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Speaker 1: Today's podcast, we're diving into the latest research and talking

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Speaker 1: about what can help us as parents to raise happier families.

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Speaker 1: But I am doctor Justin Coulson and who with my

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Speaker 1: wife and mum to our six kids, missus happy families.

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Speaker 1: Kylie Coulson Kylie three studies. Today we're going to talk

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Speaker 1: about peanut algies. We're talking about social media screens because

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Speaker 1: it's just the enduring, never ending conversation if you're a

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Speaker 1: parent of a child. And also a really fascinating study

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Speaker 1: that I wanted to share for our neurodivergent friends, Autism

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Speaker 1: and Touch, a new study out of Italy looking at

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Speaker 1: how touch affects those who are neurodivergent with an autism

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Speaker 1: diagnosis versus those who are neurotypical no diagnosis at all.

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Speaker 1: Let's dive into it.

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Speaker 2: It's interesting when I think about my upbringing, I don't

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Speaker 2: remember ever hearing about a peanut allergy. Neither do I

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Speaker 2: didn't exist. Yeah, yeah, yeah, everyone to a peanut butter.

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Speaker 2: We had to tell her, Like you just I'd never

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Speaker 2: heard of it. And yet in today's world, it feels

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Speaker 2: like every second kid is allergic to something and it's

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Speaker 2: altered what our kids can even put in their lunchboxes.

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Speaker 1: Okay, So an important note as we have this conversation.

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Speaker 1: I mean, some schools are completely peanut free. There are

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Speaker 1: bands all over the place. We're going to talk about

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Speaker 1: a psychological intervention, but I want to be really clear,

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Speaker 1: if your child has a peanut allergy, please follow the

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Speaker 1: medical advice of your practitioner. We're speaking about an intervention

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Speaker 1: and some research. We're not giving advice when it comes

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Speaker 1: to your child and peanuts.

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Speaker 2: So what did they actually find?

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Speaker 1: Let me give you the I'm not going to bury

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Speaker 1: the lead here. It is right now peanut allergies could

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Speaker 1: drop by seventy one percent with a brand new intervention

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Speaker 1: developed by some researchers at King's College in London.

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Speaker 2: Seventy one percent. That's huge.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So the intervention feeding kids peanuts, I know,

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Speaker 1: I know.

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Speaker 2: Can I just say it's interesting when we hear about

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Speaker 2: whether it's a peanut allergy or you know, someone's been

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Speaker 2: heard in a car accident, or it changes the way

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Speaker 2: we live.

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Speaker 1: Life, right, so you have it become really risk averse.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you hear that there's peanut allergies and all of

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Speaker 2: a sudden, all the peanuts get banned, right, or there's

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Speaker 2: a car accident down this particular road, Well that's an

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Speaker 2: unsafe road to travel on. We just we go so

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Speaker 2: polar extreme and this research studies suggesting that that may

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Speaker 2: be the case.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, here's what they did. What they basically said was

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Speaker 1: feed kids peanuts regularly from four months of age to

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Speaker 1: five years, and they're less likely to show up with

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Speaker 1: the with the allergy. Now, I need to note very

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Speaker 1: clearly when they're saying feed kids peanuts regularly from four months,

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Speaker 1: they're not saying give your four month old a peanut.

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Speaker 1: That would be potentially life altering, it could be catastrophic.

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Speaker 1: What they're saying is peanuts and peanut products. So consider

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Speaker 1: the developmental appropriateness of handing your child a peanut. If

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Speaker 1: they're too young to be able to chew, bite, swallow

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Speaker 1: a peanut, give them peanut paste, give them peanut butter,

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Speaker 1: give them some other nut oriented product, the things that

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Speaker 1: contain things that they're okay. And as they get older

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Speaker 1: and can suddenly and can chew those nuts, that's when

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Speaker 1: you start to give them the full monty, the whole nut. Basically,

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Speaker 1: what they found this is fascinating. This method works even

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Speaker 1: if your child never eats another peanut after the age

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Speaker 1: of five. I love this. So if you can get

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Speaker 1: your kid exposed to nuts in those first five years

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Speaker 1: and you don't have any reactions, which typically you won't

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Speaker 1: after the age of five, they made decide I don't

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Speaker 1: like peanuts, I never want to eat another nut again,

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Speaker 1: and they'll still be okay.

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Speaker 2: So how did they actually figure this out?

