] will make your illness less severe. While the vaccines change from year to year because the strains change from year to year, the immunity you get each year does tend to have a shadow effect for a few years after that. Even though you’re getting vaccines against certain strains this year, that will still give you some protection if those strains show up again in the future.

Q: How to prevent catching the flu if it’s in the air?

A: Do things that will keep your body’s defenses up. Drinking lots of fluids, getting lots of sleep, using saline spray in the nose to keep things nice and moist, that’s the kind of stuff that will be really helpful.

Q: What about treatment?

A: In terms of just treatment, listen to what your body is telling you. Cytokines, chemical messengers [in the body,] will give you those feelings of feeling sick. One of those reasons that they do that is that they tell you to stop, just be quiet, don’t run around, don’t go shopping, don’t go to work, just stay home and drink lots of fluids and do the things your body is telling you to do. Once you have the flu, try to take care of yourself and get plenty of sleep. Chicken soup is good; people will often crave fruits that have a lot of fluid in them like citrus fruits, listen to what your body is telling you. It’s also not a good idea to lay down all the time; it’s still a good idea to get up and move around because what happens with the flu is your body is producing a lot more mucus. If you just lay in one position that mucus will settle in the lungs which can block up air passages and bacteria will not be able to work their way out and can fester up and cause pneumonia.

Listen to the full discussion: Host Don Marsh discussed why the flu is so prevalent in St. Louis and what can be done to prevent and treat it.

St. Louis on the Air brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. St. Louis on the Air host Don Marsh and producers Mary Edwards, Alex Heuer and Lara Hamdan give you the information you need to make informed decisions and stay in touch with our diverse and vibrant St. Louis region.

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7 tips on when to give children their first phone

By ALEX HEUER

When should parents give children their first cellphone or smartphone? What factors should be considered? How do maturity, development and sleep considerations play into it all?

St. Louis on the Air host Don Marsh talked about the issues with two doctors:

  • Ken Haller, SLUCare pediatrician at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital
  • Mini Tandon, Washington University child psychiatrist at St. Louis Children’s Hospital

Maturity matters, not a specific age: “The issue is not an age, it’s not a grade. It’s actually the maturity level and the responsibility level demonstrated by that child.” – Dr. Tandon

Start early and build trust: “It’s common practice in our practice to hear ‘everyone’s doing it, everyone has one, how come our family is different?’ But everybody’s family is different. Again, it depends on what the purpose of the cellphone is and the responsibility level of your child. I think contextually, it’s true, if you’re using it just for safety purposes, why not, there’s going to be some embarrassment but you could also use it as a way to build trust and say, ‘look, yes you have this very archaic flip phone and yes, it may be embarrassing but what were’ trying to do is build trust. Once you can show us the responsibly level of just this bare skeleton version, as you age and as we can trust that you’re using it appropriately, maybe we build in the extra products that are available.’” – Dr. Tandon

“We have to start much earlier in terms of parents looking at their interactions with their children and when they put them in front of screens, how much time they put them in front of screens versus how much time they sit down and read them a book, and point out things and talk to them and just interact in that way.” – Dr. Haller

Maintain control: “You have to think about how smart you want that phone to be: what it can do and what it will have access to. If you have that conversation with your children and you decide that they can handle a cellphone, it really is important for parents to have controls where they have full access to everything on the cellphone.” – Dr. Haller

Model appropriate behavior: “If you want to model good behavior, you’re going to not text when you drive as an adult, you’re going to have to set some standards. If you don’t want your kids at the table during dinner on their phones than you might have to actually show that you can do the same.” – Dr. Tandon

Parenting style: “What we really want is more of an authoritative parenting model where the parents say to the kids, ‘We’re in a partnership here but I am your parent and there are certain rules I’m going to make in your best interest. You can ask me about that and I’m going to explain it but still the rules will be my rules and you’re going to have to meet certain standards and certain benchmarks in order to move from the flip phone to a more advanced phone.’” – Dr. Haller

Limit screen time: “I am amazed sometimes when I get kids in my office and they’re in for a regular physical and one of the questions we ask is how much time do you spend in front of a screen for recreation – this isn’t homework – this is computers, video games, various things like this, tablets – and some kids will go, 7, 7 hours a day!”

