There is no question that today, children are not getting enough exercise and in many cases their diets consist of too much sugar and far too much junk and fast food. The question has been floated asking whether today’s children might be the first age group that turns around the positive strides made in increasing life spans in the United States.
So many children are overweight to the point that their health is clearly at stake and many run the potential risk of hypertension and diabetes before they reach puberty! You read that correctly. Children are showing many of the same symptoms middle age, out of shape adults have when they are at risk of contracting age related diseases and conditions. They are even being diagnosed with age linked illnesses.
More and more children are obese and suffering the consequences, parents unable to control their weight gain and uncontrollable eating habits. They must turn to experts in child obesity to turn their children’s life around. One child in particular was up to one hundred eighty six pounds and approached his parents in tears claiming he weighed as much as a professional wrestler he followed. He was eight years old.
The parents found him some help at a local Children’s Hospital Fitness Clinic where they pulled no punches. Their boy was in serious trouble showing brown skin patches on his neck, an indication of impending diabetes. The medical staff helped turn the child around but not before berating the parents for their lack of effort in controlling their son’s diet.
People are living much longer these days’ thanks in no small part to medical breakthroughs and progress in public health services. As of five years ago, the average US citizen lived until they were 78 years old – in at the turn of the twentieth century, that number was forty seven years old. Fifty years later in 1950, the average American lived to sixty eight years old.
People around the world, western society in particular, are scrambling to purchase anti aging consumer goods in an effort to remain young and doing what they can to increase their longevity. However, experts in medical science are quick to point out that we are killing ourselves as a society by living a couch potato existence – eating too much garbage food while not staying active enough. With a third of the children in the United States alone being classified as overweight, this
generation may be the first to have a lower life expectancy than their own mothers and fathers.
Like Experiencing Premature Aging
Medical professionals are afraid the indicators are all pointing the wrong way with today’s children. Children are being diagnosed with what were previously adult lifestyle diseases such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes. What a pathetic legacy to leave our next generation with. Kids are showing all the signs of progressive aging before they reach their teenage years. These children are on a collision course with extreme difficulty where their health is concerned and their adult influences do not seem to be doing so well either. According to research evidence, two thirds of mature Americans are either overweight or obese.
Back in 2005, a group of medical professionals published a revealing report in the New England Journal of Medicine that forecast an obesity epidemic over the next ten years with a health outcome that would put an end to the rising arc of longevity achieved during the last one hundred years – dropping up to five years due to illnesses like heart disease and cancer.
The lead author of the study was chiefly disturbed by the obesity he has seeing in children since it had increased threefold since 1970. This challenge meant that this generation would probably be suffering the effects of weight related illnesses like type 2 diabetes, heart problems etc, and doing so over a longer time period while they took even greater numbers than ever before. Forecasting tomorrow’s prospects is absolutely unpredictable and is iffy science so the researchers use unique methods to calculate theories.
This specific group of experts based predictions on the pervasiveness of obesity and on evaluating data regarding years lost because of it. They calculated the results of obesity on our life span as a population based on reduced death rates that would take place if everybody who was obese lost sufficient weight so as to achieve an ideal BMI [or body mass index].
Not everybody agrees that such an obesity epidemic would cause quite the stir as predicted – or any at all – on life expectancies across the country. Opponents to the ominous theory think that entirely too much attention is being paid to body weight rather than concentrating on the overall situation.
Some experts believe that it would be quite unlikely that youth of today will endure shorter life spans than their own moms and dads. By all accounts, life extension continues to make swift advances at prolonging life due to new and improved medical technical breakthroughs and serious personal health awareness. People are making better lifestyle choices like smoking far less tobacco in general. No doubt we are a more overweight population than we once were but they feel the problems that result will be far less that the popular assumptions.
One main opponent to the lowered life span theory believes there is definitely some vagueness when it comes to this problem of child obesity but there has not yet been any evidence associating adult mortality to children’s obesity rates.
Longevity vs. Living Healthy
There is a belief that if we wait long enough, we will have all the evidence we need to back up the kid’s obesity dilemma. When today’s children reach adulthood, their lives of unhindered eating coming back to haunt them, they will pay the price for their early obesity. There is huge apprehension that the level of debilitation and fragility we will witness in this generations future will be colossal. The toll taken will not simply be in health, but also from a monetary perspective. Yearly health care costs are already staggering due to obesity and the health hurdles associated with it. Health fallout from diabetes alone already costs us upwards of a hundred billion per year in the United States.
