This is Pedicast.

Welcome to Pediacast, a pediatric podcast for parents.

And now, direct from the campus of nationwide children's, here is your host, Dr. Mike.

Hello, everyone, and welcome.

Once again to Pediacast.

It's a pediatric podcast for moms and dads.

This is Dr. Mike coming to you from the campus of nationwide children's hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

It's episode 362 for December 7th, 2016.

We're calling this one toxic stress and concussion update.

I want to welcome everyone to the program.

We have two very different topics for you today, but they're both important.

And the first is going to be toxic stress.

You may have heard me batting this term around a little bit in recent episodes.

This whole idea that significant ongoing stress in a person's life, and particularly

in children, but in adults as well, that can lead to other problems, both physical and mental,

emotional, down the road, and sometimes very long down the road, because the

stress response sort of alters the chemicals in your body, including things like a cortisol,

which is one of your steroids inside your body, stress, you know, you feel different when

you're stressed. And you feel different because your chemicals are in a different balance,

and that can actually have health effects down the road.

So it's an important thing to talk about.

And in particular, we're going to consider communication and engagement as a family

...