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A new study finds striking evidence that children who are obese or have high cholesterol show early warning signs of heart disease.

The study, presented Tuesday at the American Heart Association conference in New Orleans, found that the thickness of artery walls of children and teenagers who are obese or have high cholesterol resembled the thickness of artery walls of an average 45-year-old.

The study, which has not yet been published, was small, involving 70 children ages 6 to 19, and several experts said the results would need to be replicated to be considered conclusive. But they said the method used to measure artery wall thickness was considered a reliable indicator of heart disease risk, usually more reliable than cholesterol levels or other measures. The method, which uses ultrasound, has been applied to children in other studies in the last few years, but experts said this appeared to be the first time that results had been correlated to adults.

“I think this is a red flag,” said the lead author of the study, Dr. Geetha Raghuveer, a cardiologist and associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Missouri Kansas City School of Medicine. “These kids are more similar to middle-aged adults.”

Scientists not involved in the study said the findings supported a growing body of research suggesting that childhood obesity in the United States was likely to result in heart disease as the children age.

“These findings are potentially consistent with predictions that obesity and its complications would result in cardiovascular disease becoming a pediatric illness,” said Dr. David Ludwig, an associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard, who was a co-author of a 2005 study predicting that obesity could shorten the average child’s lifespan by two to five years. “There are other indications that this might be the case, but much of that has been speculative, so this may well be significant hard data, which has been largely lacking. This is actually looking at the development of atherosclerosis, the process that we know will, if it is not dealt with, lead to heart attack or stroke.”

Childhood obesity is considered an epidemic in the United States, with about 16 percent of children ages 2 to 19 considered obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although the number of new cases of childhood obesity appears to be leveling off, some experts say they are now seeing an increase in Type 2 diabetes in children, which they believe is a consequence of increased obesity.

The Kansas City study was one of several presented at the conference that looked at the link between childhood obesity and heart disease.

A study of 991 Australian children ages 5 to 15 found that children who were obese had greater enlargement of their hearts, as measured by the size of their left atrium, said the study’s leader, Dr. Julian G. Ayer, a heart researcher at the University of Sydney.

Another Australian study, of 150 10-year-olds, found that in the heart pumping process, the left ventricles were slower to untwist in children with a higher body-mass index, a relationship of weight to height, said a co-author of that study, Walter Abhayaratna, a researcher at Australian National University.

“These studies are interesting, imperfect corollary evidence of something we all believe is true,” said Dr. Lee Goldman, a cardiologist who is dean of the faculties of health, sciences and medicine at Columbia University. “The obesity epidemic in adolescents is the biggest adverse time bomb we’ve got going on in coronary diseases. These are high tech ways of adding more evidence.”

Dr. Goldman was a co-author of a study published in December 2007 in The New England Journal of Medicine in which a computer model was used to predict whether heart disease deaths in the United States would rise. The authors predicted that by 2035, there would be 100,000 additional cases of heart disease attributed to current instances of obesity in children, an estimate especially noteworthy given that advances in treatment have reduced cardiac deaths in recent years.

Another study published in the same journal at that time further bolstered the link between childhood obesity and heart disease. Analyzing the records of 276,835 Danes who were examined as children in 1930, researchers from Denmark found that the higher the children’s body-mass index in 1930, the greater the chances they would develop heart disease.

While it is too early to know if the current generation of American children will suffer more heart attacks, strokes or other heart problems, or experience them sooner, many heart researchers consider the growing corroboration of links between childhood obesity and heart disease alarming. Still, Dr. Raghuveer said that for the children she studied, hope was not lost.

“A lot of these kids’ arteries, even though they are in the early stages of atherosclerosis, are not hardened or calcified, not really advanced,” she said. “There may be an opportunity to implement lifestyle alterations, be it exercise, be it diet, or perhaps even medication. Perhaps it may be reversed.”

