Obesity
Childhood Obesity Rates Driven by Snacking
Childhood obesity rates have increased due to constant snacking by kids, according to a new study.
Today’s kids are a generation of snackers. But, the types of foods they’re choosing is driving childhood obesity rates sky high, according to a new study.
Snacking on junk food accounts for more than 27 percent of the daily calories children take in, an increase of 168 calories per day between 1977 and 2006, according to a new report in the journal Health Affairs.
Play a role in helping to end childhood obesity
First Lady Michelle Obama recently launched a new campaign, Let’s Move, designed to eliminate childhood obesity in a generation.
“It’s an ambitious goal, but we don’t have time to wait,” said Mrs. Obama.
Combating childhood obesity will be quite an undertaking, considering that the number of obese children in the U.S. has quadrupled since 1960. Most obese adolescents become obese adults, setting the stage for dangerous health conditions, such as heart disease, stroke and some forms of cancer. Currently, some 32 percent of America’s children are overweight or obese.
Conquering obesity improves lives
I’ve written many times that we are the fattest society the world has ever seen, and we are getting fatter year by year, and at a faster rate. We lead the world in obesity, but, unfortunately, many parts of the world seem determined to catch us.
The World Health Organization projects that from 2005 to 2015, the incidence of overweight adults worldwide will increase from 1.6 billion to 2.3 billion, and the incidence of obesity will increase from 300 million to 700 million. These trends, if ignored, foreshadow severe implications for the future, both human and economic.
The human cost in terms of compromised and ruined lives from chronic diseases like heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes is obvious.
Obesity and Colon Cancer a Deadly Combination
Obese patients with colon cancer may have a greater chance of dying from the disease compared to those at a normal weight.
Every year in the United States, roughly 150,000 people are diagnosed with colon cancer. A new study involved 4,381 patients with stage II or II colon cancer who were treated with chemotherapy, 20 percent of whom were obese.
“Obesity has long been established as a risk factor for cancer, but our study in colon cancer patients shows that obesity predicts a poorer prognosis after the cancer is surgically removed,” Frank A. Sinicrope, M.D., a professor of medicine and oncology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, N.Y., was quoted as saying.
Red Meat, Obesity Raise the Risk of Colon Cancer
Two new research studies have added weight to the evidence that both the consumption of red meat and excess weight contribute to the increased risk of developing colon cancer.
A team from the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Rockville MD reviewed data from a cohort of over 300,000 men and women and reviewed the detailed questionnaires by the participants about the types of meat that they consumed and how it was cooked. After seven years of follow-up, there were 2,710 cases of colon cancer in the group.
Those who ate the most red and processed meat showed a significantly higher risk of developing colorectal cancer than those in the bottom quintile who consumed the least amount of meat.
N.Y. health dept. slams sugary drinks
New York’s commissioner of health criticized the beverage industry for “ceaseless marketing” in its campaign against a proposed tax on sugary drinks.
Speaking at a symposium on obesity in Albany, N.Y., Richard F. Daines said the tax, included in the executive budget for the 2010-2011 fiscal year, is a battle to reduce obesity. He detailed the efforts of the beverage industry to market cheap soda, especially in low-income and minority communities; manipulate pricing to promote greater consumption; rally opposition to government efforts to reduce consumption of sugary beverages and blame the rise in childhood obesity on parents, while denying any link between obesity and non-diet soda consumption.
Let’s Move! The Obama Campaign against Childhood Obesity
Childhood overweight and obesity is a serious problem globally. One of the hardest hit countries is the United States, where half of children are overweight for their age. As such, First Lady Michelle Obama has launched an important program called Let’s Move to try to find ways to deal with the problem - and it deserves a lot of attention!
Let’s Move aims to help families manage and prevent childhood obesity from four vantage points:
* helping parents make healthy choices for their kids
* finding ways to make the school environment healthier
* increasing physical activity
* finding ways to access healthy and affordable food
Obesity Epidemic leads to Bariatric Surgery and Post Bariatric Surgery
The American obesity epidemic statistics are staggering. Nowhere else in the world is there a country with such a wide spread obesity problem. Approximately 11 million Americans are morbidly obese. Obesity and related problems are the leading cause of death in America. According to the American Heart Association at http://www.americanheart.org, 71% of non-Hispanic white men and 57.6% of women are overweight and of these 30.2% of men and 30.7% of women are obese. Of non-Hispanic blacks 67% of men and 79.6% of women are overweight and of these 30.8% of men and 51.1% of women are obese. Of Mexican Americans 74.6% of men and 73% of women are overweight and of these 29.1% of men and 39.4% of women are obese. Because of these staggering statistics, the prevalence of bariatric surgery is very high.
