It’s no big secret – we’re fatter and more prone to illness than ever before. And if you think adults are in bad shape, take a look at our kids.

It doesn’t bode well for the future.

And the biggest problem with our kids’ diets is not necessarily what they’re eating – it’s what they’re drinking.

New research finds that replacing soda and sugary drinks with cool, refreshing water can help significantly reduce the number of calories kids consume each day.

The study in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine found that when kids cut out the sugary drinks, they don’t replace those calories with extra food or snacks.

When you consider that sugary drinks make up 10 percent to 15 percent of a typical child’s daily caloric intake, that’s nothing to sneeze at.

In fact, the researchers found that replacing all of a child’s sugary drinks with H2O would cut about 235 calories from their diet each day.

Now, I know that raising kids ain’t exactly like raising cattle. You put out feed and water for animals, and they’ll pretty much eat and drink what you give them.

Kids have their own ideas about food, and they’re usually bad ones. I’ve had to fight those same battles with my own sons, so I know how hard it can be.

But the numbers don’t lie – give in to them now, and you can pretty much write their future health story for them, and it goes far beyond the obvious obesity problems.

Soda has been strongly linked to tooth decay, and some of its common ingredients have been tied to cell damage, liver disorders, and degenerative diseases.

These drinks have also been shown to cause lower calcium levels and higher phosphate levels in the bloodstream. As you age, that leads to bone loss and osteoporosis. For younger folks who drink a lot of soda, that could mean poor mineralization in the bones – and an increased risk of breaking those bones as a result.

And we haven’t even touched on the problems caused by drinking caffeine from an early age.

So turn your home into a soda-free zone (and that goes for diet soda, too). Just keep some water in the fridge, and you’ll always have a cool drink ready to quench any thirst.

Most importantly, talk to your kids about why you’re doing it.

Chances are, your kids won’t be impressed by your reasoning. They all think they’re pretty much invincible anyway, mine included. But think of it as a basic health issue on par with teaching them about substance abuse.

Yes, it’s that important.

I always enjoy watching the rest of medicine come around to my way of thinking.

The latest sign of common sense taking hold can be found in the journal Thorax, where a study shows a connection between nutritional deficiencies and asthma.

That makes perfect sense. Asthma, like many other conditions, is often the body’s cry for something it lacks.

In this case, the researchers found that asthma sufferers tend to be deficient in the antioxidant vitamins A and C. I’ve looked closely at their research, and not only is it solid, but it confirms much I’ve what I’ve found here at my practice.

But what I really like about this report is that it’s not based on just one study. These researchers actually looked at 40 studies conducted between 1980 and 2007 – nearly three decades of results – to reach their conclusion.

And when they did, they found that asthmatics had much lower levels of vitamin A – between a quarter and a third of the recommended daily dose.

The study also found that patients with severe asthma had lower levels of vitamin C than those with milder asthma. The severe asthmatics had around half of the recommended daily amount.

Having less C in the blood and eating less of the foods rich in it increased the risk of asthma by 12 percent.

The researchers also learned that deficiencies of vitamin E might help worsen asthma. People with less E – around 20 percent below the recommended dose – tended to have more severe asthma than those with higher levels of the vitamin in their blood.

I’ve had great success in helping asthmatics by focusing on allergies and nutritional deficiencies — and not just vitamins A, C, and E.

I’ve found that many of the folks who suffer from asthma lack magnesium. That’s one of the many problems with the modern diet – processed foods have very little of it, so people who eat too much of that garbage end up with a body crying out for help.

Simple lifestyle corrections and nutritional supplements can work wonders for asthmatics. I’ve seen plenty of people throw away their inhalers when they’ve gotten the nutrients they need for better breathing.

“Play nice and get along” may have been a lesson from preschool. But it turns out that it’s advice that might help you later in life, too.

A new study found that folks who are more active, more outgoing and less neurotic tend to live longer than everyone else. For women, being more empathetic and cooperative than other women may also lead to longer lives.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, also found that self-discipline and being open to new ideas appeared to play no role in longevity.

Now, there was one problem with this study. The researchers looked at the children of people who lived to be 100 – not the people who lived to be 100 themselves. They did this because it’s hard to follow centenarians for long periods of time, since they are more likely to die between interviews.

With a mean age of 75, these “children” were no spring chickens themselves. Previous studies have found that the offspring of centenarians tend to live longer than average as well. But the results still aren’t quite as good as they would have been if the researchers had managed to study the members of the 100+ Club directly.

There’s still some merit to this. A positive outlook and a support system of close friends and relatives can be significant factors in any battle against illness, especially as we age.

I wouldn’t suggest going out and making dramatic changes to your life and personality as a result of this study. But if you find that you could use some more friends, more activity and less stress, here’s one more incentive for you to reach those goals.

You’ll be happier and better off regardless of whether you make it to 100.

You’d like to think we know just about everything we need to when it comes to common drugs used to treat major illnesses.

But we don’t.

A new study shows that, yet again, we’re just now learning something about a drug we should have known before it ever was approved in the first place.

As it turns out, dopamine agonists, commonly used to treat Parkinson’s disease, can lead to pathological behavior such as compulsive gambling and hypersexuality. Now I’m not saying we should abandon our front line treatment for the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, but I am saying we should be a lot more careful about protecting patients from harmful side effects. You see, these types of meds have been around for a long time and I can’t help but wonder why did it take so long to uncover this side effect?

The study, carried out at the Mayo Clinic and published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, found that these compulsive behaviors may occur nearly 20 percent of the time in patients using therapeutic doses of the dopamine agonists.

Not only that, but because many compulsions often go unrecognized, the researchers believe the true number could be even higher.

Their study looked at 267 Parkinson’s patients, 38 of whom were being treated with therapeutic doses of a dopamine agonist. Of them, six men and one woman – 18.4 percent – developed compulsive gambling, hypersexuality, or both.

The researchers also noted other compulsive activity.

It took as little as one month for those behaviors to start showing up, and they often continued for years, in part because no initial connection was made to the drug.

What’s amazing is that none of the patients in the other treatment groups experienced these psychological conditions. None of them.

This isn’t the first study to make the link, but it’s the first to show it so clearly – and in such a high percentage of patients.

In the past, patients using these drugs have reported life-changing gambling and sexual behaviors, but no one took them very seriously. Meanwhile, some of these folks gambled away their life savings, or watch their marriages crumble, all because of an unreported side effect of a medication they were told would make them better.

Now, I hope these complaints won’t fall on deaf ears anymore.

And if that’s not bad enough, here’s something even more disturbing to consider: Dopamine agonists are also used to treat restless leg syndrome. No one has suggested a link between that use of these meds and these compulsive behaviors, but someone needs to start asking questions soon.

The problem, once again, is the FDA’s approve-first, ask-questions-later approach to drugs.