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

Nine-year-olds who demonstrate self-control are less likely to be overweight as teenagers, according to a new study in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

• Researchers used data on 844 children enrolled in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development.
• When the children were nine years old, parents and teachers rated them on a three-point scale on measures of self-control, such as "controls temper during arguments" and "keeps room neat."
• By age 15 years old, one-third of the children were overweight. This group had self-control measures of 1.2 at nine years old compared to 1.35 for teenagers who were normal weight.

The study appears in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.
 

Labels: self-control, childhood_health

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Families whose children are overweight do not behave differently or have different attitudes toward food compared to families whose children are of normal weight, according to a study from the Food Marketing Institute.

• Researchers looked at five factors such as how much the children influence food purchases, how often the children go shopping for food with their parents, how often children play outside, and how important it was to parents that their children stay slim.
• There were few differences between families with overweight children and families with normal weight children.
• One was that the overweight group tended to make children "clean their plates" and have more rules around eating.
• A slightly higher percentage of normal weight children play outside more often than the overweight group.
   

Labels: families

Posted By: Jane St. Clair 0 Comments

If the government imposes a tax on sugary drinks, the average American child would lose 4.5 pounds a year, according to a new study from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The average adult would lose 3.8 pounds, and the percent of overweight people would decline from 67% to 62%, the study's author's reported

According to the New York Times, the beverage industry spent $9.4 million to oppose a tax that would have only affected people in the state of New York.
 

Labels: sodas, taxes, soft_drinks

Posted By: Jane St. Clair 0 Comments

It may be easier to tell if a child is overweight simply by measuring his neck rather than calculating his or her body mass index (BMI), according to a new study from the University of Michigan.

• Dr. Olubkola Nafia studied of ,children ages 6 to 18 years old and found a link between larger necks and above average BMIs.
• A six-year-old boy whose neck circumference is greater than 11.22 inches and a girl that age whose neck is over 10.62 inches are probably overweight.
• For 18 year olds, those figures are 15.35 for boys, and 13.62 for girls.

Dr. Nafia pointed out that measuring the neck is a very quick procedure for doctors to perform, and not as invasive as measuring the waist.

The study appears in the journal Pediatrics.
 

Labels: childhood_obesity, overweight, bmi

Posted By: My Overweight Child 0 Comments

When middle schools offer healthy foods in their cafeterias and add more hours of physical education, student rates of obesity and diabetes go down, according to a major study from Temple University.

• Researchers studied 4,600 children for three years.
• The average age of the students was 11 years old, and they attended 63 middle schools.
• There were no interventions at the 21 schools used as a control group.
• In the remaining 42 schools, students had healthier food choices in their cafeterias, including foods that are high in fiber and low in fat, fruits and vegetables, and water or low-fat milk as beverages.
• They also received a minimum of 225 minutes of physical education every ten days and educational programs promoting healthy behaviors.

Overweight students in the schools that had the interventions were 21percent less likely to become obese. Although all the schools in the study had similar declines in the percentage of overweight and obese students, schools that had the interventions showed improvements in obesity, measurement waistlines and fasting insulin levels.

The study appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine.
 

Labels: schools

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Children who are poorly coordinated are three times more likely to be overweight, according to a new study from Canada.

"Developmental coordination disorder" involves problems with both fine and gross motor skills and affects 5% of all children. These children have difficulty with sports, personal care, and handwriting.

Dr. John Cairney, author of the study, said that the disorder is often considered "a playground disorder that can be relegated to a secondary position in the universe of children's health concerns. These results, along with other recent research, suggests that this is no longer acceptable."

This study appeared in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
 

Labels: causes of childhood obesity, physical_activity

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A study from Consumer Reports concluded that prescribing cholesterol-lowering drugs to children may not be worth the risk to their health.

The authors noted that no long-term studies can prove that the pediatric use of statin drugs reduces risk of heart disease in adulthood. No one knows the long-term effects of these drugs on a child's developing central nervous system, immune system, organs, and hormones. The authors concluded, however, that the decision to use statins must be based on each individual case, and is in the hands of the child's physician and parents.