Dr. Raghuveer’s study used an ultrasound method called carotid artery intima-media thickness or CIMT to measure the thickness of the inner walls of the carotid arteries, located in the neck. Scientists, who measure the carotid artery because it is easier to capture images of neck arteries than the coronary arteries directly connected to the heart, say increased thickness in the carotid artery wall indicates greater amounts of fatty plaque in the arteries leading to the heart and brain. When such plaque ruptures, it can result in clots that lead to heart attack or stroke.

Of the 34 boys and 36 girls in the Kansas City study, patients at Dr. Raghuveer’s cardiology clinic at Children’s Mercy Hospital, 40 were obese and 30 were not considered obese but had high levels of LDL or bad cholesterol. Many also had high levels of triglycerides. Their average age was 13; average weight was 140 pounds. Nearly 90 percent were white.

The researchers found that 52 of the 70 participants had a maximum CIMT of at least 0.5 millimeters, a thickness that corresponded with the CIMT of an average 45-year-old or what Dr. Raghuveer called a “vascular age” of 45. She did not measure CIMT in normal-weight children and said there was no standard CIMT chart for children.

Vascular age is “an interesting idea, and I hope it gets out there,” said Dr. Gerald S. Berenson, head of the long-running Bogalusa Heart Study in Louisiana, who has taken CIMT measurements of children in the last few years.

Dr. Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life program at Children’s Hospital Boston, said that seeing risk factors like CIMT in children was especially worrying because “there’s not only a much longer period of time for it to be damaging the body, but it is also occurring at a stage of life where the body is still forming and the physiological systems are still being fine-tuned.”
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/health/12heart.html?hp

Wolfing down your food and eating until your seams are straining could double your risk of becoming overweight, Japanese researchers have found.

A study published in the British Medical Journal this week reveals that men and women who eat rapidly or eat until they are full are twice as likely to be overweight compared to people who eat more sensibly.

People who both eat quickly and eat too much are around three times as likely to be overweight, the researchers found.

They also report that the link between the eating behaviour and overweight remains the same no matter what the actual calorie intake from the food itself.

Co-author of an accompanying editorial, Dr Elizabeth Denney-Wilson, says the study provides more evidence that eating behaviours themselves are a significant promoter of ‘positive energy balance’ - the situation where energy intake is higher than energy spent - and may be contributing to the current obesity epidemic.

Part of the problem is that humans are not very good at knowing when to stop eating, says Denney-Wilson, research fellow at the Centre for Primary Health Care and Equity, University of New South Wales in Sydney.

“Humans are not good at using the cues from their bodies to determine when they’re full,” she says.

“They’re much more likely to use visual cues so if they have a great big portion in front of them they’re likely to eat the lot.”

The researchers suggest these unhealthy eating habits are not necessarily there from birth but instead appear to be learned, or taught.

“It is possible to have children self-regulate their energy intake, and we certainly see that with breast-fed babies who are clearly regulating their own energy intake because they are able to determine when they are full.”

However the dramatic increase in portion sizes and unprecedented availability of food makes it harder to exercise restraint, the researchers say.

“Until recently there was just never more food than people needed, so it was impossible to eat beyond satiety,” says Denney-Wilson.

She says it is possible to overcome this urge to overeat by learning to recognise the cues of fullness, something that health professionals could work on with their patients.

While this is not the first study to suggest a link between fast eating and overweight, Denney-Wilson says the cultural context of the study is particularly surprising, as the Japanese are generally considered to be more ’social’ eaters compared to those in Western nations, where fast food is so readily available and eaten.

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/10/22/2398053.htm?site=science&topic=latest

Obesity may increase with each generation because overweight mothers give birth to offspring who have a tendency to become heavier, researchers have claimed.

A team of scientists believe that the genetic mechanisms that control the weight of a baby may be changed if the mother is obese before and during pregnancy.

This change could lead in turn to the baby becoming heavier than normal.

Scientists in Houston, America, made the claim after studying the eating habits of several generations of mice.

Dr Robert Waterland from Baylor College of Medicine, led the study.

He explained: “There is an obesity epidemic in the United States and it’s increasingly recognised as a worldwide phenomenon.

“Why is everyone getting heavier and heavier?

“One hypothesis is that maternal obesity before and during pregnancy affects the establishment of body weight regulatory mechanisms in her baby.

