Are Our Kids the Sickest Generation?
More kids than ever before are diagnosed with bipolar, ADHD, allergies, and asthma. Why, and what does it mean for your child?
By Jean Weiss for MSN Health & Fitness
Did you leave out the peanut butter sandwich when you packed school lunches today? Most everyone knows at least one family that has a child with a serious food allergy. Yet a generation ago, we’d scarcely heard about the problem. The same can be said for several conditions now on the rise in children. More kids are getting diagnosed with bipolar, ADHD, allergies, and asthma in this decade than in previous decades. Some attribute this increase to improved diagnosing, others to over-diagnosing. Still others view the sick-kid trend as the proverbial canary in the coalmine: More children are getting sick because they are fragile and affected by an increasingly industrialized world.