"Contrary to what many consumers believe, we don't have solid medical evidence supporting the use of statins in children, and there is no long-term safety data tracking kids who take statins for ten or 20 years," said Dr. John Santa, director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center.
 

Labels: cholesterol, childhood_health, medications

Posted By: Aspen Education Group 0 Comments

In what could be a breakthrough study, British researchers have concluded that children are overweight because they overeat, not because they don't get enough exercise. Once children are overweight, they will tend to exercise less. The conclusion of the research is that overeating causes overweight and lack of exercise follows once a child is too heavy.

The study has implications for public policy, because the British government has been increasing the number of minutes students have for physical education.

"More activity does not lead to weight loss," said Professor Terence Wilkin, one of the authors of the study.

Dr. Wilkin and his colleagues at Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth tracked 200 children from age seven to ten years old. The children wore devices to measure their physical activity. If a child was 10% fatter than average at age seven, he reduced his physical activity by an average four minutes a day by age ten.

"Our findings suggest that rather than giving children ever increasing doses of physical activity, we should first question the basic paradigm that more physical activity leads to less fat," according to the study published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.
 

Labels: overeating, causes of childhood obesity, exercise

Posted By: Jane St. Clair 0 Comments

More children are developing gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD)  because more children are overweight, according to a study from Kaiser Permanente health care system.

The study found that obese children have a 40  higher risk for the condition than average, and moderately overweight children increase their risk by 30.

Symptoms of GERD include heartburn, persistent cough, asthma, and inflammation of the larynx. A small percent of those who have the disease will develop cancer of the esophagus, which is currently increasing faster than any other kind of cancer.

Labels: health

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Community interventions that promote increased exercise and healthy eating for overweight children work best with very small children, according to a study from Deakin University in Australia.

• Dr. Boyd Swinburn and his colleagues studied more than 12,000 children, and found that interventions lose effectiveness as the children get older.
• They were most effective with children under five, and achieved few results for children in elementary and high schools.
• Children in the preschool group had rates of overweight and obesity at 3 percent less than the control group.
• Some of the older children who participated in community interventions had slower levels of weight gains.

"Once you get to high school aged children, trying to implement an intervention at the whole community level becomes more difficult." Dr. Swinburn said during his presentation at the International Congress on Obesity.
 

Labels: childhood_obesity, nutrition, prevention, exercise

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About two million prescriptions for cholesterol-lowering drugs were written for overweight children last year. However, the Consumer Reports Health Rating Center recently released a report that said, these drugs, known as statins, have no proven record of safety or effectiveness when used on young children. No one knows the harm that drugs might do to a child's developing organs, and no one knows if they prevent heart disease in adulthood, according to the report.

In 2008, the American Academy of Pediatrics okayed the drugs for children ages eight years old and above, and advised doctors to give cholesterol tests to even two-year-olds at risk for obesity.

Dr. John Santa, a medical doctor who works for Consumer Reports, is telling parents that he might not want to use cholesterol-lowering drugs on children who have no risk factors for heart disease. Risk factors include being overweight or obese, diabetes, a family history of heart disease and smoking. He advises parents to discuss the situation with their doctors and try to help the children lower their cholesterol levels through diet and exercise before using drugs.
 

Labels: cholesterol, medications

Posted By: Jane St. Clair 0 Comments

A study of more than 4,500 adults found that high fructose corn syrup may increase a person's risk for high blood pressure. (Also known as hypertension, high blood pressure is one of the more common negative health effects of obesity.)

• Dr. Diana Jalal and her colleagues at the University of Colorado Denver Health Sciences Center combed through the health records of participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of 2006.
• The researchers found a link between drinking 74 grams or more of fructose a day, the equivalent of 2.5 soft drinks, with higher blood pressure.
• They factored out age, smoking history, physical activity level, and salt and alcohol intake.

Spokespeople from the Corn Refiners Association and the American Beverage Association criticized the study as one that "furthers the confusion and misunderstandings about high fructose corn syrup." Dr. George Bakris, president of the American Society of Hypertension and a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, said that all sugars and a lack of exercise contribute to hypertension.

