Sitting on the house bar stools enjoying a drink with my husband, we got talking about obesity among children. Being a pediatrician, I had seen many children whose weight was getting out of hand so I knew what my husband meant when he said that the rates were alarming. Coincidentally, when we switched on the TV set to watch news, the health watch segment was commenting about obesity among young people. This therefore compelled me to write this article and I hope that it will help every parent to better take care of their children.
Press coverage is something that childhood obesity has been getting a lot of for a long time. In the US it has reached epidemic proportions but the press coverage has still had little effect on it.
We all know what the causes of obesity are, so we will not talk about this or assign blame for it. If a child is overweight or obese now, then this can have major health dangers and may possibly be life-threatening in later years. Physical and psychological areas are suffering in a noticeable percentage of this entire generation. As well as having to endure being a teen, they should not have to put up with the brutality from their peers for being overweight. We shall have a deeper look at what may be facing an obese child today.
Every physical area of the human body is put under severe stress from being obese. Obstructive sleep apnea is a potentially dangerous problem that a child can have from being obese. If a child is obese then they may also have problems with normal breathing.
Asthma can be developed if a child or young adult is overweight. Other problems that face the normal breathing process are often called exercise intolerance. You may have noticed that overweight people often have labored breathing. This is natural for your body as it is working harder than it should be. This is just making it easier for you to have more stress on your cardiovascular system.
The most serious risk factors will be in the cardiovascular system. Triglycerides are in the fatty blood profiles of obese children as well as having elevated serum cholesterol. The early development of these heart disease precursors early in life is something that requires immediate intervention. Just think about a young child having to take medication that has been prescribed to counter the effects of their high cholesterol. If an adult starts taking this medication then there are known side effects that they will have to accept.
A teen or young child may find it complicated to take such medicines.
The process of socialization and development of a human’s personality and individuality gets a lot faster during the teen years. The development of the teen’s body image is also at a critical point. Obviously an obese teen will have an extraordinarily difficult time achieving any semblance of normal development in those areas. What happens is the obese teen will leave high school at potentially severe disadvantages. Being able to normally compete and succeed is not something that is going to be possible for most of these kids. There is a real problem with kids and teens who suffer from obesity that affects other people too. You need to think about the cost this has on overall society. Obese kids will usually become obese adults, and there are costs associated with medical, lost time from work, etc. So this is honestly a societal problem even though that is not how most people think of it.
Knowing that weight loss plans such as colon hydrotherapy can not apply to children, it is high time parents did a lot more than running car pools for their children. Parents need to lovingly introduce healthy foods into their children’s diet if they are to win the war against obesity among their kids.