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Speaker 1: Okay? Professor Gideon Lack is a King's College, London research

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Speaker 1: He published this research of the New England Journal of

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Speaker 1: Medicine and what he found basically is avoiding so old.

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Speaker 1: The old story was avoid nuts. As you said, avoidance

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Speaker 1: is necessary. What he found in his study was that

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Speaker 1: avoiding nuts increases the risk of allergy. Doesn't reduce the risk.

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Speaker 1: It increases the risk of allergy. They had six hundred

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Speaker 1: and forty participants. They gave half of them nuts during

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Speaker 1: the first five years of their life. They gave the

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Speaker 1: other half nut all that Sorry, they didn't give the

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Speaker 1: kids nuts. They instructed parents to either give or not

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Speaker 1: give their children peanuts, and then they tested them at

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Speaker 1: age five to see if they had the allergy. There

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Speaker 1: was an eighty one percent reduced risk of allergy in

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Speaker 1: the nut group versus the no nut group. What's fascinating

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Speaker 1: to me though, is that they followed up at the

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Speaker 1: age of thirteen, So from this point on there's no

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Speaker 1: direction given whatsoever about whether you should or should not

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Speaker 1: eat nuts. Fifteen point four percent fifteen and a half

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Speaker 1: percent of those people who were avoided nuts in those

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Speaker 1: first five years were allergic to nuts. Wow, whereas only

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Speaker 1: four point four percent of nut eaters were allergic. So

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Speaker 1: to be clear, feeding your child nuts in the first

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Speaker 1: five years does not absolutely guarantee they will not have

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Speaker 1: the nut allergy, but it reduces the likelihood of the

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Speaker 1: peanut allergy by seventy one percent. That's huge, It's enormous.

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Speaker 1: So that's our study Number one, Feed your kids nuts.

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Speaker 1: Nuts are good.

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Speaker 2: I couldn't imagine living life without nuts. Get into nuts.

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Speaker 1: All right. Study number two, Social Media Use and the

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Speaker 1: Mental Health of Children and Adolescents.

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Speaker 2: I feel like every doctor's desk has a social media

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Speaker 2: or screen aspect to it. What's different about this study.

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Speaker 1: This is a smart study. It's been preregistered. There's a

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Speaker 1: control group who lives life as normal, and then there's

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Speaker 1: an intervention group in the intervention group. We've got one

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Speaker 1: hundred and eighty one children and adolescents in a Danish

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Speaker 1: study and their job is to do a two week

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Speaker 1: screen media reduction intervention. Okay, so basically the children and

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Speaker 1: adolescents hand in their smartphones and their tablets and they're

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Speaker 1: not allowed more than three hours of screens per week

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Speaker 1: per person.

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Speaker 2: You know that, and that just sounds like bliss it honest, you.

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Speaker 1: Were the most fluttered away. As you said it, your

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Speaker 1: eyes started to flutter and you're like, ah, so would

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Speaker 1: you like me to tell you what they found? Of course,

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Speaker 1: of course, fewer emotional symptoms. That is, children were better regulated.

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Speaker 1: There was less disregulation in the intervention group compared to

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Speaker 1: the control group.

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Speaker 2: I kind of want to say, d I know, I

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Speaker 2: really like this is it's so obvious.

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Speaker 1: Fewer peer problems. In other words, the children were just

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Speaker 1: better at social stuff and I won't say it again,

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Speaker 1: and more pro social behavior. Ah, kids are nice to

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Speaker 1: each other and they manage their emotions better when they

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Speaker 1: don't have as much access to screen.

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Speaker 2: Is amazing. I feel like we got a really huge

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Speaker 2: sense of this during COVID when everything shut down and

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Speaker 2: we just were able to kind of really tap into

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Speaker 2: family life together.

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Speaker 1: Well, some people did, but when the other direction and

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Speaker 1: screens became their lives, especially around schooling right, and some

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Speaker 1: people said this is killing us, got to get off

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Speaker 1: the screens. Whereas as you said, for us, we were

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Speaker 1: really conscious of bringing it down.

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Speaker 2: So what's your take on this?

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Speaker 1: My take, in a nutshell, Mike Zuckerberg and his colleagues

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Speaker 1: are colleagues. That's just far too polite a word for

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Speaker 1: who they are and what they are. Are responsible for

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Speaker 1: more unhappiness in our young people, and on a larger

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Speaker 1: scale than perhaps anyone else in human history. That's my take.