“Maternal obesity could promote obesity in the next generation.”

The team split the mice, all of which had a genetic tendency to overeat, into two groups.

One group was provided with a normal diet while the other was provided with nutrient-supplemented diet.

The nutrients in the supplemented diet encouraged the process of DNA methylation - a chemical reaction that silences genes with the hope that it would render the over-eating gene inactive.

The mice on the normal diet gained weight with each generation while the mice on the altered diet stayed roughly the same size.

Dr Waterland explained: “We wanted to know if, even among genetically identical mice, maternal obesity would promote obesity in her offspring, and if the methyl-supplemented diet would affect this process.

“Indeed those on the regular diet got fatter and fatter with each generation. Those in the supplemented group however, did not.”

Dr Waterland said the research had led the team to believe that the process of DNA methylation plays an important role in the development of the region of the brain that regulates appetite - the hypothalamus.
Source: http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1567852/obesity_may_rise_with_generations/

Heart attacks are hitting the overweight more than a decade sooner than “normal” weight people, researchers are reporting.

A study of more than 111,000 people is one of the first to put real numbers to the risk of obesity and suggests “excess adiposity” - fat tissue - is more dangerous to the heart than smoking.

“The leading theory in cardiology right now is that the fat tissue is actually producing factors that precipitate heart attacks,” says lead author Dr. Peter McCullough, consultant cardiologist and chief of nutrition and prevention medicine at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan.

The theory is that cholesterol builds up in the coronary arteries and inflammatory or other chemicals produced by fat cells trigger the plaque to suddenly rupture, causing a blood clot to form and unleashing an acute heart attack.

But until now, earlier studies “simply just didn’t have enough patients of different body sizes having their first heart attack to really evaluate” whether obesity is associated with premature heart attacks, McCullough says.

His team analyzed data from a nationwide U.S. registry of people hospitalized for heart attack and unstable angina, or chest pain, from 2001 to 2007.

A total of 111,847 men and women who had experienced a first heart attack were included in the final analysis. They were grouped according to their body mass index, or BMI, a measure of body fat based on height and weight.

Researchers found that, the heavier the person, the younger the age of a first heart attack.

The most obese people had their heart attacks on average when they were 59.

That compares to about 75 for the leanest group (average body weight 47 kilograms, or about 103 pounds, meaning they were actually considered underweight), and 71 for people of “normal” weight, where the average weight is 65 kilograms, or about 142 pounds.

The most obese group had a BMI of 40 or more and weighed on average 127 kilograms, or 280 pounds.

“It’s not uncommon in daily life to see people at that size,” McCullough says. “I’m sure there are people in your office and people you see all the time at that body weight.”

The rate of diabetes was 17 per cent in the leanest group, and 49 per cent in the most obese. “You can get a feeling of how obesity-driven diabetes is,” McCullough says.

All the patients, regardless of body size, had about the same level of LDL cholesterol, the so-called bad cholesterol thought to be a major risk factor for heart attacks. That means the excess fat is causing heart disease in other ways, McCullough says.

In addition, rates of smoking were equal across the board. “We really can’t blame it on smoking.”

“Those patients at the highest body weight on average lost 12 years of life before their first heart attack.” The second most important factor was smoking, “where they lost just under 10 years of life before a first heart attack.

“This is really the first study that shows now that some factors are more powerful than smoking in terms of the prematurity of myocardial infarction (a heart attack),” McCullough says.

The study involved a type of heart attack called non-ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction. They always require hospitalization and have an in-hospital fatality rate of about 10 per cent, and about 20 per cent over the next six months, McCullough says. “They are not trivial events. They account for a leading cause of patients to lose time away from work and actually seek medical disability.”

The study clearly shows “that, contrary to some of the arguments out there about whether or not excess weight may be protective … there is a tremendous risk difference in terms of having your first heart attack if you are overweight or obese,” says Dr. Arya Sharma, chair of obesity research and management at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

“You’re having a heart attack a decade before those who don’t have a weight problem,” Sharma says. “And 59 is actually a very young age. These are people who aren’t even close to retirement.”

