Teens Show Symptoms Of Heart Disease
New research on child obesity has revealed shocking results about the risk of heart disease for future generations.
A research team headed by the University of Bristol conducted the study, which is the first of its kind, on more than 5,000 kids. They paid special attention to levels of insulin, glucose and cholesterol, as well as blood pressure levels.
What they found was startling obese children as young as 15 already begin to display the symptoms of heart disease. Furthermore, children who are obese between the ages of 9 to 12 begin to display the risk factors for the disease, including elevated cholesterol levels and high blood pressure.
When the study began, the children who were the subject of it were aged between 9 and 12, and 18 per cent of them were medically considered overweight, with 5 per cent classed as obese. Research demonstrated that the kids, who were still fat when they reached the age of 15, were much more likely to have these key indicators of future heart disease.
Of those aged between 15 16, 29 per cent displayed high systolic blood pressure (the pressure exerted by the heart when it beats), and 3 per cent experienced elevated diastolic blood pressure (the pressure between beats). However, the children who had shed excess weight before they reached 15 through diets for children displayed less risk, especially the girls who were part of the study.
The researchers concluded that girls who go from being overweight to a healthy weight between childhood and their mid-teens as a result of diets for kids virtually eliminate any of the potential health hazards. However, boys who do this display an intermediate risk factor.
The results of the study are published as an expert claims that a mothers diet while pregnant has a significant impact in countering the current epidemic of overweight children. This is more important than later diets for children.
At a conference on childhood obesity in Queens University, Belfast, Professor Peter Bundred asserted that good nutrition for a child starts in the first months of pregnancy, and lambasted the fact that many pregnant women gain too much weight and mothers choose not to breast feed their children. He stated:
They put on too much weight in pregnancy and have a big baby. Everybody says wonderful, a big bouncy baby that then goes on to formula feeds, which is the wrong nutrition.
Its the most common nutrition but that doesnt mean its right. Mammals are called mammals because they have mammary glands. They are there to feed the babies of mammals.
The child then continues in the environment of too much food.
Professor Bundred thinks that the key to tackling the escalating problem is a strategy which educates and supports mothers. He highlighted the fact that not much is done to enable mothers to breastfeed in the workplace, and called for more privacy and facilities to enable them to do so. Failing to do this means that many women give up breastfeeding.
The conference also touched upon the delicate subject of the intervention of social services in cases where the childs wellbeing is at risk. Conference organiser and lecturer in nursing Florence Mitchell told delegates that obesity should only be an issue of child protection in the most extreme of circumstances:
Its when parents wont engage, wont attend and no evidence of progress is seen, we then owe it to the morbidly obese child to protect it.
by: Rachel Grace Evans
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