Childhood Obesity - Do you have an overweight child? We offer tips to help your child lose weight and get fit!

Spending more time in physical education classes helps overweight girls, according to a study funded by the National Center for Health Care Management.

Researchers kept track of the heights, weights and body mass indexes (BMIs) of 9750 children from kindergarten through first grade. In kindergarten, the majority of children spent 35 minutes a week in physical education. By first grade that increased to 68 minutes a week. Overweight girls and girls at risk for overweight benefited the most from the increase - they reduced their BMIs by a statistically significant amount. However, the extra time in physical education classes did not have much effort on overweight boys or normal weight childrens measurements.

Because of this study, Dr. Ashlesha Datar and her co-author Dr. Roland Sturm concluded that if all kindergarteners in the United States got at least five hours of physical education per week, the prevalence of overweight among girls would decrease by 4.3 percentage points (43%), and the prevalence of children at risk for overweight would decrease by 9.2 percentage points (60%). Currently only 16% of kindergarteners have physical education every day.

This was one of the first and only studies that proves increased time in physical education may help fight America's obesity epidemic among children.

This study appears in the American Journal of Public Health, September 2004 issue.

Labels: overweight, causes of childhood obesity, teens

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Norwegian teenagers who drink four or more sugary soft drinks a day are more likely to report mental distress, hyperactivity and conduct problems than teens who drink less.

Researchers at the University of Oslo who conducted the new study are not sure if soft drinks actually cause mental illness symptoms in teens. If the drinks are to blame, then researchers do not know whether it is the sugar or caffeine in them that is the actual culprit. Other studies have shown that sugar does not affect children with hyperactive disorders, despite what parents and teachers may believe.

Although the teens in the study who drank the most soda were in the worst shape in terms of hyperactivity and mental distress, teens who drank moderate amounts scored better than those who drank no soda at all.

The Oslo research team interviewed 5498 tenth graders ages 15 to 16 years old about their soda consumption, smoking habits, family structure, and food choices. The teens also answered the Hopkins Symptoms Checklist, which asks whether you feel anxious, panicky, tense, dizzy, sad, hopeless, and so forth. About 10% of the boys and 4% of the girls scored high for such problems. These children were more likely to consume four or more soft drinks per day. Other factors like smoking habits and food choices were not associated with the mental health problems.

Norwegians drink more soda or "fizzy drinks" as they call them, than any other people in the world. Dr. Lars Lien, author of the report, advises public policy makers to raise the price of the drinks so that teenagers can't afford them. This study appeared in the October 2006 issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

Labels: sodas, causes of childhood obesity

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The irreverent animated series South Park mocked fat camps in the episode "Fat Camp" - but it also captured some of the past failures of "fat camp" - a place where food was restricted and exercise forced, but no behavioral change was brought about in the overweight campers.

Those of you who watch SouthPark know that Cartman is often mocked for his weight - the cartoon boy is obese. In the "Fat Camp" episode he is forced to go to the camp, where he makes a deal with a kid at a drug rehab next door to smuggle in food, which he sells to the other kids at the fat camp. Disappointed parents bring home their still-fat kids and decide fat camp doesn't work.

The reality is these old-style fat camps don't work.

New weight loss camps have been developed in recent years that forego the overly restrictive diet and excessive exercise of fat camps in favor of a healthy, well-balanced diet that allows kids to lose weight without being miserably hungry and offer activities that are fun enough to encourage the child to embrace an active lifestyle.

Parents should look carefully if they are considering one of these camps this summer. Review the clinical program, qualifications of the directors and staff, and the healthiness of the diet (is it approved by the American Diabetic Association or other reputable organizations).

We know why fat camps don't work - so take care when choosing a weight loss camp for your child's summer adventure in health.

Labels: weight loss camps, fat camp

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A recent study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association confirms earlier research that suggests that children who watch fewer than two hours of television per day are less likely to be overweight than those children watching 16 or more hours of television per week.

Coupled with less television time, those children who ate more meals with their families tended to have fewer weight problems than those who didn't eat as many meals with the family. The authors speculate that those children who eat family meals not only eat healthier foods than they might eat otherwise, but may learn more about healthy eating behaviors in the family meal setting.

Labels: family meals, healthy eating, TV

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More adults than ever are undergoing stomach surgeries to lose weight. Now these same surgeries may become available to obese teens and children.

Four major children's hospitals are participating in a large-scale study this spring to determine if the surgeries can benefit young people. The Federal Food and Drug Agency approved the study in February 2007.

The surgical techniques to be used include gastric bypass, in which doctors staple a pouch off from the rest of the stomach and connect it to the small intestine. Another technique is laparoscopic gastric banding, in which doctors put an elastic collar around the stomach to limit food intake.

Children rarely undergo such operations because they are risky and the long-term results are unknown. Over 177,000 adults had such surgeries last year.

However, a small study done at New York University Medical Center found that teens could benefit. Doctors operated on 53 teenage boys and girls, who had an average weight of 297 pounds. Most lost over half their weight after their surgeries. However, fifteen had complications that were mostly minor. This study appears in the February 2007 issue of the Journal of Pediatric Surgery.

