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Diet, exercise, weight and fate

Category : Kids Weight Lose

Here are some hard and disheartening facts about obesity and food that are revealed in the documentary “The Weight of the Nation.”

  • If you have dieted down to a particular weight — say, you lose 30 pounds to reach a goal weight of 140 — you will still have to eat 20 percent fewer calories per day than a person of the same weight and height who has weighed the same all their adult life (this is why maintaining weight loss is so difficult).
  • Exercise is a component of losing weight, but often dieters who exercise think they can eat more. However, running one mile — spending perhaps 100 calories — is the equivalent of a medium cookie. Read More

Protecting Children from Developing Weight Problems

Category : Kids Weight Lose

You have probably heard by now of Marshall Reid, the sixth grader from Sanford, North Carolina, who managed to change his and his family’s poor eating habits and wrote a book about the experience, titled “Portion Size Me,” which was obviously inspired by the well-known documentary film, “Super Size Me,” by Morgan Spurlock about the negative health effects of fast food.

Like many overweight children, Marshall was bullied and made fun of by his peers. After being called “fat” one too many times, he decided to take action and asked his mother to help him lose weight and eat more healthily. He also took up exercising with his father. Eventually, the family made a video about their lifestyle changes and put it up on YouTube. The book that followed is filled with healthy recipes, easy to understand nutrition facts and a journal describing Marshall’s journey to a new life. “We realized that the amount of weight you drop isn’t the endgame. It’s about how good you feel about yourself, about making healthier choices,” said Alexandra Reid, Marshall’s mother in an interview with the New York Times (4/24/2012).

Marshall is by no means alone in his struggle with weight problems at a young age. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), almost 20 percent of American kids ages 6 to 11 are now obese. Childhood obesity is one of the greatest health threats we’re facing today, not just here but around the world. What makes this story so remarkable, however, is that one child’s determination to take control of his life and turn his situation around can make this much difference.

Understanding your child’s nutritional needs
Parents are often confused not only about the kind of foods but also how much their young ones need at different stages of their lives. Children always want more of the foods they like, and often these are not the most nutritious choices. Read More

Could You Stand to Lose Some Weight?

Category : Kids Weight Lose

Sometimes a simple idea can have a big payoff.

A small study published last August looked at using standing-style desks in Texas classrooms to see if children could be encouraged to be more active. In two classrooms, traditional desks were swapped out for desks at a natural standing height, accompanied by higher stools for comfortable seating. Children with these high desks were compared with children who sat at traditional desks in classrooms nearby. Children in both groups wore electronic devices to determine activity levels.

After three months, almost all of the children with high desks were standing most or all of the time, and teachers and students both reported improved behavior and classroom performance. Better yet, students at high desks burned 17% more calories. The effect was even more pronounced among children who were overweight—given high desks, they burned 32% more calories during the school day than overweight children at traditional desks. Read More

How Can You Treat Depressed Teens without Medication?

Category : Teen Weight Lost

There’s a valid concern about medicating teenagers for depression. The side effects are an issue as well as a loathing to become dependent on a chemical to feel normal.

For that reason, many want to try a more natural approach that doesn’t immediately start someone on a prescription drug. Here are some tips on how depression is handled without medication in teens.

Support

Part of the problem with teen depression is a sense of isolation and a feeling that there is no help available. Parents don’t understand. Peers don’t offer anything useful. Other authority figures are hard to reach out to. But this is a recipe for furthering the disease.

If you become aware that your teen is becoming withdrawn and depressed, the first thing you can offer is understanding.

While they may be reluctant to talk about their condition and feelings, that’s no reason you can’t open up about a time in your life when you felt overwhelmed by negative feelings. This is one way to bridge the gap and show the topic won’t be brushed off.

Support also comes by not overreacting when your teen displays inappropriate anger or frustration. More than adult depression, teenagers are more likely to become irritable or angry as a result of the depression they feel. Remember they aren’t being unsociable just to irritate you – isolation is a real symptom of the disease. Read More

Type 2 diabetes tough to treat in overweight teens, study shows

Category : Teen Weight Lost

(CBS/AP) Overweight teens face an uphill battle when diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, new research suggests.

Teens keep chugging soda despite health risks, says study
Sugared cereals: Should kids avoid at all costs?
Type 2 diabetes harder to control in kids: study

As few as 15 years ago, a teen with type 2 diabetes was a rare occurrence. Now, one-third of American children and teens are overweight or obese and they face a higher risk of developing the disease in which the body can’t make enough insulin or use what it does make to process sugar from food. The more common kind of diabetes in children is Type 1, which used to be called juvenile diabetes.

A major study published in the April 29 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine tested several ways to manage blood sugar in overweight and obese teens newly diagnosed with diabetes and found that nearly half of them failed within a few years and one in five suffered serious complications. The results spell trouble for a nation facing rising rates of “diabesity” – Type 2 diabetes brought on by obesity.

The NIH-funded study is the largest look yet at how to treat diabetes in teens. Earlier studies mostly have looked at adults, and most diabetes drugs aren’t even approved for youths. Doctors typically start treating type 2 diabetes with metformin, a pill to lower blood sugar. If it still can’t be controlled, other drugs and daily insulin shots may be needed. The longer blood sugar runs rampant, the greater the risk of suffering vision loss, nerve damage, kidney failure, limb amputation, heart attacks and strokes. Read More

In childhood obesity, a growing socioeconomic gap

Category : Childhood Obesity

There’s actually been some good news on obesity in recent years. After years of steady increases, new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data has suggested that rates are beginning to plateau, if not decline slightly.