This study appeared in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
 

Posted By: My Overweight Child 0 Comments

When obese children are admitted to hospitals, most of the doctors do not record that they are overweight. Thus these children miss out on procedures such as screenings for cholesterol and diabetes, and education about nutrition and exercise.

• Dr. Anshu Gupta of the Virginia Commonwealth University, studied 80 children under age 18 who were admitted to a pediatric unit in a city hospital during a period of ten weeks.
• Although 30 of the children were obese and nine were overweight, doctors recorded such information about only four children.
• Only one child was referred to a clinic for obesity outpatient treatment.

Dr. Gupta notes that his study is problematical because obese children may be hospitalized at higher rates than children of normal weight.

The study was presented at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society.
 

Labels: health, hospitals, doctors

Posted By: Aspen Education Group 0 Comments

As concern about childhood obesity continues, some schools have begun requiring that students be weighed and measured to have their Body Mass Index (BMI) calculated. If a child’s BMI is high, a “report card” is sent home to the parents. Some feel that this goes beyond a school’s authority and responsibility.

“Calculating body mass index has nothing to do with teaching students history and English and math – things that public schools… would do well to focus on. it presumes – with no compelling rationale – that teachers are reliable trustees for health-related information, and that the public school system will offer reliable follow-up for those children deemed to be overweight or physically unfit.” [Source: Fox News]

Opponents of the practice also worry that it will further stigmatize kids who are overweight, and no real benefit will come as a result of the assessments.

Labels: schools, bmi, body_mass_index

Posted By: Stefanie Hamilton 1 Comment

A study out of Montreal, Canada, has found that an increasing number of young people are using their bedrooms as “junk food havens” where they can eat whatever they want, without any adult supervision.

In the study of 534 10- to 12-year-olds, the Universite de Montreal researchers found that 58 percent of boys eat once in a while or every day in their bedroom, compared with 48 percent of girls. And when the researchers asked the kids what they ate, they were astonished by the responses.

The boys were more likely to wolf down pastries, ice cream, hamburgers, pizza, chips, French fries and soft drinks. [Source: The Montreal Gazette]

Very few of the boys or girls surveyed ate anything healthy while in their rooms, and many of them ate in front of a television or computer screen. Researchers encouraged parents to make family meals a priority, and to make them healthy. Parents are also encouraged to replace junk food with healthier snacks like fruits and vegetables.

Labels: parenting, junk food, family meals

Posted By: Stefanie Hamilton 0 Comments

Childhood obesity has reached epidemic status in the United States. Nearly one-third of all children are overweight or obese. Jacksonville, Florida – along with 70 other cities – will participate in a new initiative that aims to address obesity issues by adjusting existing social policy, rather than launching new programs.

“Among some of the changes sought by the initiative is a citywide policy that would make streets safer and more inviting for bicyclists and pedestrians. With Jacksonville recently ranked as the nation’s fourth-deadliest city for pedestrians, walking to school – or anywhere, for that matter – has become a dangerous and less-often used method of transportation.” [Source: The Florida-Times Union]

The initiative also seeks to keep schools open later in the day so that gyms and playgrounds are accessible. Members of the Healthy Kids, Healthy Jacksonville initiative admit there are obstacles to overcome with the schools, but say it’s an important component of the overall strategy.

Labels: prevention, awareness, community

Posted By: Stefanie Hamilton 0 Comments

The continued growth of American teenage waistlines has both parents and professionals willing to consider every possible option for healthy teen weight loss. One option that has been successful with adults, but isn’t yet approved for teens, is gastric band surgery. But some worry that the risks are greater than the benefits.

The company [Allergan] has an application in with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration seeking approval to market the device to teens as young as 14. A decision could come any time. Winning regulatory approval for the gastric band in teenagers would allow companies that make the devices – Allergan, Johnson & Johnson and others – to target that specific age group.

Today, regulators consider performing the procedure on the teens ‘experimental’ [Source: Reuters]

Teens can still undergo gastric band surgery, with written consent from a doctor, but if the FDA approves Allergan’s request, the surgery will be available to teens with or without physician approval.

Labels: gastric band, teenagers, surgeries

Posted By: Stefanie Hamilton 1 Comment