Kids and Fitness Blog

Diet, exercise, weight and fate

admin — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:39:51 +0000

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.

Sugar-sweetened beverages, including fruit drinks, are the largest source of sugar in the diets of children and adolescents. Many Americans get half their calories each day from sweetened beverages: pop, juice, juice drinks, energy drinks, smoothies, iced coffees, etc. And drinking calories doesn’t provide the sense of satiety that eating food does.

Many parents think substituting juice for pop is a good idea, yet even a 10-ounce glass of pure juice has only a little vitamin C, along with 10 to 12 teaspoons of sugar. Eat a piece of fruit, and you get fiber and more vitamins, instead of a jolt of concentrated sugar.

Adult obesity rates have doubled in the past 30 years; for children and adolescents, the rate has more than tripled since 1980.

Obesity-related health care costs $150 billion annually. An obese person’s care costs $1,400 more a year, on average.

Only 2 percent of high schools provide daily physical education (Cleveland schools dramatically cut back on the course in their latest round of budget cuts).

Kids spend an average of 7.5 hours in front of screens, whether watching TV, online, or playing games or texting on their smartphones.

Here’s some good news:

Losing as little as 5 percent to 7 percent of your weight lowers blood pressure, improves blood-sugar levels and lowers the chance of diabetes by nearly 60 percent in people who are pre-diabetic.

Building muscle will help raise your metabolism, which is crucial to keeping weight off.

Source: “The Weight of the Nation.”

Protecting Children from Developing Weight Problems

admin — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:37:52 +0000

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.

Moreover, appropriate portion sizes can be difficult to determine. Deciphering serving sizes on Nutrition Facts labels is hard to do for adults. There is virtually no information that can help parents with apportionments for smaller stomachs.

The right amount of food to put on your child’s plate varies with age. Toddlers should eat about a quarter of an adult’s serving in one meal, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Preschoolers and younger school-age kids have greater calorie needs, especially during growth spurts. Between the age of four and eight, appropriate portion sizes are around one third of those of an adult. Older children and teens will eat almost as much as their parents, but this is the time when overeating becomes particularly tempting.

Addressing the issues
For families like the Reids, weight problems can be a sensitive subject to discuss. Parents don’t want to embarrass their children even more than they already are and yet the issue must be addressed before things get further out of control.

“While it may be uncomfortable to discuss weight concerns, the sooner you bring it up and help your child take action, the easier it will be to help him or her achieve a healthy weight. Ignoring it won’t make it go away, and in fact, waiting until your child is older to deal with weight issues may make it harder in the long run,” wrote Constance Matthiessen a freelance writer for WebMD.

She strongly recommends tackling weight problems when a child is still young and more open to lifestyle changes. Parents, she says, must act as their child’s ally, not their critic. When it comes to making better food choices, children should be involved in the decision-making process. It gives them ownership and teaches them to take responsibility for their actions. Most importantly, parents have to be good role models. “If parents go to fast-food restaurants and expose their child to junk food around the house, that child will develop the same habits – and those habits are extremely hard to break.”

That’s also Alexandra Reid’s, Marshall’s mom’s experience. It’s a challenge to keep up the hard-won eating and exercise regimens for the whole family. “We are a work in progress,” she said. Aren’t we all?

If you are interested in learning how to determine healthy portion sizes for children, go to “Food and Health with Timi Gustafson R.D./Kids’ Health.”

Timi Gustafson R.D. is a clinical dietitian and author of the book “The Healthy Diner – How to Eat Right and Still Have Fun”®, which is available on her blog, “Food and Health with Timi Gustafson R.D.” (http://www.timigustafson.com), and at amazon.com. You can follow Timi on Twitter and on Facebook.

Could You Stand to Lose Some Weight?

admin — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:36:52 +0000

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.

This was a small study, involving only 58 students. Still, the results are impressive, especially considering that both the teachers and students liked the new arrangement. These desks improved not only rates of physical activity but also school performance. Though I wouldn’t say high desks would be great for everyone—easily distracted kids, I think, might be more prone to wandering around—this simple, inexpensive, and safe change could have a big impact on weight problems and health.

Standing at work isn’t just for kids. Parents, think about your own desks—could you get your work done mostly standing in front of a high desk instead of sitting all day? Most of us would be healthier with more physical activity, but it can be hard to make it to the gym or have set time for actual exercise every day. Higher desks make it more comfortable to stand, which just might be a safe, painless, and easy way to help you and your kids keep a healthy weight. Give it a try!

