KEEPusHEALTHY

A friend from Canada sent me this article a few days ago, and while I don’t have any children of my own, this is an issue that is close to my heart each time I talk to a woman about lifestyle change.  No child should be overweight in the year 2008.  We know better.  Just for a moment, I want you to pause and think of your kids.  Are they overweight?  Is one of them overweight? What hard decisions do you need to make today to give your child every chance for good health?  Are they getting enough exercise? What kind of diet to they have?  Are you giving them high-quality supplements addressing all their nutritional needs?

Today’s Family News
November 19, 2008

An alarming new study has found that obese children may have the arteries of someone more than three times their age, the Ottawa Citizen reported.

“This study is another red flag to people out there who are managing these kids, and to parents especially,” Dr. Geetha Raghuveer, a cardiologist and associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine, told Health magazine. “These kids not only have the risk factors – like high cholesterol and hypertension – but they also have damage to their arteries.”

 A research team led by Raghuveer studied 70 obese children whose average age was 13. By comparing the fatty buildup of plaque in their carotid arteries to those of healthy children, she concluded that three-in-four had the arteries of a normal 45-year-old.

 For Dr. Brian McCrindle, a professor of pediatrics and staff cardiologist at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, to learn that obese children could have such an advanced “vascular age” came as a surprise. “I thought they would be at increased risk, but I didn’t think that it would be that bad,” he told the Citizen.

 Others see it differently. “If you’ve seen what’s on the menu for most school lunches, these findings are no surprise,” Dr. Michael Schloss, a heart disease prevention specialist at New York University, told the Associated Press.

“The time has come,” Schloss added, “to seriously deal with the issue of childhood obesity and physical inactivity on a governmental and parental level.”

The 34 boys and 36 girls all had risk factors such as obesity, abnormal cholesterol levels, or a family history of premature deaths from heart attack.

Raghuveer noted that while it is very rare for children to suffer heart attacks regardless of the risk, “it is very possible that these kids – especially the cohort of obese kids we’ve been seeing in the last decade or so – may grow up to be young adults who may well have premature angina or heart attack, even as early as their 30s.”

The study, said McCrindle, is “one more piece of evidence that if we don’t start taking this childhood obesity epidemic seriously, we’re going to wind up with health problems that could potentially swamp the whole health care system.”

“Some of these children may need [drugs] either because they’re not compliant to dietary changes or because they don’t respond,” Raghuveer said.

In 2005, Statistics Canada reported that between 1978 and 2004, the rate of overweight adolescents aged 12 to 17 more than doubled from 14 per cent to 29 per cent, while their obesity rate tripled, jumping from three per cent to nine per cent.

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Contact us: lorraine@keepushealthy.com