Posts Tagged ‘childhood obesity’

Childhood Obesity Linked to Heart Disease

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

The Wall Street Journal continues their examination on the obesity pandemic gripping our Nation’s youth. A new study finds links between childhood obesity and heart disease.

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Obese children as young as age 3 show signs of an inflammatory response that has been linked to heart disease later in life, researchers said, in a finding that is likely to further stoke concerns about childhood obesity.

The results suggest that obesity-related disease processes may start earlier than previously believed. Nearly 30% of obese 3-to-5-year-olds had elevated blood levels of C-reactive protein—a widely studied marker for inflammation—compared with 17% of healthy-weight kids of the same age. The disparities widened as children aged, according to the study, which is being published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

“It’s really important to be concerned about childhood obesity and to even be concerned when they are quite young,” said Asheley Skinner, a professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, who was the first author of the study. “We can’t wait until they’re adolescents or adults.”

In the U.S., 14% of 2-to-5-year-olds are considered overweight, or at the 85th percentile or greater of weight for height in their age group.

C-reactive protein, or CRP, has been shown to help predict risk of heart disease, stroke and death under certain conditions, according to the American Heart Association. Previous studies have found that overweight and obese adults show elevated levels of CRP, but less has been known about CRP in children.

The study examined three markers that measure different aspects of inflammation, including CRP, in more than 16,000 children nationwide between the ages of 1 and 17. By ages 15 to 17, CRP was elevated in about 60% of obese teens, compared with 18% of teens of healthy weight. The increase was even more pronounced for very obese kids, with nearly 43% of young children and 83% of teens showing CRP elevation.

A similar pattern of elevation was observed for the other two inflammatory markers, though one of the markers wasn’t elevated in obese children until the age of 6.
It isn’t known whether elevated CRP in young children will predict heart disease in adulthood. Such a study, which would involve following overweight and obese children until adulthood, hasn’t been done, Dr. Skinner said. But, she said there wasn’t any evidence to suggest that CRP response would be different in children than in adults; its response in the body is the same regardless of age. Inflammation is the body’s immune response to infection or injury.

The concern of finding CRP elevation in such young children is that its effects could be cumulative. Future research is needed to investigate whether that is the case, and also whether losing weight could reduce CRP response in kids, according to Dr. Skinner. This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.


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The First Lady Tackles Obesity

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

The Wall Street journal ran an article today highlighting one of the causes that the First Lady, Michelle Obama, is pursuing: taking on obesity among the nation’s youth. A noble and just cause, the First Lady is bringing some much need attention to a growing national problem.

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WASHINGTON—First lady Michelle Obama on Tuesday plans to unveil a campaign to fight childhood obesity, a cause that is becoming her top policy priority.

Her campaign is part of a government effort to reframe the debate about the nation’s expanding waistlines. Top health officials, including Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, say they want to shift the conversation away from achieving a particular weight or dress size and instead emphasize the benefits of good nutrition and physical activity.

In an event at the White House scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, Ms. Obama plans to outline an effort months in the making to improve childhood nutrition and physical activity. The White House in recent days has contacted some of the nation’s largest food companies to prepare them for its push.

The U.S. obesity rate grew rapidly through the 1980s and 1990s, but figures released last month show the increase has slowed. About two-thirds of Americans are counted as either overweight or obese, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

Officials say that despite years of new regulations, the government still lacks an effective strategy to tackle the issue. One problem is that messages about avoiding unhealthy food tend to turn off Americans.

“As America’s family doctor, I want to change the national conversation from a negative one about obesity and illness to a positive conversation about being healthy and being fit,” Dr. Benjamin says in a message posted on her Web site. That means Americans should eat nutritious foods, exercise regularly “and have fun doing it,” she says.

Ms. Obama’s plan has four planks, according to people briefed on it. She wants to improve nutrition and physical education in schools; promote activity such as walking and biking in community planning; make healthy food more available, particularly in poor areas; and make nutrition information on food packages clearer.

About one-third of American adults are considered obese, while about two-thirds are counted as either overweight or obese

Some local governments and food companies themselves have in recent years taken steps intended to fight obesity. They have curbed marketing to children, sought to remove trans fats from foods, and some cities and states have required restaurants to post the calorie and fat content of their offerings.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture also is considering restricting the sale of certain sugary drinks and salty snacks in school vending machines, amplifying restrictions already in place throughout many schools nationwide.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa), said Monday he had spent at least 15 years trying to impose tighter regulations to prevent childhood obesity and had seen many of his efforts fail, including a 1996 push to remove vending machines from schools and a move two years ago to ban soft drinks from schools.

But he held out hope that the popular first lady would fare better. “When she does these kinds of things, it gets a lot more attention than if I do it,” Sen. Harkin said.
Republicans have expressed concern that efforts to combat obesity could impede on personal freedom.

