Benj’s Busy Blog

Taken from MSN

My child can’t seem to sit still. Could she be hyperactive? What can I do?

Toddlers are an active bunch. And because they have lots of energy to burn, many of them are just like your little one, unable to sit in one place for long. That’s why traditionally doctors reassure parents not to worry about hyperactivity at this age, and have rarely diagnosed children under the age of 5 with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Recently, however, a spate of news articles and research studies has shown that more children this age are being diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed medications such as Ritalin and Prozac to help them cope. But most experts continue to believe that it’s a mistake to prescribe medication for toddlers and preschoolers, especially as the side effects of these medications haven’t been well studied in young children.

If your toddler’s activity level is causing you concern, you may want to speak with your doctor about it. But the most important thing you can do is help her find as many outlets as possible for her abundant energy. Schedule frequent visits to the playground so she can run and climb to her heart’s content. If you’re indoors, turn on the radio or pop in a CD and get her dancing. You may want to join in the fray yourself (dancing, after all, increases the heart rate and keeps limbs loose, a plus for both adults and children). And if you can’t play with your child — for instance, when you’re cooking dinner — give her something to do instead of expecting her to sit quietly and wait for you. Loan her a few pots and pans and encourage her to use her toys as “ingredients” for a meal she cooks alongside you. The blocks can be mushrooms, and the puzzle pieces can be meat. Sing a song together as you cook, or catch up on your respective days.

You can help interest your child in sustained quiet activities by introducing them selectively and letting her participate at her own level. For example, if she doesn’t seem to enjoy sitting on your lap to listen to a story, let her sit on the floor or wander around the room. If you add a lot of enthusiasm to your reading — funny voices and animal sounds are big attention-getters — she’ll be hooked and will pay more attention.

Rhythm is a great outlet; if you can stand the noise, encourage her to pound on drums or shake a pair of maracas. Musical instruments help focus her energy on one activity, while allowing her to play vigorously and work out her emotions. And remember, your child is more likely to play with her toys if you play with her. If she’s under 2, she’ll rarely play for long on her own.

Finally, limit the amount of time you ask her to sit still. If it’s important to you that she sit still at dinnertime, then get her involved in something physical before dinner so she’ll be ready for some quiet time. And if five minutes is her limit for staying in her chair, praise her for her good mealtime behavior and let her go.

Our hearts pump blood to keep blood circulating all over our body. This keeps the blood going all over every part of your body to supply each part with the nutrients needed like Oxygen and Iron(which makes the blood red). If the heart stops, we die. When we exercise and tire ourselves, the more oxygen and other things like sodium and magnesium is needed in our body, especially in the body part that is exerting effort. The more it these nutrients need to circulate, the blood needs to be pumped by the heart.

What fitness trainers use as a gauge for one’s endurance is the heart rate. There is the resting heart rate which is the rate of your heart in beats per minute(BPM) when you are doing nothing. The lower it is, the fit you are, because it takes a longer time for your heart to reach it’s maximum capacity.

And to improve on this, you need to do aerobic exercises(not necessarily the aerobic class many people think of with a lot of women in spandex). Aerobic exercises is nothing but doing a continuous exercise that will make your heart pump about 65 to 75 percent of your maximum heart rate. Going lower than that is said to not improve your heart rate, and going beyond will just burn you out so fast you can’t do anything anymore.

I remember my resting heart rate back in college to be near the 60 BPM range. Today it is like 80 to 90 mainly because of my type of goiter that I have. I have hypertyroidism where my thyroid gland tells my brain that it needs more blood to be pumped there and my heart goes to work, thus I get tired more easily. There were times that my knees hurt because of the lack of blood going there since my Thyroid gland wants more attention.

But it is getting better now since I do not get any problems with my knees. And maybe because I have been avoiding patis and bagoong which are rich in iodine that I do not need because of my hyperthyroidism.

Well I just thought of talking about this because of my admiration of Lance Armstrong who is veing for his 7th Tour de France win! If he wins that will be tour history for him. 7 consecutive wins is a feat that I think cannot be beaten for a very long time. And I have heard his resting heart rate is 13 BPM! Imagine that? Thinking of the human body as a machine… how is that possible? It is slightly more than 4 seconds for every heart beat. And these nutrients should be spread all over your body to live. That means each pump is strong that it is sufficient enough to supply the body with what ever it needs from the blood.

Well Tour de France started with a time trial, one of Lance’s rivals German Jan Ullrich, a former winner also started out 1 minute earlier than Lance since it is a time trial lap, and Lance pass by Jan! lolz :)) funny.

And a surprise time trial win came from American David Zabriskie who has the best time trial performance in the whole history of Tour de France!

I decided to check out Mt. St. Helen’s current activity and found up-to-date information on the US Geological Survey website. Well this is an active volcano, unlike Pinatubo which was dormant, when it erupted, it was a big one since being dormant, there was a lot of pressure build up inside before it blew up.

Intrigued by the people that maintain the site I went to the homepage and saw the satellite photography. And I then started to look at a lot more stuff that calls my interest.

Then I thought how cool it would be to work at USGS. And I checked out the job openings, and saw I can enter in a lot of them. There were a lot of openings for Chemist, Physical Scientist, and IT. And there were a lot of jobs for each category, if I don’t qualify in one, there are a lot more. Salary sounds good too.

I can if I wanted to, but I decided not to at the moment. You never know how much it will eat of my time in the future. For every movement the earth makes, that is something significant to USGS and I might be required to be there all the time when something happens. That may sacrifice time with my family in the future. Although I believe I’ll love the job, I still love my family a lot more. I know there are a lot more opportunities out there that I can maximize my time with my family.

This is exactly 1 hour after Mt. St. Helens emitted volcanic ash in the air, 36,000 ft. above sea level.

The most up-to-date site seems to be this site.