McCullough says people could reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease by losing weight and body fat. According to the Canadian Community Health Survey, 23 per cent of Canadians aged 18 and older are obese.
Source: http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=b172edd0-a4c2-41a3-bd89-a00f698871e1

Obesity significantly increases the risk of recurrent miscarriages, UK researchers have claimed.

When the body mass index (BMI) of almost 700 women who had experienced at least three unexplained miscarriages was investigated, 45% of the women were found to be overweight or obese.

All women had previously undergone comprehensive investigations, but no cause as to why they kept miscarrying was established.

In total, 1% of the women were underweight, 54% were of normal weight, 30% were overweight and 15% were obese.

In those who went on to have a subsequent pregnancy, 19% of those who miscarried again were obese, compared to 11% who had a successful pregnancy.

Mothers being over the age of 35 and high numbers of previous miscarriages were associated with poor pregnancy outcome.

When maternal age and number of previous miscarriages were adjusted, obese women were shown to have a significantly increased risk of a further miscarriage compared to those with a normal weight.

“Ours is the first study to look directly at the link between BMI and recurrent miscarriage. It shows that obese women who experience recurrent miscarriage are at greater risk of subsequent pregnancy loss,” said Winnie Lo of St Mary’s Hospital, London.

Ms Lo advised that all women with recurrent miscarriage should be weighed at their first consultation. Those who are found to be obese should be counselled regarding the benefits of weight loss in increasing their chances of a successful pregnancy, she said.

“Programmes should be in place to help with the weight loss progress,” Ms Lo concluded.

The research was released at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists 7th International Scientific Meeting in Montreal.
Source: http://www.irishhealth.com/?level=4&id=14281

Being obese may dim a man’s chances of becoming a father, even if he is otherwise healthy, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that among 87 healthy men ages 19 to 48, those who were obese were less likely to have ever fathered a child. More importantly, they showed hormonal differences that point to a reduced reproductive capacity, the researchers report in the journal Fertility and Sterility.

Compared with their thinner counterparts, obese men had lower levels of testosterone in their blood, as well as lower levels of luteinizing hormone (LH) and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) — both essential to reproduction.

According to the researchers, these relatively low levels of LH and FSH are suggestive of a “partial” hypogonadotropic hypogonadism. This is a condition in which the testes do not function properly due to signaling problems in the hypothalamus or pituitary gland, two brain structures involved in hormone secretion.

The findings suggest that obesity alone is an “infertility factor” in otherwise healthy men, write Dr. Eric M. Pauli and his colleagues at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey.

Of the 87 men in the study, 68 percent had had a child. Pauli’s team found that the average body mass index, or BMI, was lower among these men compared with those who’d never fathered a child; in the former group, the average BMI was 28, which falls into the range for “overweight,” while the average BMI for childless men was nearly 32, which falls into the “obese” range.

When the researchers assessed the men for several reproductive hormones, they found that the more obese a man was, the lower was his LH and FSH levels. On the other hand, increasing obesity correlated with increasing estrogen levels.

Excess body fat, Pauli’s team explains, may increase the conversion of testosterone to estrogen in a man’s blood. Such hormone alterations could, in turn, signal the brain to suppress FSH and LH production.

Past studies have linked obesity with a dampened libido and increased risk of erectile dysfunction, the researchers note. Those effects, they say, along with the hormonal alterations seen in this study, could act together to decrease an obese man’s fertility.
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSKEN97315720080919

Watching too much television may not only help make children fat, it may also raise their blood pressure, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

They found obese children who watched four or more hours of TV a day were three times more likely to have high blood pressure than children who watched less than two hours a day.

“There is a significant association between hours of television watched and both the severity of obesity and the presence of hypertension in obese children,” Dr. Jeffrey Schwimmer of the University of California, San Diego and colleagues wrote in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Many studies have found a strong link between watching TV and obesity, but this is the first study to show a link between TV and blood pressure in obese children and teens, the researchers wrote.

Obesity in children is on the rise, increasing the risk of heart disease and diabetes. And high blood pressure in children has been rising in right along with obesity rates.

