Can Throwing a Three Year Old Up in Air Damage Their Brain
Tossing Babies Bad for Brains?
Doctors worry obscure babe-dropping ritual leads to unseen injuries.
May 6, 2008 — -- A pop video circulating the Net this week has villagers in a town near Solapur, India, shrugging their shoulders and pediatricians in the The states shaking their heads.
The video, available here , shows a crowd tossing infants off a temple roof onto an outstretched cloth fifty anxiety below. Officials in the hamlet of Musti say this 500-year-old ritual does non hurt the babies and is meant to bring adept luck and protection.
But pediatricians reacted to the footage of infants plummeting and bouncing back from the cloth with varying degrees of concern.
"Of course at that place is risk of injury in this exercise. Missing the stretched cloth might be fatal and even landing on it wrong might crusade a limb fracture," said Dr. Joseph R. Zanga, past president of the American University of Pediatrics and a professor at the Brody Schoolhouse of Medicine, Greenville, N.C.
"I would not advise that we endeavor it in the U.South., but if they have been doing it for 500 years without any injury I'd exist wary of stopping them," Zanga said.
Dr. Michael Wasserman, of the Ochsner Health System in New Orleans, felt the same pull toward cultural sensitivity. "It is hard for ane to disagree with religious rituals, as they are private choices, at the same time, at that place is a existent danger," Wasserman said.
However, some doctors idea the health risks trumped cultural sensitivity in this case.
"The idea that parents would participate in such a harmful practice and that no i would point out the dangers to them seems inconceivable," said Dr. Astrid Heppenstall Heger, professor of clinical pediatrics and executive managing director of the Violence Intervention Plan at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
So What Are the Risks?
Injuries related to shaken babe syndrome topped the listing of worries among pediatricians watching the video. Shaken baby syndrome results from a whiplash-blazon motion -- an dispatch pushing the brain against one side of the head and a quick deceleration bouncing information technology back, which tin can cause brain injuries, bleeding of the brain and potentially encephalon impairment.
While the villagers claim there are no injuries, whether all the babies escaped damage may be hard for anyone in Musti to tell. Shaken baby syndrome tin can be difficult to diagnose, fifty-fifty in U.Due south. doctor'south offices, and parents in India may not recognize the subtle signs of encephalon injury.
The National Institutes of Wellness report in that location are commonly no physical signs of injury like bruising, bleeding or swelling when a child has shaken baby syndrome. Instead, infants unremarkably show mild to severe irritably, sleepiness or poor feeding.
Infants, especially young infants, can be at risk for whiplash-similar injuries because children'south brains are softer, their neck muscles weaker and their heads are much larger compared to the size of the residuum of their bodies.
Just while much older kids could stand up whiplash better, the babies in the video might also be amend suited to take the skilful-luck fall onto the sheet.
"The infants pictured were not relatively delicate newborns," said Zanga, who noted the babies looked to exist about 5 to 6 months old and would accept greater head control than a newborn. "They too, at that age, have more body fat and cartilage to dissipate the 'energy' of the fall."
Zanga said infants may handle a fall amend considering they generally relax and stay more flexible, whereas adults might tense upward, making injury more than probable.
"Though I still wouldn't want my grandchildren dropped equally these infants are," Zanger said.
As far as explaining why grandparents and parents in Musti would desire the children dropped, even experts in Indian religious rituals were at a bit of a loss.
A Bigger Moving picture
"Children in India are considered particularly vulnerable, so there are a range of rituals to protect children," said Joyce Flueckiger, professor of S Asian Religions at Emory University, Atlanta. "My principal reaction was that information technology'southward i more fourth dimension that we have something out of context and sensationalize it -- why that out of a number of other things?"
Since children living in a developing country like Republic of india tin can face a reality of disease and malnutrition, Flueckiger said the vulnerable label fits.
Pediatricians in the Usa hold.
"Through well-nigh of Bharat overcrowding, inadequate sanitation and poor water -- all encouraging a variety of infectious diseases -- and express access to health intendance in many regions are considerably more of a danger," said Zanger. "If I were to do anything to 'protect' these infants, those are what I would work on first."
Flueckiger, who studies rituals in central Bharat, had never heard of the dropping ritual in Musti, just said that Republic of india is total of unique rituals in particular locations.
A more common safeguarding ritual, according to Flueckiger, would be to necktie amulets to babies to protect them from evil eye. "That would be a common practice, that they're dropping it [a baby] is non common."
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/tossing-babies-bad-brains/story?id=4791847
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