That data, however, looks like it might be masking a troubling trend: A growing socioeconomic disparity in obesity rates, with most prevention gains being made among higher earners.

New research in this month’s Pediatrics focuses on childhood obesity rates in Massachusetts. It found that, overall, obesity rates held steady for children under 6 between 1999 and 2003, but then dropped by a notable 14.7 percent over the next four years, from a 10.5 percent obesity rate in 2004 to 8.9 percent in 2008.

“The declines in obesity in our sample…suggest that the epidemic of obesity may have peaked among young children around 2003–2004,” the authors conclude.

But that wasn’t necessarily the case when the authors broke down the data for children by socioeconomic status. Among children insured through Medicaid, researchers saw a smaller, 6.9 percent, decline in obesity rates. That’s the population where, arguably, the most work on obesity reduction is necessary: The obesity rate stood at 11.5 percent in 2008, about 2 percent higher than the overall population.

Kids on private insurance, saw obesity rates fall by 17 percent to 8.3 percent in 2008.

To the authors, the smaller decrease in obesity among those on Medicaid “suggests that the coming years may see a widening of socioeconomic disparities in childhood obesity.”

Obesity-Linked Diabetes Tougher to Treat in Kids Than Adults

Category : Childhood Obesity

Type 2 diabetes is harder to treat in children ages 10 to 17 than it is in adults, according to one of the first large studies of the disease in younger people.

The research also found that diabetes develops more rapidly in this age group. About 700 overweight and obese U.S. children and teens were given three therapies in the study: The oral drug metformin alone; that medicine combined with GlaxoSmithKline’s Avandia; and metformin used alone with diet and exercise.

All three had high failure rates, according to the results published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The data is key as the number of overweight children in the United States has tripled since 1980, spurring a concurrent rise in Type 2 diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. About 3,600 new cases are diagnosed in children yearly, the researchers reported. Read More

Treating Childhood Obesity: A Family Affair

Category : Childhood Obesity

With nearly one-third of American children being overweight or obese, doctors agree that there is an acute need for more effective treatments. In many weight management programs, the dropout rate can be as high as 73 percent, and even in successful programs, the benefits are usually short term.

Although family-based approaches to pediatric obesity are considered the gold standard of treatment, theories of the family and how it functions have not been incorporated into effective interventions, according to a study published in the May issue of the International Journal of Obesity by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

“The field of family studies provides an innovative approach to the difficult problem of pediatric obesity, building on the long-established approach of family-based treatment,” said Joseph Skelton, M.D., assistant professor of pediatrics and director of the Brenner FIT (Families in Training) Program at Wake Forest Baptist, and lead author of the study.

Skelton and his research team reviewed medical literature published between 1990 and 2011 to identify the use of prominent family theories in pediatric obesity research. Of the 76 manuscripts found, 13 were selected for the study. Read More

President’s Fitness Council Swings Into Interactive Gaming

Category : Kids Fitness

Computer games used to be the bane of parents’ lives, their children spending days and nights cloistered in an eerily glowing war zone with only young thumbs moving to save themselves. Not anymore: Interactive gaming is the new family activity, and is now so popular that the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition (PCFSN) has just teamed up with America’s Entertainment Software Association (ESA) to promote interactive games as a way to gain a presidential fitness award.

“This is a whole other level,” said NFL quarterback Drew Brees at the launch of the initiative in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, May 1.

These are actually exercise routines that can be done in very small classrooms and can be done by kids to give them a really good workout- Secretary Kathleen Sebelius

“The whole interactive gaming thing is phenomenal, because it is so different from what you think is just your traditional sit-behind-a-computer playing computer games or just sitting there with remote control.” Brees told The Epoch Times. “Now you’re actually getting up, you’re having to dance, you’re having to swing an imaginary rocket right, swing a golf club, throw a ball, so you can start breaking a sweat really quickly.” Read More

Obesity-Linked Diabetes in Children Resists Treatment

Category : Kids Fitness

Obesity and the form of diabetes linked to it are taking an even worse toll on America’s youths than medical experts had realized. As obesity rates in children have climbed, so has the incidence of Type 2 diabetes, and a new study adds another worry: the disease progresses more rapidly in children than in adults and is harder to treat.

“It’s frightening how severe this metabolic disease is in children,” said Dr. David M. Nathan, an author of the study and director of the diabetes center at Massachusetts General Hospital. “It’s really got a hold on them, and it’s hard to turn around.”

Before the 1990s, this form of diabetes was hardly ever seen in children. It is still uncommon, but experts say any increase in such a serious disease is troubling. There were about 3,600 new cases a year from 2002 to 2005, the latest years for which data is available.

The research is the first large study of Type 2 diabetes in children, “because this didn’t used to exist,” said Dr. Robin Goland, a member of the research team and co-director of the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. She added, “These are people who are struggling with something that shouldn’t happen in kids who are this young.”

Why the disease is so hard to control in children and teenagers is not known. The researchers said that rapid growth and the intense hormonal changes at puberty might play a part. Read More

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