Obesity •

Earlier Bedtime Hours in Childhood Tied to Healthy Weight Later On

July 18, 2016 By Janet Vasquez Leave a Comment

STATES CHRONICLE – A recent study suggests that putting your kid to bed earlier may dramatically cut their risk of becoming obese in adolescence.

Preschoolers who went to sleep after 9 p.m. saw their risk of becoming obese double as compared with kids that were tucked into bed before 8 p.m.

Lead author of the study Sarah Anderson and epidemiologist at The Ohio State University College of Public Health recommend parents to establish bedtime routines. Anderson believes that going to sleep at set bedtimes can help children develop better on an emotional, social, and cognitive level.

Childhood obesity has gone rampant in the U.S. in recent years. About 17 percent or nearly 13 million of children and adolescents struggle with obesity, a CDC report shows. Previous research has revealed that childhood obesity forces tomorrow’s adults to constantly struggle with weight gain and other health conditions including diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

The latest research was based on data on nearly 1,000 children enrolled in the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, which monitored them from birth through adolescence. All the babies were born healthy, researchers noted.

Study investigators found that preschoolers either went to bed before 8 p.m., between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. or after 9 p.m.

Only 10 percent of those who had the earliest bedtime hours became obese in their teen years. About 23 percent of teens who had gone to bed after 9 p.m. when they were in preschool became obese.

The analysis also revealed that non-white preschoolers, those who lived in a poor family, or those whose mothers were not highly educated were more likely to go to bed after 9 p.m.

Past studies had also found a link between obesity and lack of sleep. One particular study even found an association between late bedtimes and high risk of becoming overweight half a decade later.

The latest study is the first to find a link between late bedtimes and risk of becoming overweight or obese a decade later. Anderson explained that her team was more interested in bedtimes than wake times because bedtimes have a larger influence on sleep duration.

Plus parents have less control over bedtimes as there is no guarantee that the child will fall asleep the moment he was put to bed. Yet, in families that wake up early preschoolers tend to easily follow suit.

The latest study was published this week in The Journal of Pediatrics.

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Breakfast Is Very Important for Students

March 18, 2016 By Deborah Cobing 1 Comment

Children having two breakfasts might be healthier than those who skip breakfast

STATES CHRONICLE – If you happen to be a fan of the Lord of the Rings you definitely know the very long list of meals that hobbits have in only one day, which included two breakfasts. While that was fantasy, it turns out that having two breakfasts is actually better for children and you could probably convince them to eat by telling them about Merry and Pippin.

How can eating two breakfasts help? After all, we are all afraid that our children will be eating too much and too unhealthy and will become overweight. Well, according to a new study conducted by a team at Yale School of Public Health, middle school students who eat breakfast at school are less likely to become overweight or risk obesity than the ones who skip breakfast.

So, even if your kid has had breakfast at home, you might want to encourage them to eat at school too. This isn’t the first study that looks at the benefits of having breakfast at school. Previous studies have showed that eating breakfast in school can be associated with a healthy body weight, better health overall and improved academic performance.

However, it was feared that a second breakfast might lead to gaining too much weight, but this recent study proves there is no need to worry. The study showed that students skipping breakfast or having it inconsistently were twice as likely to become obese than the ones who had double breakfasts. Moreover, comparing the ones who ate two breakfasts with the ones who ate only one, there was no difference in weight gain from 5^th to 7^th grade.

The problem is that many of the America’s obese people are children. One-third of the kids between 6 and 11 are either overweight or obese and everyone is working to find solutions to these problems.

Children need to have a balanced diet, which means not only to eat healthy, but also to eat at normal hours without skipping any meals. Policy makers are thinking that a good solution would be introducing and promoting breakfast in schools but studies are being conducted to make sure this plan will work and will not lead instead to en excess of calories.