How Can You Treat Depressed Teens without Medication?

admin — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:32:34 +0000

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.

Promote Physical Activity

This is probably the most natural of the natural remedies. We seem to be wired to respond positively to physical activity and teens are no different. Allowing them to simply vegetate infront of a computer or sleep an inordinate amount of time is precisely the opposite of what should be done. If possible, encourage physical activity either by offering transport, paying fees or participating with them.

This should be brisk but doesn’t have to be Olympic level exercise. Movement and getting outside are the two critical factors. If they have an interest in a sport, get them on a team. Get involved yourself so they don’t simply drop the activity at the first sign of any failure. Biking, hiking, dog walking – these are all activities you can do together. Sharing some time out exercising will not only improve depression symptoms, but help you bond with your teen.

Promote Healthy Social Activities

Combating isolation is critical. Where there is an opportunity to enhance your teens social life in a positive way, take it. Friends are important at this age and there are some things they will not wish to share with any but their closest friends.

While high school remains the social hub for many teens, there are other organizations and activities available, including church activities, volunteering and work.

Stay Involved

Talk therapy with a specialist is natural in the sense that it allows someone to talk over their troubles and get feedback from a trained professional. However, by learning about depression and following your teen’s progress, you can stay involved even when you aren’t directly participating.

The trick is to remain involved without becoming controlling. Key off your teens expressed desires and willingness to open up. The critical thing is to be available when needed.

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

admin — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:28:37 +0000

(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.

Judith Garcia still struggles to manage her diabetes with metformin and insulin years after taking part in the study at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. She has to remember to watch her diet and set aside time to exercise.

“Trust me, I’m working on it,” said the 19-year-old who lives in Commerce, Calif.

The new study sought to find out: What’s the best way for teens to keep diabetes in check?

Researchers looked at 699 overweight and obese teens recently diagnosed with diabetes. All had their blood sugar normalized with metformin, then were given one of three treatments to try to maintain that control: metformin alone, metformin plus diet and exercise counseling, or metformin plus a second drug, Avandia. Drug companies donated the medications.

After almost four years, half the teens in the metformin group failed to maintain blood sugar control. The odds were a little better for the group that took two drugs but not much different for those in the lifestyle group.

“Two drugs right off the bat, that’s an important finding,” Dr. Robin Goland, professor of clinical medicine and pediatrics at Columbia University in New York City, told the CBS Evening News. “Taking medicines chronically, especially two drugs, would be very difficult for a teenager.”

Study author Dr. Phil Zeitler, head of endocrinology of the University of Colorado Denver’s Children’s Hospital said doctors would not recommend this combination drug therapy because Avandia has since been linked to higher risk of heart attacks in adults – risks that became known after this study had started.

Another study leader from Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Dr. Mitchell Geffner, agreed that Avandia can’t be recommended for teens, but said the study makes clear they will need more than metformin to control their disease.

“A single pill or single approach is not going to get the job done,” he said.

Among all the teens in the study, 1 in 5 had a serious complication such as very high blood sugar, usually landing them in the hospital. The message from the study is clear: Prevention is key.

“Don’t get diabetes in the first place,” said Zeitler

The “discouraging” results point to the need to create “a healthier ‘eat less, move more’” culture to help avoid obesity that contributes to diabetes, Dr. David Allen, a professor of pediatric diabetes and endocrinology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, wrote in an accompanying editorial.

Diabetes expert Dr. Mark Hyman, author of “The Blood Sugar Solution,” shared a similar sentiment with CBS This Morning.

“The takeaway is that we’re needing a national wakeup call,” Hyman said. “We’re not going to solve this in the doctor’s office, we have to solve this in the communities where people live.” He suggests soda taxes and laws aimed at changing food marketing to kids to help curb the rates.

“You can’t medicate your way out of a bad diet.”

In childhood obesity, a growing socioeconomic gap

admin — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:18:48 +0000

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

admin — Tue, 08 May 2012 21:40:15 +0000

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.

“With diabetes developing younger in life, it means people now have the disease for a longer period and will move onto more intensive and expensive therapy earlier, and require it longer,” said Timothy Gill of the University of Sydney, in an email. “These implications may be magnified by the more severe form of diabetes that appears to develop in adolescents and young adults. There are enormous public health consequences.”

Gill, who is principal research fellow at the Boden Institute of Obesity, Nutrition, Exercise and Eating Disorders, wasn’t involved in the latest research.

