14 DAY TRIAL // Healthcare experts and parents alike have believed for a long time that giving sugar water to small children before various procedures may ease the little one's pains. That is simply not true, a new study suggests.
Sweet drinks apparently do little to quell the pain sensation, show the new investigation, which was conducted using brain imaging techniques.
The research team that conducted the new investigation, which is based at the University College London (UCL), says that the product only appears to be influencing the expressions the babies make.
The actual pain sensation is not gone or dampened, the team says. “All of us feel bad if we have to hurt a baby. The baby does, we do, the parents do,” says Dr Judith Meek.
“But if this is only masking what's going on, we need to think about it carefully,” adds the expert, who is a researchers on the investigation and a neonatologist at the UCL Hospital.
For the past two decades, sugar water has been used to calm babies for around two minutes, during which time physicians engaged in procedures such as drawing blood, putting in intravenous tubes, or carried out spinal taps.
The new findings are extremely important for children who need to be subjected to such experiences several times per day, because they are sick. The discoveries will force scientists to think of other methods of calming the pains the infants feel.
“If you have painful procedures done repeatedly while the brain is developing, the brain will change,” explains the scientist, quoted by MyHealthNewsDaily.
She reveals that these experiences may be altering the very make-up of the brain in the long run, exposing children to more risks as they grow old.
“If we think we're having an impact and we're not, that's worrying,” Meek adds. She reveals that her team conducted the new study by using electroencephalography (EEG).
The non-intrusive method relies on placing electrodes on the heads of children. For the new work, the sensors were turned on when blood was taken from the infants.
Half of the kids in the experiment were given sugar water, while the other half was not. In the end, the results showed no conclusive difference between the brains of infants in the two groups.
Had the sugar water had any effect, this would have become visible in the brain, researchers say.