The problem is often undiagnosed in children, and if undetected, high blood pressure can quietly damage the organs, especially the kidneys.

Schwimmer worked with researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of South Alabama. They studied 546 children and teens aged 4 to 17 seen at weight management clinics from 2003 to 2005.

Height and weight were measured to determine a body mass index, or BMI, and blood pressure was recorded.

Children were considered obese if their BMI measures were above the 95th percentile for age and gender. Children in the study had a mean BMI of 35.5. In adults, a BMI of 30 or higher is considered obese.

The children and their parents estimated how much time they spent watching TV, and a doctor reviewed and confirmed their estimates.

The researchers found children who watched two to four hours of TV were 2.5 times more likely to have high blood pressure compared with those who watched less than two hours of television a day. Those who watched more than 4 hours per day were 3.3 times more likely to have hypertension.

The authors said the study illustrates the need for parents to curb their children’s TV time, especially for children who are already obese or have high blood pressure.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends children watch fewer than two hours of TV per day.

Some 17 percent of U.S. children are obese, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Source: http://www.canada.com/topics/bodyandhealth/story.html?id=d23d08f5-3041-494a-ab7a-d52ea6d914a4

Fat is not a feminist issue, despite what feminists used to say. It is a class issue. Well-to-do, well educated people are rarely fat, still less obese. You see few fat children in private schools. Fatness and obesity are directly related to low income and low education.

A fat map was published last week by Dr Foster Intelligence, showing the areas with the fattest populations, and sure enough the poorest industrial areas in the north of England and in Wales produce the most obese people. The problem seems to be getting worse, fast.

You hardly need expert medical data analysis to understand that. You need only to go to a few supermarkets. At a Tesco in western Scotland this summer I was astonished by the number of horribly obese shoppers waddling round the aisles with their elephantine children, who could not possibly have squashed themselves into an ordinary one-person chair. Young women, with eyes reduced to slits by the pressure of the fat on their faces, laughed grimly with each other as they scanned the shelves. And this is a rich country.

Even though the vast Oban Tesco is full of good food, the trolleys at the checkout were heaped with stuff that is either useless or positively bad to eat – crisps, snacks, swizzlers, twizzlers and guzzlers, cheesy dips and fatty whatsits, cakes puddings and pies, heavily dusted in additives. The obese seem to fill their carts regularly with several times their own weight in eatables that can make them only fatter, that they shouldn’t eat and that nobody should produce, as if they were determined to lay down yet more adipose tissue. Yet you rarely see such bloated people and trolleys in smart supermarkets in rich areas. These days you can easily tell people’s precise socioeconomic bracket and body weight by the contents of their trolleys.

Obesity seems to be the issue of the day, possibly because we are still in the silly season. Coincidentally last week, Andrew Lansley, the Tory health spokesman, spoke against obesity in a long speech to the Reform think tank. He was widely understood as saying that fatties have only themselves to blame; they must take responsibility for themselves and their weight because “we all have a choice”. And while that is a slightly unfair take on his speech, he does seem to mean something of the sort. Yet at the same time he offers what’s now called a whole raft of measures to stop people getting fat. This is awkward for Conservatives; either you interfere with people’s choices or you don’t. Empowerment, a word he used, is often just a weasel word for state intervention.

The question is why a Conservative government should interfere at all in people’s inalienable freedom to choke on deep-fried Mars bars if they choose to. The argument is that the fat and the obese (people with a body mass index over 30, which is something you could spot without a calculator) cost the country squillions in lost productivity and increased National Health Service costs. The obese tend to develop serious illness, particularly heart disease and diabetes, and are, generally speaking, crocked up and expensive to look after.

Somebody somewhere has come up with a figure for the cost of all this, which Lansley quotes – £7 billion a year, for what it’s worth. Last year’s Foresight report said this cost could go up by six times by 2050. And fat is getting fatter so fast. According to NHS figures, the proportion of obese men in the population rose during Labour’s time in office from 13.2% in 1993 to 23.1% in 2005. Among women it was even worse, from 16.4% to 24.8%. That is nearly a quarter of all women. If you consider people who are not obese but overweight (with a BMI of 25-30), 46% of men in England are overweight and 32% of women.