The study, which ran for four years, found that 52 percent of those using metformin alone had treatment failure, forcing them to undergo daily shots of insulin to control their blood sugar. Metformin combined with lifestyle changes didn’t significantly improve blood-sugar rates and only about a third of the patients gained the targeted weight loss.

Use of Avandia with metformin was the most effective therapy, though that too failed in 39 percent of the children and teenagers, according to the data.

The results “imply that most youth with type 2 diabetes will require multiple oral agents or insulin therapy within a few years after diagnosis,” wrote David B. Allan, at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison, in an accompanying editorial.

The failure rate with metformin alone appeared higher among children than it is in some adult patients, Allan wrote. The report didn’t say why Type 2 diabetes is harder to treat in children, though the researchers suggested the normal growth cycle may be at least partly at fault.

The research was led by Phil Zeitler, at the University of Colorado Denver, and Kathryn Hirst and Laura Pyle at George Washington University in Washington. It was funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Bethesda, Md., among other groups.

“This study highlights some of the real challenges posed in managing young people affected by type 2 diabetes,” said Louise Baur, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Sydney, in an email. “Lifestyle change is difficult, and families and young people need a great deal of support to do so. And the study also shows that medications aren’t a panacea.”

Baur, who is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Pediatric Obesity, wasn’t involved in the research.

Diabetes can lead to heart disease and other medical ailments later in life. With Type 2 diabetes, fat, liver, and muscle cells become resistant to insulin. As a result, blood sugar doesn’t get into these cells to be stored for energy, building up instead in the blood.

People who develop Type 2 diabetes as children are more susceptible to increased blood-cholesterol and triglycerides, which are risk factors for cardiovascular disease, said Paul Zimmet, honorary president of the Brussels-based International Diabetes Federation, who has studied the disease for 40 years.

“We don’t have a solution to this except to do better things about prevention,” said Zimmet, who wasn’t involved in the research. The data supports what physicians have seen in their offices, he said, adding “it’s typically more difficult to achieve desirable blood-sugar control in children and adolescents than it is adults.”

One key issue is treatment compliance, he said,

“Adults may understand better that this is a life-long disease,” Zimmet said in a telephone interview. “It’s very hard to tell a 12-year-old that they’re going to be on medication for the rest of their life.”

Treating Childhood Obesity: A Family Affair

admin — Tue, 08 May 2012 21:38:54 +0000

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.

Wake Forest Baptist researchers found limited use of family theories in the study of pediatric obesity, particularly in weight management treatments. Family behavioral theories can provide valuable insight into the complexities of families, and increased use of these theories in both research and practice may help in the development of more effective treatments for childhood obesity, the study found.

“Traditionally doctors looked at the patient as the one in the family to focus on, but now we have to look at the entire family as the patient,” Skelton said.

“One of the problems we found was that there wasn’t even a clear definition of family in the literature. A two-parent household with a stay-at-home mother and working father is no longer the norm. Inability to define the family makes it difficult to apply a straightforward model of family function to child health and weight management.”

In the clinic setting, families are often represented by a child and a parent, typically the mother. However, this often does not accurately reflect family complexity and it doesn’t define which family members should be included in treatment, Skelton said.

A common theme in the field of family studies is that families are a system, made up of interdependent units. Intervening with one unit, such as a mother and a child, will influence other units. These interpersonal relationships influence the health behaviors of the child and the family as a whole, according to the study.

“The challenge is to find ways to incorporate the entire family in the process, while allowing for different schedules and different age kids with different health needs,” Skelton said. “If we don’t find more effective treatments and this epidemic continues, these children will likely go on to become obese adults, resulting in an entire generation with lower life expectancies than their parents’ generation.”

Skelton and his team at Brenner FIT have begun incorporating theories of the family into their research and in their treatment approach, and are finding ways to engage more members of the family in treatment.

Funding for the study was provided by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Duke Endowment and the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Foundation.

Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center is a fully integrated academic medical center located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The institution comprises the medical education and research components of Wake Forest School of Medicine, the integrated clinical structure and consumer brand Wake Forest Baptist Health, which includes North Carolina Baptist Hospital and Brenner Children’s Hospital, the commercialization of research discoveries through the Piedmont Triad Research Park, as well as a network of affiliated community-based hospitals, physician practices, outpatient services and other medical facilities. Wake Forest School of Medicine is ranked among the nation’s best medical schools and is a leading national research center in fields such as regenerative medicine, cancer, neuroscience, aging, addiction and public health sciences. Wake Forest Baptist’s clinical programs are consistently ranked as among the best in the country by U.S.News & World Report.

