Your Childrens Health

Childhood obesity prevalence is dramatically rising today.  As these obese children get older, it will lead to epidemics of diabetes, hypertension, degenerative joint disease, and cardiovascular disease.  Obesity is a challenging health problem for everyone including children.  Studies are being done to learn more about the causes of obesity and scientists are searching for effective treatments but have not found any easy interventions and solutions. 

Many researchers think that the sudden rise in childhood obesity is due to the current environmental and social trends.  For example, children are spending much more time playing video games, watching television, and sitting in front of the computer instead of playing outside and being physically active like children many years ago used to do.  There is also evidence that parental obesity also increases the likelihood of obesity development in children.  Children who have two overweight parents are at the greatest risk for developing obesity because children often follow the examples that are set by his/her parents. The foundation of therapy for obese children is modifying what is eaten and his/her levels of activity.  Currently, about 11% of United States children are classified as overweight.  Also, 14% of children and adolescents have a body mass index between the 85^th and 95^th percentiles which places them at risk for becoming overweight. 

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 8th, 2007 at 4:28 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.