Dr. Gutierrez weighs in on National Youth Violence Prevention Week

Today, our own Dr. Gutierrez takes a look at National Youth Violence Prevention Week.

Dr. Gutierrez

 As spring break ends and most students reluctantly return to class, the very serious subject of youth violence will be one of the topics at the forefront.  

March 18-22 marks National Youth Violence Prevention Week.  This nationwide campaign is designed to raise awareness and educate students, teachers, counselors, parents and the general public on effective ways to prevent or reduce youth violence.  

Violence affects all people regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity or religion, but violence disproportionately affects young people.  The young person can be a victim, offender, or witness to the violent act.  According to the CDC, youth violence is the second leading cause of death for young people age 15-24.  

Each day of the Youth Violence Prevention Week focuses on different activities in regards to violence prevention: 

Day1:  Promote Respect and Tolerance

Day2:  Manage Your Anger, Don’t Let it Manage You!

Day 3:  Resolve Conflicts Peacefully

Day 4:  Support Safety

Day 5:  Unite in Action

Much of the focus is to remind us that while anger is a normal human feeling, violence is not a normal human reaction.  The activities of this education initiative help to demonstrate the positive role young people can have in making their school and community safer.  

The ultimate goal is to stop youth violence before it starts.  

Take some time this week to find out more about Youth Violence, and what you can do to help prevent it. There's even some chapters of Students Against Violence Everywhere in San Antonio.  And some great suggestions of activities to do this week to promote awareness can be found here. What will you be doing this week to help spread awareness of Youth Violence Prevention?

Breakfast: The Yummiest part of School!

The yummiest part of school!

March 4-8 is National School Breakfast week. Here are a few words of wisdom from our own Dr. Gutierrez about the importance of breakfast for children:

We have all heard it said, “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day”.  With that in mind, the week of March 4 recognizes National School Breakfast Week.

National School Breakfast Week raises awareness about the availability of the School Breakfast Program (SBP), as well as highlights the benefits, especially academic, of eating a healthy breakfast.

My grandfather grew up very poor in South Texas, near Refugio.  He tells stories of how he did not have food in the house for days.  He and his brothers would survive on the oranges they picked off the trees in the neighborhood.  He admits he was not a good student and recalls how he had lots of difficulty concentrating.  He remembers feeling extremely fatigued as well as having terrible diarrhea due to eating nothing but fruit for days in a row.  He could have really benefited from a nutritious, well balanced meal provided at school.

The School Breakfast Program started under the Child Nutrition Act of 1966.  This program offers breakfast to children free or at a reduced price.  Currently, about 7 million children eat breakfast at school daily with approximately 85% of participants receiving their breakfast free or at a reduced cost.

According to “Ending Childhood Hunger: A Social Impact Analysis” children who ate breakfast scored 17.5% higher on standardized math tests and attended 1.5 more days of school.  Now that’s powerful food for thought.

Visit the National School Breakfast website to learn more. There's all kinds of cool merchandise for sale to help support the program, and even a writing contest for kids!

Zzzzz…It’s National Sleep Awareness Week

Did you know that sleep (which is so lux­u­ri­ous and won­der­ful any­way) greatly impacts your health? Not get­ting enough sleep can cause or con­tribute to obe­sity, dia­betes and depres­sion, all of which are wide­spread through­out the US. And being sleep-deprived can also cause traf­fic acci­dents and even impaired per­for­mance at school and work. There’s even a “Maggie’s Law” (named after a young woman killed by some­one dri­ving while sleep-deprived) in New Jer­sey mak­ing dri­ving while drowsy ille­gal. In fact, once you’ve been awake for 17+ hours, you’re con­sid­ered just about as impaired as some­one dri­ving while intoxicated. 

Try this quick list of tips to help you sleep well:

• Estab­lish a reg­u­lar bed and wake time
• Avoid nico­tine alto­gether and avoid caf­feine close to bedtime
• Avoid alco­hol
• Exer­cise reg­u­larly (but com­plete the work­out at least 3 hours before bedtime)
• Estab­lish a con­sis­tent relax­ing “wind-down” bed­time routine
• Cre­ate a sleep-conducive envi­ron­ment that is dark, quiet and comfortable
• Dis­cuss the appro­pri­ate way to take any sleep aid with a health­care professional

Check out the National Sleep Foundation’s site for more info (like the above list) and to find out if you’re “Sleep­ing Smart”