How to avoid Halloween tummy aches

The scenario: The kids, having returned from trick-or-treating, are sitting on the floor eating a mound of candy as fast as they can. What comes next? The inevitable stomachache.

At Halloween, “kids sometimes just eat too much candy, which often is loaded with sugar. The sugar level in youngsters’ blood stream rises dramatically, which causes release of insulin,” says Chris J. Dickinson, M.D., chief of pediatric gastroenterology at the University of Michigan Health System. When the candy is gone from their system and the insulin is still around, “kids get hypoglycemic . . . and often feel very sick.”

How do you distinguish between harmless and serious tummy aches? One general rule to follow is “if it’s pain, leave it alone,” says Dickinson. When a child experiences fever, vomiting or diarrhea with their stomachache, a parent will want to have a doctor evaluate their child. For more information, contact Andi McDonnell at (734) 764-2220 or andreakm@umich.edu.

Why we Like to be Scared

People enjoy getting “spooked” in haunted houses and scared by ghost stories, but do you ever wonder why it is so stimulating? Stephen Maren, U-M professor of psychology, is studying the fear response in rats, which helps explain what happens with the human brain when people are scared.

“For instance, if you show humans scary faces, the amygdala, a part of the brains temporal lobe, ‘turns on,’ and you see an increase in blood flow in the amygdala,” Maren says. “Similarly, if you present rats with a stimulus that they learn to fear, rats show much more activity in the amygdala.

“The amygdala is hooked up to a number of other brain areas that generate fear responses—freezing or immobility, increase of heart rate and blood pressures, pupilary dilation, perspiration and stress hormone release.” For more information on understanding the “psychology of being scared,” contact Maren at (734) 936-6532 or maren@umich.edu.

Blood, Gore and Popular Culture Invade Halloween

Suddenly, you spot a man with a 12-inch knife protruding from his head trotting down the street with Xena the Warrior Princess?you’re not dreaming; it’s popular media taking over Halloween. U-M English Prof. Eric Rabkin is an authoritative source on how Halloween “fosters the popularity of diverse images” and how it developed into the guts, gore and popular culture event that it is today.

“We are in a period where brutality sells for shock value, probably fostered in part by the move to have news which has always covered war, crime and disaster being re-imagined, not as civic involvement but as entertainment,” Rabkin says. “Halloween, for historical reasons, authorizes children to ape the monstrous and play at shocking. Today, that means cranial chain saws.” For more information, contact Rabkin at (734) 764-2553 or esrabkin@umich.edu.

pediatric gastroenterologyandreakm@umich.eduStephen Marenmaren@umich.eduEnglishesrabkin@umich.edu