Ask pediatricians whether infants and young children can travel by air with ear infections and the likely answer is, no, they cannot.
Ask pediatricians if they have ever seen a child with serious ear issues resulting from air travel and the likely answer is, no, they have not. 
There is virtually nothing in the medical literature to [...]

Posted in Air Travel, Outdoor Recreation, Prevention, Safe & Healthy Travel No Comments »
Tags: Air Travel, Ear infections, ear problems, ear problems air travel, flight, Infants, pediatric travel advice, safe to travel, travel safety, young children

When children complain of ear discomfort in the summertime, chances are that they have swimmer’s ear, a condition important for you, the parent, to recognize. Early treatment can save you from a few days of having a very unhappy child on your hands and, perhaps, from having to seek medical care and all the hassle [...]

Posted in Prevention, Safe & Healthy Travel Comments Off
Tags: backyard pools, bathing caps, canal opening, chlorinated swimming pools, ear discomfort, ear drainage, ear drops, ear infection, ear wax, earache, eardrum, earlobe, fungi, hot tubs, medical care, muffled hearing. bacteria, non-chlorinated, oral antibiotics, outer ear canal, recreational water, salt water, skin lining the outer ear canal, swimmers earplugs, swimmer’s ear, whirlpools

Are your children’s vaccinations up-to-date before traveling by air?
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in the past year alone there were more than 3,000 known airline passengers traveling while ill with a contagious disease.
 
1. The aircraft cabin environment abets the spread of disease-causing microorganisms.
Infected passengers cough up, sneeze out and exhale these organisms. [...]

Posted in Destinations, Prevention, Safe & Healthy Travel, Travel, Vaccinations No Comments »
Tags: air travel children, air travel infants, aircraft cabin, CDC, chickenpox, contagious, disease-causing organisms, diseases transmitted, flu epidemics, ill passengers, ill travelers, in flight, infectious illness, influenza vaccination, measles, medical staff, microorganisms, mumps, passengers traveling with disease, pertussis, spreading disease, symptomatic, traveling with infants, typhoid, unvaccinated children, unvaccinated visitors, vaccinated children, vaccination children, vaccine-preventable, yellow fever

To prevent children from being burned at cookouts, establish a “circle of safety” or a “forbidden zone” around cooking grills and campfires. Draw the line in the ground (literally, if possible) or delineate the area in some other way. 
Even though such burns are preventable with reasonable precautions, each year more than 3,000 American children experience [...]

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Tags: barbecues, burns, campfire safety, campfires, campgrounds, children, circle of safety, coals, cooking grills, cookout-related burns, cookouts, grills, kids, kids campfire, Kids Travel Doc, kids travel doctor, marshmellows

Facts about infants/air travel/in-flight comfort/feeding:
(This is an update of an earlier posting – but bears repeating).
Check the top twenty entries on Google regarding infants/air travel/feeding or air travel/infants/health. Nineteen say that you must give infants lots of fluids to prevent them from becoming dehydrated. One entry says that in flight dehydration is a myth – [...]

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Tags: Air Travel, air travel with infants, air travelers, Diarrhea, feeding infants, in flight dehydration, in-flight comfort, infant feeding, infant health, Infants, Kids Travel Doc, kids travel doctor, sweating, Vomiting

Infant cars seats – when infants are aboard – belong strapped into the back seat of cars where they prevent injuries and save lives. They do NOT belong on beds, couches, chairs or kitchen counters, says the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Car seats are not totally stable when standing alone. Sometimes they are accidentally tipped over [...]

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Tags: car seats, infant car seats, Infants, Kids Travel Doc

Mother Nature provides us with an infinite array of wonders. But it seems that she also possesses a mischievous streak, perhaps to remind us that “natural” is not synonymous with “beneficial,” as many people like to think. Poison ivy is a case in point. It affects countless millions of Americans each ear.              
Here what you should [...]

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Tags: poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, rash, urishiol

In the Northern Hemisphere, June is the month that the sun is most hazardous for eyes, especially the eyes of infants and young children.  
The sun is closest to Earth, is straight above and there are more hours of sunshine. And the weather is generally cooler than in July and August, lulling adults into thinking that [...]

Posted in Outdoor Recreation, Prevention, Sun No Comments »
Tags: alert, kids sunglasses, Sun, sunglasses, ultraviolet, UVA, UVB radiation

Want to keep your children in sight even when you cannot see them? No problem! A large variety of readily available spotting systems can keep an eye on your kids, whether they are playing in your backyard, on their way to school, hiking in a national park, or hiding behind a rack of clothes in [...]

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Tags: ankle bracelets, child locator, child surveillance systems, gps kids, spotting systems, surveillance systems, transmitters

One highlight of the recent Super Bowl game between Green Bay and New Orleans occurred after the game ended, and had little to do with whom you rooted for or who won (New Orleans). During the victory celebration on the field, the winning quarterback, Drew Brees, held his infant son high in the air amid [...]

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Tags: atmospheric pressure, decibles, Drew Brees, ear, ear band, earmuffs, earplugs, excessive noise, hearing deficits, hearing difficulty, infant, infant son, language acquisition, moise-reducing, New Orleans, noise-induced hearing loss, noise-reducing earmuffs, otolaryngology, speech and hearing, speech and language, Super Bowl