Other hospitals participating in the new experiment are University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Morgan Stanley Childrens Hospital of New York-Presbyterian.

Labels: weight loss surgery, gastric bypass, FDA

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Just saying no to television does not mean that your child will use that lost time to exercise, according to a new study from Harvard Medical School.

Researchers led by Elsie Taveras had over10,000 children ages 10 to 15 years fill out annual questionnaires about their television viewing during the four year study. Girls averaged about ten hours a week of TV; boys averaged about fourteen. However, if a child started to watch less television, he or she did not necessarily spend more time in physical activity.

"Television viewing and physical activities are separate constructs and not functional opposites," Taveras concluded. "Simply restricting viewing may not be effective in increasing physical activity."

This study appears in the February 2007 issue of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Labels: research, exercise

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Just recently, New York City passed a law to stop restaurants from using trans fats in food preparation. Trans fats are oils that have been hydrogenated from a liquid to a solid or semi-solid state, providing processed foods with a longer shelf life. Trans fats can be found in many processed foods such as baked goods and crackers, and also fried foods. They are more harmful for your body than saturated fats (a type of fat found in animal products), because they not only raise the body levels of "bad cholesterol" (LDL) but also lower the levels of "good cholesterol" (HDL).

The banning of trans fat is a good step. But health professionals caution that reducing trans fat in the diet isn't very helpful if it is replaced with saturated fat. For example, if restaurants replaced hydrogenated soybean oil (trans fat) with palm oil (50 percent saturated fat) for cooking fried foods, the health benefit would be marginal.

Consumers need to be aware of what kind of fats are present in foodsand how many calories are present as well, in order to lower weight and improve health.

Labels: nutrition, healthy eating, fats

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A recent study conducted by Northwestern University finds that children who don't get enough sleep are at a higher risk of being overweight.

"A study followed 2,000 kids for five years, and found that kids who get just one extra hour of sleep are four to 6% less likely to be overweight. They also found that the kids who were getting more sleep overall weighed less at the end of the five year study."

Another reason to get your kids to bed early. Read more online.

Labels: research, causes of childhood obesity, sleep

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A study in the February 2007 issue of the American Journal of Public Health found over a third of the nation's low-income three-year-olds are overweight. The study, funded by the National Institute of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, indicates Hispanic children are at the greatest risk.

This study was one of the first to look at the weights of toddlers. Other research has determined that 21% of American children over age five years are overweight - double the percent in 1971.

Drs. Rachel Timbro, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Sara McLanahan recorded the heights and weights of over 2800 children from 20 cities at ages birth, one year and three years. By age three, 44% of the Hispanic children were either overweight or obese, compared to 32% of white and black children. If a mother was obese herself, her child's odds of being overweight doubled. Allowing a child to go to sleep with a bottle also increased the odds. However, breast-feeding for six months or longer protected a child from getting too fat.

Factors that may have mattered did not. For instance, how much television a child watched or whether or not a child was in day care or cared at home by a parent did not increase or decrease his or her chances of overweight. Almost a fourth of the children in the study watched five or more hours of television per day.

The authors suspect that Hispanic mothers are more likely to pressure their children to eat too much because of a cultural belief that chubby children are healthier than thin ones.

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Country living may not be as healthy as it is cracked up to be.

A study for the National Center for Disease Statistics found that suburban people are the healthiest and live longest, city people come in second, and country residents are at the bottom.

People who live in rural areas fare worst on measures such as the number of overweight people, smokers, suicides, automobile fatalities and infant deaths. More country folk die before age 75 years than those who live in cities or suburbs. Rural residents carried less health insurance and yet were more at risk for lung disease, strokes and heart failure.

This study appears in the October 2004 issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

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Women who are overweight or obese may suffer more than their male counterparts.

A study published in the September 2006 American Journal of Public Health found that overweight and obese women were more depressed, died earlier and enjoyed fewer years of good health than their overweight or obese male counterparts. Nevertheless, overweight people of both sexes died much younger and lost years of "quality living" compared to people of normal weight.

Researchers led by Dr. Peter Munnig of Columbia University examined the medical records of 84,375 adults. They analyzed the records for weight-related deaths and number of years spent in poor health. Although more men than women in the study were overweight, there were more obese women.

The researchers concluded that overweight men in the United States lost 47,000 years of life compared to one million lost by women. Overweight women had 6.6 times higher burden of disease compared to their male counterparts.

The implications are that if the majority of Americans continue to be overweight or obese, women will no longer continue to outlive men. Statistically, overweight children grow up to become overweight adults. Since so many American children are overweight, this means that their life expectancies will probably be shorter than those of their parents and grandparents.

The authors concluded that "overweight has a profound impact on both the length and quality of life."

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Teenage girls notoriously dislike gym class and exercise. However, a new study shows that they are more likely to be physically active if they come from a close family that supports their need to exercise.

Researchers studied over two hundred high school girls from Baltimore, MD. Eighty-three percent were African American, a group at higher risk for overweight and obesity than the general population. Family intimacy, sharing and support were important predictors of whether the girls were physically active.

The researchers expected neighborhood violence and crime to affect the girls' levels of activity, but that was not the case.

The National Institute of Health funded this study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, January 2007.

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