Fat is also an ethnic issue. According to NHS figures published in 2006, Irish and black Caribbean men had the highest incidence of obesity (25% each) and among women black Africans had 38%, black Caribbean 32% and Pakistani 28%. So, with migration trends and immigrant fertility, the costs of obesity are going to rise fast as well.

However, I wonder how much, if anyone knew the facts, the final cost of obesity would be to the taxpayer. For fat people die sooner and obese people die much sooner than others, thus relieving the NHS and the economy of their needs. It’s true that obese people need expensive treatment for diabetes and heart disease before they die, but that might easily be offset if they had significantly shorter lives – and they do. Current thinking seems to be that the obese die between five and seven years earlier than otherwise they would.

Few papers I’ve looked at on this subject discuss the possible cost-benefit of obesity, although one from an insurance company coyly mentioned the advantage to pension providers if a person died before he reached pensionable age. For years I used to argue that smokers were a net benefit, purely financially speaking, to the exchequer, because they died early. I still feel rather proud of being the first, I believe, to get a known expert (Professor Richard Peto in 1993) to agree publicly to this idea, now accepted. Might not the same be true of obesity? The real drain on the NHS is geriatric medicine; the obese might not reach old age.

If the only reason for interfering with what fat people eat is how much it costs the rest of us, perhaps we should leave them alone. It’s well known that obesity (and fatness) are associated with poor education, poor housing, poor employment or none, low expectations, low opportunities and all the rest. These are all social ills that this government has been trying to deal with for more than a decade. Yet little has improved and obesity – as an indicator of that fact – has swollen vastly while Labour has been in office. What prevents obesity is a good income, a good education, good opportunities and the kind of background that develops self-confidence. Prosperity, in short.

Obesity cannot be defeated by taskforces, better labelling on packets or investing in health accreditation schemes. This has all been tried and has failed. In the presence of a complex problem, and in the absence of a workable solution, perhaps it is better to leave people to their own devices. Nobody can pretend they don’t know what they’re doing. They should be left alone to do it.
Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/minette_marrin/article4641974.ece

Constance Wedemeyer is quick to praise the merits and benefits of the Licking County Family YMCA’s “Activate Youth” program, which helps assist families and obese children.

The 12-week program preaches better nutrition and exercise habits, and Wedemeyer said those that stick to it often find themselves on the right track to lifestyle changes.

But it’s not just the children who sometimes are the most stubborn ones in the program.

“Parents don’t like to be told to clean out the cabinets and not have any junk food,” said Wedemeyer, the health and fitness coordinator at the YMCA.

“It’s just as much the parents as it is the children.”

This presents another difficult hurdle in promoting better health and fitness for youth.

Obesity in youths continues to be a major problem nationwide — more than 10 million children are considered obese, and overall, 60 percent of Americans are overweight — and in Licking County, and the task of reversing those trends becomes a massive uphill climb when it’s not a family effort.

Various studies show if both parents are considered healthy and in good shape, their children have a 10 percent chance to be overweight. If both parents are obese, however, it increases to 80 percent.

“You see kids that are overweight and not physically active, and that’s the norm for the whole family,” said Dr. John Applegate, a physician with Licking Memorial Pediatrics. “Taking care of your kids means taking care of the whole family. You have to work with the whole family to change their behaviors.”

Those behaviors include being more active and instilling more exercise in their daily routine, but that’s only part of an important equation.

Looming just as large for an increasingly sedentary lifestyle in youths is poor nutritional habits, which usually come directly from the parents.

“Children model their parents,” said Shari Gallup, Family and Consumer Sciences educator at Ohio State University’s Licking County Extension.

“It is a parenting issue because parents are going to the stores to purchase the food. A lot of studies that are done show what is put in front of a child, they typically eat.”

In most cases, food purchases aren’t made with healthy intentions.

Restaurant-industry sales will reach about $558 billion in 2008, according to the National Restaurant Association, almost $200 billion more than it was in 2000.