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Chewing Noises Make You Eat Less

March 17, 2016 By Georgia Dawson Leave a Comment

Listen to your chewing – it will make you eat less

STATES CHRONICLE – More and more people are concerned with what they eat, how much they eat and how they look. Although eating in itself is not a problem, there are many persons who do have to pay more attention to it as they are struggling with health problems such as obesity.

According to a new study conducted by a team of researchers from the Brigham Young University in Utah, focusing on your eating sound could make you eat less. This is why, it is recommended that you turn off all other sounds, such as TV, radio or any other sources to be able to hear yourself chewing.

In the study published in Food Quality and Preference, the scientists made three experiments. One of the experiments showed that people eat less when they hear the sound of their food. The researchers compared how much people ate with music, and how much without.

The people in the music group ate 1.2 pretzels more each than the people who didn’t listen to music. Although the difference is not that big, if you were to some up all your meals for a year, then it will really make a difference.

Similar to a study in which participants were asked to look in the mirror while they were eating, which made them less likely to finish their food, this studies suggests the same: being more conscious about the taste, the appearance and the sound of your food and even more importantly the way you look and sound when you’re eating could have a great impact on your dietary habits.

Somehow, the brain has a lot do to with your hunger and appetite. Listening to crunches while eating potato chips instead of listening to music might make you eat less of the unhealthy snack. Given the studies and experiments made so far, if you try to hear the sounds of your food while also looking at yourself in the mirror when you’re eating could actually cut your appetite by half.

All in all, if you are willing to eat less but experience problems with that, you should try to pay more attention to your food. In this way, you will be able to stop earlier and maybe even lose weight in time.

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Obese Women on the Pill at Stroke Risk

March 15, 2016 By Georgia Dawson Leave a Comment

Contraceptive pills may increase the risk of stroke for obese women

STATES CHRONICLE – Blood clots could be helpful as they prevent us from losing too much blood when we get a superficial scratch. However, if clots occur inside the body, in one of our veins, this could lead to a stroke called CVT (cerebral venous thrombosis).

According to a new study conducted by a team from the Academic Medical Centre from Amsterdam, the risk of CVT is higher in obese women who take oral contraceptives. Oral contraceptives have their own negative side effects which the doctor prescribing them usually tells you about.

There is the myth that contraceptive pills will make you fat and mess up with your hormones, which can happen if you don’t take them exactly as your doctor prescribed. Otherwise, their side-effects should be at a minimum.

Unfortunately, women who are overweight or obese are more likely to develop deep vein thrombosis, a blood clot which usually occurs in the leg as well as pulmonary embolism which, obviously, forms in the lungs. Knowing this, the researchers wanted to see whether birth-control pills could increase even more the risk of these women developing blood clots.

They started by studying 186 medical records of patients with CVT. It turned out that the patients were more likely to be young women using oral contraceptives. Besides, obesity was also an important factor to consider as it increases the risk of CVT in women who are on the pill.

Scientists managed to find that obese women on contraceptive pills were 30 times more likely to have a CVT. Moreover, they couldn’t find any link between obesity and CVT in women who didn’t use oral contraceptives, which suggests that the pills might really be at fault.

It was previously believed that the only contraceptives which could increase clot risk were the ones with estrogen. But scientists soon realized that estrogen is not the only substance responsible for blood clots. They found links between CVT and progestings which can also be found in contraceptive pills.

It is recommended that doctors give better counseling on the use of birth-control pills especially to obese women, informing them of the risks the pills can pose. Moreover, they could also recommend them some other contraceptive options which are not hormonal.

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New Study Says that Early Childhood Obesity is Associated with Infant Antibiotic Exposure

September 30, 2014 By Deborah Cobing Leave a Comment

Last week we’ve seen the results of a new study that revealed that NSAIDs can increase the risk of venous thromboembolism and today we’ve got the results of a ground breaking study that will surely interest many parents. It appears that early childhood obesity is associated with infant antibiotic exposure.

Early Childhood Obesity – Finally Explained?

