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

Overweight children have stiffer central arteries than do normal weight children, according to a new study from the Medical College of Georgia.

Dr. Catherine Davis and her colleagues examined 44 overweight children ages 8 to 11 years old and found that those with higher body mass indexes had less compliant arteries.

"It basically shows that the roots of the disease that may cause a heart attack at 40 or 50 or 60 years old are already growing in a child," Dr. Davis said. "It turns out that fat tissue is an organ, rather than just a silent mass. It is an active organ, secreting inflammatory factors and so forth."

The study was presented at the Society of Behavioral Medicine meeting.

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According to a new report in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, obese patients with colon cancer are at great risk for death or recurrent disease compared to patients who are within the normal weight range. The report, from researchers at the Mayo Clinic, was the topic of a March 11 ScienceDaily article.

For the study, researchers evaluated 4,381 patients with stage II or stage III colon cancer who had received adjuvant chemotherapy in clinical trials. Twenty percent of the patients were obese.

"Obesity has long been established as a risk factor for cancer, but our study in colon cancer patients shows that obesity predicts a poorer prognosis after the cancer is surgically removed," said researcher Frank A. Sinicrope, M.D., a professor of medicine and oncology at the Mayo Clinic.

The study also found that the link between obesity and a poor prognosis was more pronounced in men than in women.

"We do not know if this is due to biology or the way we measure obesity," Sinicrope said. "Body mass index is a limited measure and there is evidence that abdominal fat may be a better predictor of colon cancer risk and perhaps prognosis in men than in women. There is also the potential influence of menopausal status and hormone replacement therapy in women."

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The number of adults under age 30 in Great Britain who were admitted to hospitals because of obesity-related causes increased by 340 percent in the past five years. More than 800 children admitted to hospitals because of their weight since 2004.

"This absolutely horrendous rise shows what happens as yesterday's adolescents bring their bad habits -- junk food, lack of exercise, binge drinking -- into adulthood," said Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum.

Norman Lamb, a Liberal Democrat health spokesperson called the statistics "utterly shocking" and expressed concern about medical costs.

"The pattern among young people is particularly alarming," he said, "because of what it shows about the problems ahead, not just for the individuals involved, but for the National Health Service, which will be bankrupted because of obesity, unless there is drastic action."

The quotes and other information in this post originally appeared in an Aug. 22 article by Laura Donnelly of the British newspaper The Telegraph.

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According to a July 9 USA Today article, hospitalizations rates for overweight and obese children have dramatically increased in the first half of the current decade:

The number of hospitalizations of kids and teens, ages 2 to 19, with a primary or secondary diagnosis of obesity nearly doubled between 1999 and 2005, climbing from 21,743 to 42,429, according to a study published Thursday on the Health Affairs website.

These were stays for obesity-related conditions such as asthma, diabetes, gallbladder disease, pneumonia, skin infections, pregnancy complications, depression and other mental disorders.

USA Today also reported that hospitalization costs for overweight and obese children rose from about $126 million in 2001 to about $238 million four years later.

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A study published in the June 1st issue of the journal SLEEP found that waist size and BMI (Body Mass Index) are consistent, independent risk factors for all severity levels of sleep disordered breathing (SDB) in children.

According to principal investigator Edward O. Bixler, PhD, of Penn State University College of Medicine in Hershey, Penn., it is assumed that the primary mechanism of SDB in children is the presence of large tonsils or adenoids. The study suggests, however, that the causes of SDB in children are more complex, that there may be a systematic influence of obesity. (Source: Red Orbit)

The study included data from 700 children between the ages of five and 12 years who were monitored for one nine-hour period in a sleep laboratory. Obesity-related sleep disorders can inflict severe damage on an individual's health, and are among the many health problems facing overweight and obese teens.

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CBS3 in Philadelphia reported on new research that shows a link between childhood obesity and build up of fluid in the middle ear.

"Severely over-weight children who have related problems, like elevated cholesterol, also have increased rates of inner ear fluid build up, but researchers are not sure how to explain the connection."

Read more online.

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Most parents would do anything to decrease their children's risk of behavioral problems, psychosocial stress, alcohol use, and sexual experimentation. But most don't know that one thing that they can do to delay or eliminate these problems for girls is to prevent obesity.

Sound strange? Not when you consider that recent research suggests that childhood overweight and obesity may be contributing to earlier onset of puberty in girls, some as early as 9 years old. And many previous studies have shown that early puberty is associated with stress and behavioral problems as well as earlier experimentation with alcohol and sexual activity.

Labels: health problems, puberty, substance abuse

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Another outgrowth of the childhood obesity epidemic is that surgeons are seeing more and more overweight and obese children in the operating room. In fact, a recent study of records from over 6.000 pediatric surgeries performed at the University of Michigan hospital in Ann Arbor revealed that nearly a third of them were performed on overweight or obese children.

The problem with this? Those who are overweight or obese have a greater frequency of problems during and after surgery. One complication that is more prevalent in overweight people, including children, is post-surgical wound infection.

Labels: health problems, obesity surgery

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