What’s often in those meals, many of which are the fast-food variety, is nowhere close to what’s healthy when things like processed sugars and portions are considered.

“I remember growing up, when we went out to eat on the weekend it was a huge deal,” The Advantage Club general manager Larry Miller said. “Now, it’s twice a day for people.

“You’re a product of your environment. If parents aren’t taking care of themselves, the best thing a kid can do is watch portion control.”

Gallup recommends snacks like cheese sticks and yogurt, along with plenty of vegetables. Most also agree sugary drinks — which means even products like Gatorade — should be kept to a minimum.

“It’s so easy to eat poorly. That’s probably the biggest thing that’s changed in the last 10 to 15 years,” said Clint Cox, the director of training at Total Athletic Development. “We have to educate parents to make better food choices.

“It starts with them and it starts at home. They’re the role models for kids in eating right and being physically active.”

If not, the children likely will become like their role models.

To help kids make changes, Gallup recommends the whole family work together.

It starts with planning activities to do as a group, such as an after-dinner walk or anything to promote exercise together.

But Gallup and others said it’s also crucial to limit things such as TV and to also promote healthy eating habits, which includes everything from proper foods to the proper portions.

Applegate uses a 5-2-1-almost none approach, which means five daily servings of fruits and vegetables, two hours of screen time, at least one hour of physical activity and almost no sugary drinks.

“The message I try to send is it only takes a small change,” Gallup said. “People in America want a quick fix, but it’s about making small steps and small changes. You want to chip away at things.

“You can’t lose all the weight at one time. If we can teach sound nutritional principles and fun physical activities, we can be successful.”

Source: http://www.newarkadvocate.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080713/SPORTS/807130330/1006

Maternal obesity has been associated with diabetic complications in the resulting offspring, according to experiments in mice reported recently by researchers at the University of Louisville.

Obesity is presently a worldwide health issue, and it is commonly considered a risk factor for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and stroke. When a pregnant woman is obese, her children can be affected by malformation, functional abnormalities, obesity, and type II diabetes. Since, presently, over 18% of American women are classified as obese, and between 18 and 38% of pregnant women meet this criteria, it is an important issue in maternal and child health in this country. However, very little is known about the mechanism of the link between maternal obesity and diabetic effects in offspring.

To investigate this association, Dr. Jianxiang Xu and Junying Han of the University of Louisville first established a viable animal model to function similarly to maternal diabetes might in humans. Female mice, genetically predisposed to obesity and further marked with a yellow coat color, were mated with normal mice, whose offspring could then be classified by coat color for this obesity gene. The obesity prone mice were obese between 6 and 8 weeks of age, but maintained normal blood glucose levels. Offspring from these and from normal crosses were then fed with normal food for up to 15 weeks, then fed with a high fat diet, and examined by sex, and the mother’s obesity status. In this first portion of the study, the birth weight of offspring from obese mothers was 14% higher than in the control group.

When the offspring, at 50 weeks of age, were administered 2 mg glucose per kg body weight. This resulted in similar glucose levels in each group, but major differences in the serum insulin levels. Namely, in female offspring from obese mothers, there was a significant increase in serum insulin levels, while females from obese mothers and males showed no significant differences. This indicates that β cell function was impaired in the female offspring of obese mothers.

To confirm this link, a second experiment was performed. Pancreatic cells were isolated from 50 week old offspring to be tested in vitro for insulin excretion. Cells from mice with a normal diet showed normal secretion, but in the high fat diet, insulin secretion was sharply reduced in offspring from an obese mother, especially when exposed to a high glucose concentration. The measure of other enzymes related to glucose metabolism such as transketolase, GAPDH, and PFK in the cells of the 50 week old mice indicated a decrease in production by the β cells ranging from 31% to 70% for those born to an obese mother.

According to the researchers, this shows that obesity in pregnancy is a factor by itself to impaired glucose tolerance in offspring, which could contribute to the development of gestational diabetes in the mother and type II diabetes in the offspring. Additionally, since there are many mothers who are obese without displaying gestational diabetes, this obesity might be a greater factor in the health of their children than previously expected.
Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/115691.php