A little boy saved his great-grandfather’s life after he slipped into a diabetic coma.

On Saturday 21 July young Aiden Smith from Walsall, England, was visiting his great-granddad Brian Clark when he noticed the pensioner having a hypoglycaemic attack, which left him unable to speak.

But instead of panicking, the primary school pupil rushed to grab Brian’s blood-sugar testing kit after seeing the 73-year-old use it many times before.

When Aiden realised the retired engineer’s blood-sugar levels were dangerously low, he quickly grabbed some jelly babies – saving Brian from a fatal coma.

“I’m so proud of Aiden, he’s so smart,” Brian says.

“My wife was out shopping so it was just us in the house. Suddenly I realised I wasn’t well but I couldn’t move and couldn’t say a thing.

“Aiden had watched me measuring my blood sugar every day so he knew how to use it.

“Then he ran and got the jelly babies and quickly put a few in my mouth.

“He was very calm. It took me about 10 minutes to come around.

“I’m very proud, he really saved my life.”

Little Aiden usually spends the weekends with Brian and his great-grandmother Sandra (70) but on Saturday he was alone with his great-granddad.

After feeding the pensioner, who has had type 2 diabetes for 30 years, two jelly babies and giving him Lucozade to sip on, the six-year-old tested Brian’s sugar level again.

Luckily, within 10 minutes his sugar level had gone up and the great-grandad was feeling much better by the time his wife came home.

“I was really shocked,” Sandra said. “I couldn’t have done much even if I’d known what was happening as I was out of the house.

“Aiden has watched his grandad use the finger-prick tester so many times, so he knew how it worked.

“I’m just so proud of him.”

Aiden – who’s also suffered from asthma attacks – now hopes to become a paramedic.

“He’s never had any first aid training. We’ve all been watching my grandad for years and we just know what to do, so he did it automatically,” said Aiden’s mom, Hayley Farren (27).

“His brain is like a sponge, he absorbs everything.

“I don’t think he even realised how important it was what he did. He saved grandad’s life. He’d definitely be in a coma if it hadn’t been for Aiden.

“When I asked him about it he just said, ‘Mommy, I just knew what I needed to do.’

“I’m so proud of him – for a six-year-old to do all this is a big deal.

“He’s such a sweet, loving little boy. He always thinks about others more than himself.”

Source: Magazine Features

Magazine Features

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Drinking alcohol while breastfeeding is a bit of a controversial topic, says Catherine Pereira, Association for Dietetics in South Africa spokesperson, registered dietitian and lecturer at the University of the Western Cape.

But, she warns that drinking alcohol while breastfeeding is quite different to drinking alcohol while you are pregnant.

“During pregnancy, alcohol can move across the placenta, is toxic to the developing foetus, and in high amounts can cause serious damage. With breastfeeding, the alcohol does not transfer straight into the breastmilk. Any food or drink that a mother consumes needs to be digested first, so will transfer through her whole gastrointestinal tract (stomach, intestines etc.), get broken down and then individual nutrients are absorbed into the blood,” says Pereira.

She adds that there are many factors that influence the composition of breastmilk, and the production of breastmilk is largely controlled by the hormones prolactin and oxytocin as well as the frequency (how often) a mother breastfeeds. 

So, is it safe to consume alcohol while breastfeeding?

Pereira refers to Dr Jack Newman, a renowned and recognised breastfeeding advocate, who recently compiled a Facebook post summarising his recommendations regarding breastfeeding and alcohol.

Dr Newman says, “The alcohol content in breast milk immediately after drinking is equivalent to a 0.0274 proof beverage. That’s like mixing 1 oz of 80 proof vodka (one shot) with 2 919 oz of mixer. By the way, 2 919 oz is over 70 liters [sic].” 

“The take-home message of this is that the amount of alcohol that eventually is present in breastmilk is so low that it is unlikely to affect the baby,” says Pereira. In South Africa, however, the recommendation is that if people do drink alcohol, they do so in moderation.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism says that low-risk drinking can be defined as consuming up to one unit of alcohol per day, with no more than three drinks on a single day and no more than seven drinks per week for women; while for men it’s up to two drinks per day with no more than four drinks per day for men and then no more than 14 units of alcohol per week.

“Don’t forget, though, that what you consider to be one unit of alcohol is often much less than one drink!” says Pereira.

If you do choose to drink alcohol while breastfeeding, Pereira advises that you do so straight after a feed so that your body has the maximum amount of time to metabolise the alcohol before your baby’s next feed.   

Breastfeeding guidelines

If you are worried about the wellbeing of your baby while breastfeeding, Dr Ronald Marino, chief of the division of general paediatrics at NYU Winthrop Hospital in Mineola, New York, advises on erring on the side of caution. “Most things do get into breast milk, and we need to understand this more because we don’t know if there’s a safe exposure level for babies. But it’s probably better not to be exposed.

“Your baby’s brain is developing so much in the first year of life, you want to give them every chance to have high function. Try to stay as pure as you can when breastfeeding – [avoiding] marijuana, alcohol or even herbal remedies,” he said.

Here are some important breastfeeding guidelines, according to a previous Health24 article: 

• Do not smoke or use any recreational drugs.
• If you are taking medication for a chronic condition, speak to your doctor before you start breastfeeding. 
• There are no foods that you must avoid, just ensure that you are following a balanced diet with variety. 
• Strong-flavoured food may flavour your breastmilk but this will not affect your baby. 
• Avoid dieting while you are breastfeeding. Pereira adds that you should lose some weight when you breastfeed.

