Even though more people than ever are getting healthy and educating themselves about nutrition, though we have more knowledge on the subject than we ever have before, the truth is that we are still living in the middle of an obesity epidemic. And, for the first time ever, a generation of children might possibly have a shorter life expectancy at birth than their parents.

Obese children are at higher risk of:

  • heart disease
  • diabetes
  • stroke
  • atherosclerosis
  • kidney disease
  • non-alcoholic fatty liver (now the most common liver ailment worldwide among children)
  • they are also twice as likely as their normal-weight peers to develop certain cancers and may be less likely to survive others

Something must be done.

From the article:

“In some ways, the premature sickening of a demographic that should be any society’s healthiest is even worse than it seems. These kids aren’t simply developing the diseases of adults; they are, in many ways, physically becoming adults. By the time they are barely 10, some obese children are pushed into puberty by bodies that are ready to reproduce even if they are not remotely ready to be sexually active. Their chromosomes show signs of wear in the same ways as those of much older people. Their tissues are accumulating the kinds of damage previously seen only in people of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. Their very cells, if placed under a microscope, would look like an older person’s, showing inflammatory and oxidative damage that is usually the result of a much longer, often indulgent life. Millions of middle schoolers are being prescribed medications that drug developers never intended for anyone under 40.”

But the adult drugs that many kids take to battle high cholesterol, hypertension, and other conditions are problematic children. For instance, while a 60-year-old may need to take something for 20 years, a 10-year-old would have to take them for 70 years. However, these drugs haven’t been well tested in kids AND they include terrible side effects.

The bigger issue is whether or not these kids can ever come back to true health, once they start prematurely aging; it’s possible that scarred liver tissue may never entirely recover, that damaged chromosomes in the cells may be beyond repair, and that once obese at such a young age- though the weight is taken off and kept off- food may never be able to be processed the same way again.

More from the article:

“It’s looking more and more like obesity does some things that might just be tied to the fundamental aging processes,” says Dr. James Kirkland, director of the Kogod Center on Aging at the Mayo Clinic. Worse, Kirkland says, the damage fat cells do to surrounding cells seems to be contagious, with other, otherwise unaffected cells effectively aging along with the damaged ones. That, at least, is the theory, and it gets a lot of support from studies of animals and elderly people–as well as kids in an entirely different population: childhood cancer survivors.

One of the terrible ironies of winning such a mortal battle so early in life is that in adulthood, cancer survivors tend to develop a number of diseases several decades earlier than average: they suffer heart attacks in their 40s rather than in their 60s or 70s and show signs of cognitive decline in middle age rather than in their 70s or 80s. The reason is not clear, but the research suggests that it’s an as-yet-undefined result of the cancer, as well as the toxic consequences of radiation and chemotherapy. Whatever the cause, these patients show the same signs of accelerated cellular aging at the molecular level that researchers are starting to see in obese children.”

At this point what is most important and imperative for these children and their families is education AND prevention. Doctors have to continue to educate themselves about nutrition and so do parents. The first line of defense for obese children needs to be a healthy eating plan, physical activity, and strategies for managing stress.

If you need help, it’s available; talk to your doctor about healthy cooking classes and ask for help putting together an exercise plan. (You can also click here to receive my free e-book where I share how I lost weight years ago and have kept it off.)

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Source: Time