A team from the National Institutes of Health recently reported that the current teen generation is likely to be the first generation whose life expectancy will not increase. This fact is largely due, they say, to the surge in childhood obesity.

"'Obesity prevention starts prenatally,' [Mary Margaret Gottesman, RN, PhD, CPNP, PNP] says. 'Although we don't understand exactly the mechanism, we have found that maternal overweight is a big predictor of overweight children.'"

Gottesman and others recommend that nurses, who perform height and weight checks during office visits, should input the data into a BMI (body mass index) calculator and keep an on-going record of each child's BMI, alerting a parent or guardian if the child is at risk of becoming overweight or obese. She also supports nutritional discussions with the whole family during wellness check-ups. Read more at News.Nurse.com.

Labels: body_mass_index, lifestyle, prevention