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

Hi Readers. This is a first for our website, a posting by someone other than myself. This posting is by Chris Van Tilburg, MD, author of Introducing Your Kids to Outdoor Adventure (Stackpole, 2005). 
The question I get most often regarding adventuring with kids is, is it safe?  When people read in magazines about my [...]

Posted in Outdoor Recreation, Safe & Healthy Travel No Comments »
Tags: adventuring, backpack, biking, breast-feed, camping, child-carry backpack, Chris Van Tilburg, Columbia River, exploring outdoors, Health, hiking, Infants, kids, nutrition, Oregon, safety, skiing, Vancouver Island, young children

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 – [...]

Posted in Destinations, Prevention, Travel No Comments »
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 [...]

Posted in Prevention, Safe & Healthy Travel No Comments »
Tags: car seats, infant car seats, Infants, Kids Travel Doc

To sedate or not to sedate infants for air travel, that is an oft-raised question. Is it truly nobler to spurn sedatives, risk an unruly child, and bravely suffer the heartaches of stares and scorn of outraged fellow passengers?  Or is it more virtuous to sedate infants, perchance they’ll sleep, and endure the thousand humiliations [...]

Posted in Safe & Healthy Travel No Comments »
Tags: Airplane, Infants, Jet lag

Swimming: The source of many illnesses
Most kids’ favorite summer activity is swimming, no matter if it’s splashing in a small backyard pool, or on the beach of a five-star resort. But the reality is that no fun activity is totally safe and healthy. For information on water safety, see TenTips: Waterfront. For avoiding illnesses from [...]

Posted in Outdoor Recreation 1 Comment »
Tags: Diarrhea, Infants, Intestinal illnesses, Respiratory infections, Skin conditions, Sun exposure

The sun does to skin what tobacco smoke does to lungs. Both produce progressive, cumulative, and irreversible tissue damage, often culminating in very serious health issues many decades later.
But it need not happen. There are positive rays of sunshine, too: information on how to neutralize the harmful effects. Here is what you should know:
1. Don’t [...]

Posted in Sun No Comments »
Tags: Equator, Infants, Respiratory infections, Skin conditions, Sun exposure, Sunburn, Sunscreen, Toddlers

Visiting Mexico City: 7,550 feet. Viewing the Grand Canyon: 8,000 feet. Skiing in Colorado: 8,000 feet (with some slopes going higher.) Driving up Pike’s Peak: 14,000 feet. At these elevations most children run circles around their huffing and puffing parents. But some children will show symptoms of acute mountain sickness (AMS), and a rare child [...]

Posted in Outdoor Recreation No Comments »
Tags: Acetaminophen (Tylenol), Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS), Altitude, Aspirin, Asthma, Coughs, Dehydration, Fatigue, Frostbite, Headache, Hypothermia, Ibuprofen (Advil Motrin), Infants, Intestinal illnesses, Loss of appetite, Nausea, Respiratory infections, Seizure disorders, Sleep, Sore throat, Sun exposure, Toddlers, Vomiting

An incredible 900,000 types of insects are known to exist. Equally incredible is the number of insect repellents available.
Here is what you should know:
1. The most thoroughly studied insect repellent is DEET.
No repellent bears this name; it is the active ingredient in most products. Don’t be alarmed by its chemical formula, N,N-diethyl-m-toluamide Lots of products [...]

Posted in Insects 2 Comments »
Tags: Breast-feeding, DEET, Eczema, Infants, Insect repellents, Picaridin, Skin conditions

A vacation at sea offers families the best of all worlds: seeing foreign countries without the hassle of constant packing; supervised age-appropriate activities, lots of other children and, should you need it, “in-house” medical facilities.
Here’s what you have to know:
1. Bring your children’s medications:
A leading reason for passengers visiting ships’ infirmaries is to obtain medications [...]

Posted in Destinations No Comments »
Tags: Cruise ships, Infants, Intestinal illnesses, Medical kit, Medications, Seasickness, Sun exposure, Third world, Toddlers, Tropics, Vaccine