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

A small study from Kansas State University links asthma to childhood obesity and inactivity.

Sara Rosenkranz and her colleagues recruited 40 healthy children to fill out questionnaires about their activities and to undergo lung function and body composition tests. The children who had elevated levels of body fat and who reported low levels of physical exercise were more likely to have asthma-like symptoms after they exercised. None of the children had been diagnosed with asthma.

"Kids who are overweight and inactive are having - even at the age of 8 to 10 years old - a negative response to exercise challenge tests, which might be contributing to the increase that we have been seeing over the past several decades in asthma prevalence as well as obesity prevalence," Ms. Rosenkranz said.

Labels: inactivity, side-effects, asthma

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Recent studies have linked child and teen obesity to sleep problems, reduced quality of life, and higher rates of breathing complications during surgeries. One study from St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia found that obese children between the ages of 8 and 12 had "poorer scores for sleep onset delay, sleep-disordered breathing, sleep duration, and daytime sleepiness, compared to children who were overweight or healthy weight."

The same obese children consistently reported lower overall scores for psychosocial factors and total quality of life. Kelly Ann Davis, lead researcher, commented, "In this study, sleep and weight each contributed unique variance for quality of life scores, thus indicating the need to evaluate daytime functioning in children with both obesity and sleep problems."

Research has shown that obesity increases a child's risk of developing OSA, or obstructive sleep apnea. This sleep-related breathing disorder actually causes the child to stop breathing for periods of time while sleeping. Although OSA mainly disrupts sleep, it is serious and can be fatal if left untreated.

A second study, released in 2008 by the University of Michigan Healthy System, found a significant correlation between childhood obesity and breathing complications during surgery. Obese children were more likely to experience "difficult mask ventilation, airway obstruction, major oxygen desaturation (a decrease in oxygen in the patient's blood), and other airway problems."

Labels: sleep, side-effects, quality_of_life

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Annually, over five million children suffer with ear infections. A new study has found that childhood ear infections could damage taste nerves and increase the risk for obesity.

"When ear infection pathogens damage the main sensory taste nerve it can intensify sensations produced by fatty foods. This heightens the preference for those foods and can lead to weight gain, [Linda] Bartoshuk said."

University of Florida researchers found that children who had had ear infections were 14 percent more likely to enjoy sweet foods than those without ear infections. They also like high-fat foods 18 percent more than those without ear infections. Source: MediLexicon

Labels: side-effects, fatty-foods, ear-infections

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Prescription data from three organizations shows that a growing number of American children are taking medications for obesity-related conditions.

"The numbers... indicate that hundreds of thousands of children are taking medication to treat type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and acid reflux - all problems linked to obesity that were practically unheard of in children two decades ago."

The greatest increase was in type 2 diabetes medication, which saw a 151 percent jump between 2001 and 2007. Source: The New York Times

Labels: diabetes, medications, side-effects

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