SOURCE Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center

President’s Fitness Council Swings Into Interactive Gaming

admin — Tue, 08 May 2012 21:30:24 +0000

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.”

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Drew Brees and Billy Jean King at the Smithsonian American Art Museum for the launch of the Active Play Presidential Active Lifestyle Award (PALA+), a joint initiative between the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition (PCFSN), and the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). (Shar Adams/The Epoch Times)

The award-winning quarterback for the New Orleans Saints is also co-chair for the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition. His participation was welcomed by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who joked at the event about how lucky she was to have had the handsome Brees’s arm around her for a photo shoot. Secretary Sebelius became serious, however, when she talked about America’s health problems.

“Way too many Americans suffer from conditions and illnesses that could be prevented through a healthy lifestyle,” she said. “A quarter of children now have chronic conditions—asthma, diabetes—that can challenge their success, both inside and outside the classroom.”

In an effort to encourage healthier living, the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition teamed up with First Lady Michelle Obama’s ‘Let’s Move Campaign’ last year and launched a challenge to get 1 million Americans to sign up for the Presidential Active Lifestyle Award (PALA+). Participants, both children and adults, must “get moving” for 30 to 60 minutes a day, 5 days a week, for 6 weeks, in order to earn the award.

New Dimension to Exercise

Participants in the PALA+ initiative exceeded 1 million, up from last year’s 700,000. The new interactive gaming initiative will see the industry promote the PALA+ awards plus the fitness aspects of the games, while adding a new dimension to exercise.

After witnessing the enthusiasm with which school kids embraced the games during a demonstration at a D.C. school earlier in the day, Sebelius said the games could help the many schools that were short on recreational areas and space for exercise.

“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,” she said.

The games could also be a family affair. “Kids and families are going to be able track their active game play to meet their PALA+ quotas,” Sebelius said.

Michael Gallagher, president and chief executive of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), said the potential for family involvement had been integral to the presidential relationship.

“What the President’s Council has done is said, ‘Well, fitness goes beyond just kids, it reaches to adults’—and what our industry has done goes beyond just kids and now incorporates whole families,” he said.

Not only was the equipment easy to use and relatively inexpensive, but the ability to track progress had also been an important aspect of the presidential program. “So there is a measurement process that puts in the integrity you need for a President’s Council partnership,” Gallagher said.

Gaming companies are not only receptive to the needs and interests of consumers, they are also able to respond quickly to trends. There were 7 top titles on display but at least 20 others in the market, Gallagher said adding, “This is a high-growth category, so you’ll see more and more.”

The fact that attendees entered the ESA event by passing through an exhibit called “The Art of Video Games,” which is hosted by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, further highlights the impact electronic art is having on the greater community.

Among the members of the President’s Council on Fitness attending the event were former tennis champion, Billie Jean King, and Olympic figure-skating gold medalist, Michelle Kwan.

“Whatever works to get people moving,” Billie Jean King said.

A flag bearer for America at the opening of the London Summer Olympics, Kwan said she thought the games were a fun way to get fit, but hadn’t picked up any new dance moves.

“I love to dance, I have always been a dancer, so there are no steps that are new. I think it is fun because it is like a choreographed program. If you have four players, you can do it like that. It can be a competitive thing, but also funny if that person can’t dance and you watch them, that is fun,” she said having a chuckle at some of the antics on display.

Drew Brees, father to two young boys, said he was looking forward to spending some family time with the games. As for any links to the NFL, he says he does not know of any NFL games in the pipeline, but he would be keen to help out if there were.

“I would love to be asked,” he said. “I hope that happens in the future, for sure.”

Obesity-Linked Diabetes in Children Resists Treatment

admin — Tue, 08 May 2012 21:27:51 +0000

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.

The study followed 699 children ages 10 to 17 at medical centers around the country for about four years. It found that the usual oral medicine for Type 2 diabetes stopped working in about half of the patients within a few years, and they had to add daily shots of insulin to control their blood sugar. Researchers said they were shocked by how poorly the oral drugs performed because they work much better in adults.

The results of the study and an editorial were published online on Sunday by The New England Journal of Medicine.

The findings could signal trouble ahead because poorly controlled diabetes significantly increases the risk of heart disease, eye problems, nerve damage, amputations and kidney failure. The longer a person has the disease, the greater the risk. So in theory, people who develop diabetes as children may suffer its complications much earlier in life than previous generations who became diabetic as adults.