10 additional messages

Pereira also points to the National Department of Health, which offers 10 important infant feeding messages:

1. During their first six months of life, the World Health Organization recommends that babies need breastmilk and nothing else (no porridge, water, tea or other foods and liquids).

2. Breastfeeding is the normal way to provide babies with food for healthy growth and development.

3. It is safe for HIV positive mothers to breastfeed their babies while using antiretroviral treatment.

4. Mothers should be supported and shown how to initiate breastfeeding within the first hour after birth.

5. Mothers need to be supported to breastfeed successfully. Support them to get the baby to latch. Proper attachment encourages release of breast milk.

6. Almost all mothers will have enough breast milk to feed their babies exclusively during the first six months.

7. Everyone should support a mother to breastfeed her baby for a better, healthier life.

8. Happy breastfeeding moms make happy employees – employers must offer them privacy and time to express at work.

9. Continue to breastfeed and start introducing freshly prepared foods (such as fish, meat, vegetables and fruits) when the baby is six months old. 

10. Babies should be taken to the clinic every month to check their growth and development.

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Compiled by Mandy Freeman

There is a general perception that humans don’t hear as well as animals – mainly because they can hear many sounds we can’t.

Added to this is the fact that humans have become less dependent on their senses for survival. As hunter-gatherers, our forefathers relied on especially their sight and hearing to stay alive – which changed when humans became agriculturalists around 10 000 years ago. 

Were we just never as sharp as our animal friends, is it a case of “use it or lose it”, or are there other factors at play? 

Loudness and pitch

According to Widex, the human audible range is dependent on the pitch (high or low) and loudness of sound. We use Hertz (Hz) to measure pitch and decibels (dB) to measure loudness.

As far as pitch is concerned, human hearing starts at about 20Hz and ends at 20 000Hz, but our hearing is most sensitive between 2 000 and 5 000Hz. The pitch of a dog whistle is too high and the roar of a wind turbine too low for humans to hear.

When it comes to loudness, in our most sensitive range humans can actually hear softer sounds than dogs and cats.

We can safely be exposed to sounds ranging from 0 to 85dB. Anything louder than that can eventually damage our hearing. An ambulance siren is about 125dB, and normal human speech around 65dB.

Hearing loss usually starts by affecting our upper pitches, which means that we will have difficulty hearing sounds like birdsong and instruments, such as flutes and piccolos. By middle age our upper range can drop to between 12 000 and 14 000Hz.

Some interesting animal hearing facts

• Dolphins do not have ears. Instead, they rely on eardrums located outside their bodies. They also use sonar, or echolocation, to enhance their already superior hearing abilities.

• Bats also utilise echolocation to determine location and size of things in the dark. In fact, they can find small insects 9m away in pitch darkness.
• Cats are able to hear higher frequencies than both humans and dogs. Their ear muscles also allow them to rotate their ears up to 180°.

• Elephants are tuned into frequencies 25 times lower than humans. Their feet and trunk also have specialised receptors for detecting low-frequency vibrations.

• Dogs can hear frequencies way above humans. That’s why they know you’re home long before anyone else.
• Pigeons can hear sounds as low as 0.5Hz and can detect distant storms, earthquakes and even volcanoes. Pigeons are also the best navigators in the world.
• Monkeys’ hearing is slightly less acute than that of humans at frequencies below 8 000Hz, but extends up to 45 000Hz, which is an octave above the upper human limit. 

In defence of modern humans

It is true that humans cannot detect sounds occurring at all frequencies – but neither can animals.

A study done by researchers at Binghamton University in New York found that early humans could hear better than both chimpanzees and modern humans at certain frequencies. They studied the anatomy and reconstructed the hearing capabilities of some of our ancestors who lived in South Africa.  

The researchers found that our early ancestors were especially good at hearing frequencies between 1 500 and 3 500Hz, which would include the sounds of rustling leaves – and nowadays vacuum cleaners, telephones and hard consonants.

Instead of regressing as one might expect, modern humans’ hearing ability has become even more acute in the slightly higher frequencies. In fact, as mentioned above, modern humans are proficient at hearing sounds from 2 000 to 5 000Hz, and actually fare better than other primates in that range.

Being able to excel at higher frequencies is good for “complex short-range vocal communication”. This explains why we are better at having an intimate conversation across a dinner table than grunting and howling at each other out in nature. Chimps for instance have trouble hearing some sounds we use in spoken language. 

^{Image credit: iStock}

Eugene Lotter

According to a Health24 review, cholesterol is a fatty substance which is essential to the human body. It forms part of the lining (membrane) of every cell; it is the basic substance used for the production of hormones; it’s needed for the production of bile for digestion – and numerous other bodily processes. 

The main causes of high cholesterol are:

• Genetics (controllable with modern medication)
• Diet (controllable)
• Underlying medical conditions (thyroid and kidney disorders – partly controllable)
• Overweight (controllable)
• Inactive lifestyle (controllable)
• Age and sex (uncontrollable) (Sex is biologically controlled, whereas gender is “sex” assigned to nouns or behaviour.)
• Smoking (controllable)

When should you be worried? South Africans are particularly vulnerable to developing high cholesterol, especially taking our high obesity rate into account. 

Health24 has two tools that might be useful: 

Could I have high cholesterol? 

Is your diet cholesterol-healthy?