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Speaker 1: I absolutely cannot comprehend the pure mendacity, the deceitfulness, and

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Speaker 1: their ongoing manipulation of our families and our children and

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Speaker 1: young people's lives in search of attention economy dollars. They

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Speaker 1: are just absolutely, absolutely disgraceful. I blame the system, I

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Speaker 1: blame the politicians, But because nothing is happening unfortun as parents,

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Speaker 1: it lands on us, and if we're not doing something

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Speaker 1: about it, we are also unfortunately responsible. I was at

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Speaker 1: an event just the other day. I was giving a

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Speaker 1: talk and somebody told me that they're seven year olds

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Speaker 1: on Snapchat. Why because they're big brothers and sisters are

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Speaker 1: on Snapchat, And I just said no, Like, as a parent,

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Speaker 1: you've got a responsibility. Get your seven year old off Snapchat.

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Speaker 1: They don't need to be on roadblocks, they don't need

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Speaker 1: to be on Minecraft. More and more evidence is coming

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Speaker 1: out telling us that we at the very least need

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Speaker 1: to be breathtakingly cautious. But I think when you look

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Speaker 1: at a study like this one out of Denmark, we're

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Speaker 1: seeing really clearly. Just get the kids outside, get them

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Speaker 1: being physically active, have them involved in play, especially risky play,

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Speaker 1: and get them involved with other people. Children outside, not

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Speaker 1: in the house, not with a screen. They're going to

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Speaker 1: be so much better off, better emotionally regulated, more physically capable,

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Speaker 1: and they're also going to be more pro social as

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Speaker 1: a general rule.

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Speaker 2: Well, I'm going to lower your blood pressure because I

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Speaker 2: feel like it's our last study. We're talking about autism

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Speaker 2: and touch. This is quite intriguing.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so most people, most people do better with touch.

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Speaker 1: We had a Doctor's Desk episode where we talked about

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Speaker 1: the importance of touch. You got very excited in that one.

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Speaker 1: You got because if you're neurotypical and you get touched

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Speaker 1: as so long as it's consensual and it's the kind

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Speaker 1: of touch that you would like, Oh gosh, it just

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Speaker 1: feels good. Right. Italian researchers have looked at the difference

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Speaker 1: between neurotypical responses to touch and neurodivergent responses to touch

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Speaker 1: with people who are diagnosed.

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Speaker 2: Autistic and what did they find?

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Speaker 1: In a nutshell, lower physiological responses to touch, but higher

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Speaker 1: ratings for both pleasant and unpleasant touch. So, in other words,

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Speaker 1: it's really complicated. There's a lot of sensory issues around this,

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Speaker 1: and I think we probably need to dig deeper, especially

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Speaker 1: for any parent of an autistic child, or maybe maybe

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Speaker 1: even for any autistic parents who listen to the pod,

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Speaker 1: this will probably resonate and there'll be a few ah

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Speaker 1: kind of moments.

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Speaker 2: So why does touch actually matter?

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Speaker 1: Okay, so touch matters. We did discuss this briefly in

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Speaker 1: that last podcast, but let's talk about it. Number one,

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Speaker 1: it's really important to help establish and maintain relationships before

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Speaker 1: verbal skills have developed. Okay, so when you've got a

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Speaker 1: brand new baby, it's all about touch. Crucial role in

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Speaker 1: human communication, crucial role in social interaction, and it conveys

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Speaker 1: so much emotional and social meaning that promotes attachment, social affiliation, bonding,

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Speaker 1: and we know, especially if touch is consensual and it's

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Speaker 1: the kind of touch that somebody wants, there are really

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Speaker 1: pleasant effects like we feel we just feel really.

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Speaker 2: Good about that.

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Speaker 1: The question about autism though not particularly well answered, and

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Speaker 1: this study helps us to answer it.

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Speaker 2: So what did they do in the study?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, forty eight participants, twenty four with ASD and twenty

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Speaker 1: four typically developing controls participants.

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Speaker 2: With they it's quite a small group.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it is twenty four inch, but that's enough. That

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Speaker 1: is enough for us to get something meaningful here. Essentially,

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Speaker 1: participants they sat down, put their left arm on a table.