“You don’t want the federal government to overstep its bounds,” said Rep. Mary Bono (R., Calif.). “I don’t believe that we should become the nanny state and start restricting dietary choices.”

In one example of ways policy makers are seeking to shift the debate to focus on being healthy at any size, Ms. Bono is working on a bill with Rep. Ron Kind (D., Wis.) that would, among other things, call for government health programs to pay more attention to body mass index, a measure comparing height and weight used as a rough guide to determining who is overweight.

Restaurant chains, packaged-food companies and supermarkets in recent years have sought to show they are serious about combating obesity as a wave of lawsuits alleged they were helping to make people fat. Kraft Foods Inc. stopped marketing certain products to children under 12 years old; chains such as McDonald’s Corp. and Burger King Holdings Inc. added items like apples and carrot sticks.
Some of the efforts have drawn criticism; several food manufacturers stopped placing “Smart Choices” labels on products last year after the Food and Drug Administration said the labels could mislead consumers about the foods’ health benefits.

Food makers said they would be part of the first lady’s effort.

The White House on Friday held a conference call with restaurant chains including Doctor’s Associates Inc.’s Subway sandwich chain and Yum Brands Inc., parent of KFC and Taco Bell, and asked for feedback, according to companies on the call.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents packaged-food makers and some retailers, said its members have reformulated 10,000 products in recent years to reduce levels of calories, fat and sodium.

“Childhood obesity is a serious health crisis that can’t be solved without strong leadership from the White House,” said Scott Faber, the group’s vice president for federal affairs.


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3 Simple Steps to Combat Childhood Obesity

Monday, February 8th, 2010

cause-of-childhood-obesity

Childhood obesity is an emerging topic in our national conversation, with the First Lady even weighing in recently. Americans are recognizing that a health crisis quickly approaching epidemic levels is sweeping across the nation. With schools cutting gym classes, kids living increasingly sedentary lifestyle, and the ubiquitous presence of unhealthy foods and drinks our nations youth are at risk.

TIME magazine ran an article on three simple things families can do to combat childhood obesity. Read on and see if you agree.

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To curb the childhood-obesity epidemic, health experts have long urged parents to make healthy changes to their family’s lifestyle — such as eating nutritiously, reducing TV time, exercising and getting a good night’s sleep.

Individually, these behaviors have been linked to a lower risk of obesity in kids, but researchers at Ohio State University were interested in learning whether their effect might be cumulative — that is, whether families who adopted not just one but two or more of these behaviors could reduce their children’s risk of obesity even further.

Led by epidemiologist Sarah Anderson, researchers analyzed data on 8,550 4-year-olds in a national study and found that, indeed, children who practiced two healthy lifestyle behaviors were slimmer than those who adopted only one behavior, while youngsters who implemented three beneficial habits were the least likely to be overweight. “The more of these routines the children had, the lower was their risk of obesity,” Anderson says. “If children had all three routines, their risk of obesity was 40% lower than children who had none of the routines.”

The three behaviors Anderson studied were eating dinner regularly with the family, limiting the amount of time spent in front of the TV, and getting enough sleep. The children who were least likely to be obese ate dinner with their families six or seven times a week, slept for at least 10.5 hours each night and watched less than two hours of television per day.

The protective effect of these routines remained strong even after Anderson accounted for other factors that can contribute to childhood obesity, such as the mother’s obesity and low family income. The findings suggest that adopting these routines can be a powerful way for families to encourage healthy weight in their children regardless of socioeconomic background, she says.\

In addition, says Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children’s Hospital Boston, the routines are relatively easy for most families to adopt. “This is a beautifully simple study. It makes a very important point, and one that needs to be re-emphasized time and again. These are all behaviors that are within the reach of us all.”

The data Anderson used came from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth Cohort, a government-sponsored study of a cross section of children born in the U.S. in 2005. The children were enrolled in the study at birth; their parents answered questions about the children’s daily routines — including how much television they watched, when they went to bed each night and when they woke up each morning — at 9 months, 2 years and 4 years.

Anderson focused her attention on the 4-year-olds and found that families who had layered on the routines tended to have the slimmest kids. “We know that it’s going to be more difficult for some families than for others to adopt these routines,” she says. “But we can feel comfortable recommending them and encouraging parents to consider them, because not only do they offer protection against obesity, they are also likely to have other positive benefits in terms of children’s social, emotional and cognitive development.”

Obesity experts stress that the key is to start somewhere, and these routines are as good a place as any. “We don’t have to be running marathons every day,” says Ludwig. “Even moderate improvements in these three key behaviors can translate into a marked effect on body weight.” And when it comes to controlling weight, especially in youngsters, every pound counts.


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