“I don’t think that’s a good thing. While this is a lot of time to be doing this one thing, my bigger problem is that it is cutting into actual time spent with friends, time spent with family, time spent with physical recreation.”– Dr. Haller

Develop a Family Media Use Plan: Dr. Haller suggests a tool developed by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Among the suggestions are:

  • Keep screens out of kids’ bedrooms.
  • For children under 2, substitute unstructured play and human interaction for screen time.
  • Take an active role in your children’s media education

St. Louis on the Air brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. St. Louis on the Air host Don Marsh and producers Mary Edwards, Alex Heuer and Kelly Moffitt give you the information you need to make informed decisions and stay in touch with our diverse and vibrant St. Louis region.

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Should parents change their tune on children and media literacy in the digital age?

By KELLY MOFFITT

Smartphones, tablets, computers at home, computers at school, computers at the library, augmented reality, video games…the list of new platforms that children have available to engage with goes on for miles. Although the platforms for media consumption may be shiny and new, that doesn’t exactly change the way parents should approach media exposure for their children.

“The most important way children learn language, how to socialize, is by their interaction one-on-one with their parents,” said “St. Louis on the Air” panelist Dr. Ken Haller. “Media can supplement that but it can’t substitute it. One of the things we’re learning through research around media and children is that media itself is not so much the problem as it is the fact that we tend to substitute media, electronic media, for one-on-one human interaction.”

“St. Louis on the Air” host Don Marsh moderates a live panel on children and the media for Media Literacy Week.
CREDIT KELLY MOFFITT | ST. LOUIS PUBLIC RADIO

 

Haller was one of four panelists that joined “St. Louis on the Air” on Monday for a broadcast in front of a live audience on children and the media as part of Gateway Media Literacy Partners’ 10th annual Media Literacy Week. This year, the week coincides with a national media literacy week as well and people are joining in the conversation on Twitter with the #MediaLitWk hashtag. Panelists included:

  • Art Silverblatt, media literacy scholar and professor emeritus, Webster University
  • Brenda Fyfe, Professor and Dean, Webster University’s School of Education
  • Dafna Lemish, Professor and Dean, College of Mass Communication and Media Arts, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, author of Children and Media: A Global Perspective
  • Kenneth Haller, Jr., M.D., SLUCare Pediatrician at SSM Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center; Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Saint Louis University

“This is a world where we have electronic media, they’re not going away,” Lemish said. “What we do need to do is find a balance between different forms of activities that we do with young children.”

This is a world where we have electronic media, they’re not going away. What we do need to do is find a balance between different forms of activities that we do with young children.

For example, she said that using an e-book instead of a printed paperback to engage with children is just fine—so long as the parents is helping the child interpret the book, ask questions about it, pointing out particulars as they would with a normal book.

“The most important thing is the interaction,” Lemish continued. “Using electronic media passively, putting the baby in front of the screen and going to do the laundry is not such a good strategy. If you are using it to interact with the baby, whether it is going to the museum to look at the pictures or looking at animals in the street, it is another resource in the environment…one other resource in their holistic environment.”

In the end, media literacy comes down to establishing critical thinking in children and adults. Silverblatt recommended a “production approach” to start conversations: encouraging children to think about media with style questions about production such as “What music is used?” “What colors are being used?” “What point-of-view is the camera capturing?”

“Media literacy focuses on a process not a product; we’re telling people how to think, not what to think,” Silverblatt said.

Haller recommended that parents looking for advice on digital media consumption for their youngsters should look to the sites healthychildren.org and commonsensemedia.org. “Media literacy, when it comes right down to it has a lot to do with common-sense parenting,” Haller said. “While a lot of media are new, it comes down to engaging with your kids about these things.”

 

At the crux of it, is time. Many people emailed and tweeted during the conversation to lament a lack of time and money to spend with their kids. Unfortunately, time could very well be the most important part of instilling media literacy in kids.

“Listening is so important, listening to what they’re taking in from the media,” Fyfe said. “Sometimes we just run right over children and guide them and direct them and put them through experiences and never take the time to hear what’s going on in their minds.”

“St. Louis on the Air” discusses issues and concerns facing the St. Louis area. The show is produced by Mary Edwards, Alex Heuer and Kelly Moffitt and hosted by veteran journalist Don Marsh. Follow us on Twitter and join the conversation at @STLonAir.