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Speaker 1: It was hidden from view by wooden panel so they

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Speaker 1: couldn't see it, and then each participant was touched on

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Speaker 1: their left forearm different types of touch. There was what's

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Speaker 1: called affective touch, which is slow gentle strokes and controlling

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Speaker 1: kinds of touch. So that was lots of tapping. That's

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Speaker 1: how you would characterize it, just tap tap, tap, tap tap.

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Speaker 1: So I'm in kind of annoying and not at all

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Speaker 1: like the affective slow gentle strokes. The experimenter delivered the

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Speaker 1: held I say, the experimental delivered the touch stimuli and record.

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Speaker 1: They had it all set up so they could record

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Speaker 1: the physiological responses of the participant using a device that

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Speaker 1: measured skin conductance, which is a pretty good way of

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Speaker 1: identifying whether or not there's any autonomic nervous system activity.

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Speaker 1: And in addition to having that skin conductance recorded, each

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Speaker 1: participant also rated the touch on how pleasant or unpleasant

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Speaker 1: it was, just using a numerical scale, so pretty basic,

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Speaker 1: really flexible. Allows participants to applause if they don't like it,

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Speaker 1: if they're overwhelmed, if they're feeling fatigued, and that kind

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Speaker 1: of thing.

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Speaker 2: And what was the outcome of the study?

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Speaker 1: In a nutshell, individuals with ASD showed lower overall skin

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Speaker 1: conductance compared to neurotypical participants, which means that there's a

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Speaker 1: lower autonomic response. And this is where I think it

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Speaker 1: gets really interesting. Well, typically developing participants had a higher

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Speaker 1: physiological response to affective touch compared to the controlling tapping touch.

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Speaker 1: That wasn't shown in the ASD group. In other words,

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Speaker 1: people with ASD did not show a distinct autonomic response

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Speaker 1: to the two different kinds of touch. It was basically,

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Speaker 1: you're touching me, full stop end, Sorry, you're touching me. Yes,

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Speaker 1: there is difference, but you are touching me. Whereas neurotypical

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Speaker 1: people were like, I like that one, I don't like

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Speaker 1: that one. Here's something really interesting though, despite the lack

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Speaker 1: of that physiological differentiation, individuals with ASD rated both the

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Speaker 1: affective and the control touch higher than typically developing participants

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Speaker 1: by our neurotypical participants, which means that they subjectively are

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Speaker 1: experiencing the touch more intensely on both the positive and

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Speaker 1: the negative scale. I think this is fascinating to look

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Speaker 1: at and it highlights.

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Speaker 2: But not at a physiological level like this is.

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Speaker 1: It's really curious, isn't it. So if you're a parent

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Speaker 1: of an autistic kid, I think what I would be

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Speaker 1: saying really is do you like it when I touch you?

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Speaker 1: How do you like to be touched? I think that

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Speaker 1: it just requires exploration with an acknowledgment that touch can

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Speaker 1: for a child who has any kind of sensory issues,

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Speaker 1: It can be overwhelming and frustrating and just too much.

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Speaker 1: So again, my main emphasis based on what this study

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Speaker 1: is showing is consent. Consent and conversation around touch are

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Speaker 1: going to be your best friends.

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Speaker 2: So three big studies today, we've talked about how to

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Speaker 2: lower our kids possibility of having a nut allergy by

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Speaker 2: actually exposing them to it from as four months.

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Speaker 1: Early as we just don't give them whole nuts at

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Speaker 1: four months.

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Speaker 2: Please, reducing screen use with our families is going to

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Speaker 2: deeply enhance.

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Speaker 1: We're going to have better kids, your.

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Speaker 2: Family connections and everything else that goes with it, right

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Speaker 2: and autistic children in touch.

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Speaker 1: This is a really intriguing I'm so glad that you

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Speaker 1: enjoyed our doctor's desk you normally complain about it, looks

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Speaker 1: like you actually got something out of this one. Each

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Speaker 1: of these studies will be linked in the show notes

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Speaker 1: so that you can get the details. For those of

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Speaker 1: you who are curious about learning more, we will link

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Speaker 1: to the actual scholarly article. The Happy Families podcast is

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Speaker 1: produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media. Mim Hammonds provides research,

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Speaker 1: admin and other support. If you would like to make

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Speaker 1: your family happier, check out the Parenting Revolution. It's available

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Speaker 1: wherever you buy your books, or visit us at Happy

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Speaker 1: families dot com. Do au