In the News

An IEP List of health stories that make you go "Hmmmm....":

1. Reading may be good for kids, but apparently, there are limits: Doctors are blaming the enormous new Harry Potter for causing headaches in children who've read it too voraciously.

2. Scientists say that it looks like it's probably perfectly okay to eat cloned animals. Okay, but you first.

3. Researchers are shocked and dismayed to find that children's bad eating habits sometimes start before the age of two, with even infants downing candy and soda and getting their vegetable allowance from french fries. I guess I shouldn't have such fond memories of driving my son home from early intervention while passing french fries over my shoulder to where he sat in his car seat. I thought I was just driving badly, not contributing to nutritional delinquency. He's my healthy eater now, though, while his sister, who was in a Russian orphanage until age 4.5 and presumably did not make a lot of McDonald's runs, never met a green vegetable she didn't loathe. Go figure.

4. There's a new ailment in town: Hurried Woman Syndrome. Among the symptoms of this syndrome are being tired, moody, and having problems controlling your weight. And here, I thought those things were just symptoms of being a woman with kids and, you know, a pulse.

5. A study shows that women who take care of their grandchildren at least nine hours a week have a 55 percent greater chance of having a heart attack. And also, presumably, of being tired, moody, and having problems controlling their weight. If there really is such a thing as "Hurried Woman Syndrome," you just know kids are carriers.