Medical professionals do not doubt that obesity – specifically the morbid variety – will result in many frightful conditions and healthcare expenses. It is when the theory of life expectancy gets tossed into the mix is when professional hackles rise. This life span query of whether an entire nation will lose years off their average longevity repealing years of progress remains at issue.
One expert immersed in the field of obesity and nutrition with the CDC [Center for Disease Control] feels that modern medicine will lessen the effect of any obesity epidemic. Diabetics for instance are able to live a functional and productive life with proper care and drugs. There are numerous therapies that can counter act the results of obesity related illness. Medication for hypertension, high cholesterol and elevated blood glucose levels are being perfected and released all the time.
Living with these chronic ailments is not exactly the ideal life for many people, especially when they are diagnosed at an earlier age than ever before. The following generations just may be the heaviest medicated group of all time. The experts agree on one point that it is certainly the preferred option if people maintain lower levels of weight and avoid obesity at the excessive or even moderate level. Leading a healthy life should always be the option of choice.
It would be wrong to assume that obesity does not matter to health or wellness, that there are no adverse repercussions when we chow down on a diet of Twinkies and cinnamon buns! Thinking about health as dead or not dead is an unnecessary option. One expert stated that there is perplexity regarding the fallout of extra weight on health and how much added plumpness transmits what risk.
A study reported last year concluded that obesity at a thirty BMI or more is linked to more than one hundred twelve thousand fatalities yearly due to heart disease in the US – obesity and being overweight [up to 29 BMI] combined accounted for over sixty one thousand deaths caused from kidney disease and diabetes. Nevertheless, the investigation also discovered that just being overweight and not obese showed no links with deaths from heart illness or cancer. Additionally, added weight appeared to actually safeguard people from mortality caused from pneumonia, injury and certain kinds of infection.
When one observes the multitude of issues that can determine the life span in a whole population consisting of many millions, it is tough to single out the role played by a solitary issue.
Also, when it comes to weight, things do not always appear as they actually are. There are studies that conclude it is possible to be fit and fat all at once. Evidence exists that overweight and active persons are healthier than their weighty inactive comrades and perhaps doing better than some skinnier inactive types as well. Most people who smoke have a tendency to be thinner than non smokers but they are not essentially any healthier.
In a centralized investigation that looked into the developing life span fissure existing between societies – wealthy and poor – a jaw dropping 4.5 year difference or [79.2 years compared with 74.7 years] in those folks inhabiting the least and poorest regions of the country stated that lifestyle among other issues played a part in health and longevity inequality. They included a lack of health insurance, lowered health care availability, lower incomes, smoking, physical activity, poor nutrition as well as neighborhoods without parks or grocery stores lacking any supply of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Narrowing these points even more, an investigation released quite recently stated that females who reside in many of the least well off counties in the nation are well behind other females in life expectancy. This disproportion number is mainly caused by smoking, obesity and hypertension caused by their immediate circumstances.
Fitness As A Family Affair
As for the young man and his family mentioned at the outset, he and his family are taking measures to fight back against obesity. They are going to begin getting fit and thin to increase their chances of longevity and healthy lives. The parents are themselves overweight and both are being treated and medicated for hypertension so they are exercising side by side with their youngster to eliminate extra weight. That includes their two year old who they are starting off on the right track with proper eating habits.
In just a few months their son has dropped more than thirty pounds, works out with a trainer every couple weeks and see’s his physician each six to eight weeks. He has dramatically reduced his caloric consumption and he trains five times a week. He no longer eats a sandwich and a bag of Doritos while sitting on the couch after school, now only a piece of fruit or cup of yogurt.
The child’s mother insists that rejuvenating her son’s health is her top priority so he can live as long as possible but there have also been some unexpected benefits occurring now. Casual observers no longer seem to look upon her son as “the fat kid” any longer; he appears much taller than previously, has enhanced confidence and he is more accepting of himself.
It seems like a happy ending for one obese child while so many millions more continue to tempt fate.
Wed, May 5, 2010
Anti Aging, Health And Aging, Longevity