The benefits of bariatric surgery often outweigh the risks. Patients typically lose well over a hundred pounds. The health benefits are astounding, though the risks are high. With recent technological advances and changes in the way surgeries have been performed, the risks are slowly decreasing, but with old methods, serious problems exceeded 30% of those who underwent surgery. For those without complications though, bariatric surgery is a life giving procedure.
After losing over a hundred pounds, patients tend to notice the way their skin hangs in empty folds.
L.A. obesity summit will feature Schwarzenegger, Clinton
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former President Clinton are scheduled to attend a summit on health, nutrition and obesity in Los Angeles on Wednesday.
The governor, a former bodybuilder who has long advocated healthy living and exercise, will join with health professionals, educators and others to discuss ways California can combat obesity and promote physical fitness.
In a statement, the governor cited several efforts he has supported to combat obesity in California, including requirements that some vending machines include healthy foods, that larger restaurant chains have nutritional information on menus and that some junk foods be removed from school campuses.
Obesity, Lack of Exercise Heighten Arthritis Risk for Women
Higher levels of obesity and inactivity, especially among women, explain why arthritis is more common in the United States than in Canada, according to a new study.
Researchers at the Toronto Western Research Institute analyzed 2002-03 data from both countries and found that the prevalence of arthritis in the United States was 18.7% and the prevalence of arthritis-attributable activity limitations (AAL) was 9.6%. In Canada, the rates were 16.8% and 7.7%, respectively.
Women in the United States had a higher prevalence of arthritis (23.3%) and AAL (13%) than Canadian women (19.6% and 9.2%, respectively). Men in both countries had similar rates of arthritis (14%) and AAL (6%).
How to wage war against obesity
Dr. Valerie Taylor doesn’t believe that most people with a weight problem would say, “This is not my fault,” or, “This is because of McDonald’s.”
“Absolutely, they take responsibility,” says Taylor, an assistant professor in psychiatry and behavioural neuroscience at McMaster University in Hamilton, and director of the Canadian Obesity Network mental health program. Many people feel guilty about their weight, she says, “and they struggle to accept treatments like surgery because they really feel they should be able to control this problem themselves.
“Some don’t even think they deserve the kinds of treatment and care that other medical conditions receive.”
Obesity and Diabetes–The Missing Link?
As some of you may recall from an earlier post here, inflammation appears to be a common link in the body between obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. There are substances in the body called pro-inflammatory cytokines that, as their name implies, promote the inflammatory process. This can be helpful when a foreign organism such as a bacterium or virus is the target; however, sometimes things go awry and these same cytokines may involve themselves in an assault on healthy tissue.
It appears that fat cells may be one of the primary culprits here. The thinking is that the more fat cells you accumulate, the greater your inflammatory cytokine level will be. Inflammatory cytokines in turn have been shown to be a risk factor for coronary heart disease (by promoting the development of plaque in the walls of the coronary arteries) as well as for diabetes. In the latter, it seems that they bind to insulin receptors on cells, blocking the action of insulin.
Which Comes First, Obesity or Depression?
People who are obese are often diagnosed with clinical depression, but which comes first - the increased weight gain or the depression symptoms? Researchers from Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands have found that it is actually a two way street and each condition influences the other.
Floriana Luppino MD and colleagues reviewed medical literature up to March 2008 on overweight and obese conditions and their link to depression. In total, the researchers screened almost 3,000 articles. They performed a more intense meta-analysis on 15 of those studies which covered 58,745 subjects.
They found that those subjects already overweight or obese were more likely to be clinically depressed and that those who were depressed had an increased tendency to become obese.
Bill Clinton fights childhood obesity after his 2nd heart surgery: South Florida schools fight too
”More than ever, we as parents and a nation must do something about the growth of obesity in our children. We must do more than just talk, we must be concerned enough to act.”—Lee Haney
Former President Bill Clinton received a second wake up call three weeks ago warning him to change his lifestyle and eating habits. After an emergency trip to the hospital and an hour long, life saving heart surgery to unclog his blocked arteries, he is doing amazingly well. Six years after a quadruple bypass heart surgery, Ex-president Clinton was given a second chance at life that he is now taking very seriously.
Clinton stated, “I have been working too hard and sleeping too little and not exercising too little.” So what will he change? The former president stated, “I’m exercising more, I’m sleeping more and I’m trying to be even more rigorous about the diet… Lots of fruits and vegetables and salads.”
Obesity treatment in family members should be contagious
The Framingham Heart Study is perhaps the most famous long-term medical study. As every medical student learns, starting in 1948, the lifestyle habits of thousands of residents of Framingham, Massachusetts were followed to determine important risk factors for cardiovascular disease.
It is because of this study that your physician can, with a few keystrokes, predict with great accuracy your risk of having a heart attack within the next 10 years and what you can do to reduce that risk. I’ve found the “Framingham calculator” to be a terrific educational tool in my practice, especially to illustrate the typically underestimated heart benefits of quitting smoking versus taking costly drugs for high cholesterol or high blood pressure.