“I fear that these children are going to become sick earlier in their lives than we’ve ever seen before,” Dr. Nathan said.

But aggressive treatment can lower the risks.

“You really have to be on top of these kids and individualize therapy for each person,” said Dr. Barbara Linder, a senior adviser for childhood diabetes research at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, which sponsored the new study.

Sara Chernov, 21, a college senior from Great Neck, N.Y., learned that she had Type 2 diabetes when she was 16. Her grandfather had had both legs amputated as a result of the disease, and one of the first questions she asked was when she would lose her legs and her eyesight.

A doctor scolded her for being fat and told her she had to lose weight and could never eat sugar again. She left the office in tears and did not go back; soon after, she joined the study at Columbia. Like many of the children in the program, she did not even know how to swallow a pill.

Ms. Chernov believes that the disease “is not a death sentence,” she said, if she is careful about controlling her blood sugar. But it has been a struggle. Her family tends to be overweight, she sometimes craves sweets and she has orthopedic problems that have required surgery and have made it hard for her to exercise. She is also being treated for high blood pressure.

A few weeks ago, because her blood sugar shot up despite the diabetes pills she was taking, Ms. Chernov began using insulin.

Most of the participants in the study came from low-income families: 42 percent had yearly incomes under $25,000, and 34 percent below $50,000. About 40 percent were Hispanic, 33 percent black, 20 percent white, 6 percent American Indian and less than 2 percent Asian. Poor people and minority groups have some of the highest rates of obesity and diabetes in both adults and children.

Dr. Phil Zeitler, an author of the study and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado, Denver, said many participants lived with a single parent or guardian and, like Ms. Chernov, came from families with a history of diabetes and had relatives with kidney failure or amputations.

“They’re wrapped up in a lot of family chaos,” Dr. Zeitler said, calling them a “challenging population” with a lot of stress in their lives, on top of the normal chaos of the teenage years.

Type 2 diabetes used to be so rare in children that it was called adult-onset diabetes. Type 1, a much less common form, was most likely to strike children and teenagers, and was called juvenile diabetes. Both forms of the disease cause high blood sugar, but their underlying causes are different.

Type 1 occurs because the patient’s own immune system mistakenly destroys the cells in the pancreas that make insulin, a hormone needed to control blood sugar levels. Patients have to take insulin.

Type 2 is thought to be brought on by obesity and inactivity in people who have a genetic predisposition to develop the disease when they gain weight. And they may also have an inborn tendency to put on weight. The pancreas still makes insulin, though not enough, and the body does not use insulin properly — a condition called insulin resistance. High blood pressure and cholesterol often come with the disease. Initial treatments include dietary changes, exercise and oral medicines, but many people eventually need insulin.

Doctors began noticing an alarming increase in Type 2 cases in children in the 1990s, especially among blacks and Hispanics from poorer families. The problem had started even earlier in American Indians, who have had sharp increases in obesity in recent years.

The current study was meant to find the best treatment. The participants were all overweight, some very obese. All, with a parent or guardian, got diabetes education. They were then assigned at random to one of three groups. One group took only metformin, a standard diabetes pill (also called Glucophage). Another took metformin and a second drug, rosiglitazone (also called Avandia). A third group took metformin and went through an intensive diet, exercise and weight-loss program (which has worked in adults). They were followed for an average of about four years.

The results were disappointing: all three regimens had high failure rates, meaning that they could not control blood sugar. Metformin alone failed in 52 percent of patients, metformin plus rosiglitazone failed in 39 percent, and metformin plus the diet program failed in 47 percent. Metformin alone was least effective in blacks, and metformin combined with rosiglitazone worked better in girls than in boys. The failure rates were high even in the patients who adhered most strictly to their treatment programs.

The obvious conclusion is that better treatments are needed. Adding rosiglitazone is not a good option, researchers say, even though the combination worked better than metformin alone; rosiglitazone has been linked to an increased risk of heart attack and stroke in adults, and its use has been restricted by the Food and Drug Administration. There are other oral diabetes drugs, but none have been approved or tested in children. In the meantime, the doctors said, the best solution is to move quickly to insulin shots if metformin does not work.

Ideally, Type 2 diabetes should be preventable with improvements in diet and exercise. But so far, that has been easier said than done.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 29, 2012

An earlier version of this article said a new study found metformin combined with rosiglitazone worked better in boys than in girls. In fact, the study found that the combination worked better in girls.