The obesity of some young children sometimes baffles their parents. They feed their children well, yet they still are obese. Now, the results of a new study published in the JAMA Pediatrics have revealed that the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics in children under the age of 2 could lead to an increased risk of obesity in early childhood.

Other factors that influence early childhood obesity include: the pre-pregnancy BMI of the mother, sleep duration, physical activity and nutritional intake, of course. Up until now, scientists only guessed that antibiotics may play a role in early childhood obesity, but now we’ve got the proof.

How do antibiotics make children fat? Well, when we are born, our intestines star being colonized by a plethora of bacteria, which can differently affect our growth. Some antibiotics can influence (by killing or modifying) the bacteria and microbes that grow in our stomach. The researchers from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, PA wondered if infant antibiotic use affects early childhood obesity and the results were staggering.

The team of scientists followed more than 64,000 children between 0 to 24 months. The children were now 5 years old and 69% of them had received antibiotics; children who were prescribed the medicine on four or more occasions were more likely to be overweight or obese, but only broad-spectrum antibiotics created the risk of obesity. The results of the study were as follows: at 4 years, 15% of the children were obese and 33% overweight and at 3 years 14% were obese and 30% overweight.

So, the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics before the age of 24 months will increase the risk of early childhood obesity. What are your thoughts on this? Drop us a line in the comment section below.

Obese Children Weight Considered Normal

July 23, 2014 By Sebastian Mc’Mannen Leave a Comment

According to a report by Center for Disease Control and Prevention, obese children weight is not considered a problem when kids are asked about how they see their body. Instead, they believe their body weight is appropriate. In a study called the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and developed by CDC, the results indicated that only a small percent of obese boys and girls correctly identified their weight, the vast majority didn’t.

The study was a longitudinal one and covered data since 2005 until 2012 from around 9.1 million kids.

Obese children weight is seen as normal because the number of persons considered obese according to medical terms are increasing every year, which means that normality starts to be considered not what a body should weigh, but an average image of what surrounds those kids. This explanation was offered by Dr. Daniel Neides from Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute. At the same time, kids from obese families have higher weight misperceptions, because they see this weight model at their parents. The fact suggests that obesity can also be a socially-induced disease, as previous studies revealed.

Obese children weight is misperceived in the case of low-income families

The report also indicated teens are a little more aware of weight problems than younger children and that minority groups are also less aware of these issues. Not being aware of obesity makes them unwilling to make steps to change their weight. On the other hand, there are also normal weighed children or underweighted ones who see themselves as overweighed, which might highlight that the problem with body images doesn’t affect only obese children, but all children. According to the study, the following figures show how weight misperception is distributed among young people: 42% of children considered obese think they have the right weight; 76% of those considered overweight see themselves as having the right figure; and 13% of those considered having an appropriate weight see themselves as either too thin or too fat.

Also, income was differently associated with weight misperception: kids coming from high-income families had a lower weight misperception than kids from low-income families did.

The same study gives and overall analysis of trends in overweight evolution. The report says the trend is stabilizing and the number of people considered overweight according to objective measures isn’t increasing.

As we have seen, families have an important role in how obese children weight is perceived by their kids. According to Time, some parents refuse to see their child as overweight, adding to other factors that might shape their misperception. Being obese has some difficult- to- deal- with health issues consequences, like osteoarthritis, type-2 diabetes, heart problems, and ovarian cancers.

Obesity Fosters obesity, Researchers Claim

July 8, 2014 By Deborah Cobing 1 Comment

It might look like an evident truth, but researchers paid a lot of effort to reach the conclusion that obesity fosters obesity. After all, this is one of the most important roles of science, to confirm or refute seemingly evident truths. The importance of obesity research is more important than ever. Recently we found out that obesity increases the risk of ovarian cancers.

Obesity reached alarming figures in the U.S. for a while now. We almost got used to it. Although everybody is worried about the effects of the process, the explanations are often contradictory. A very strong blame apparatus puts places the agency on individuals. Your body is a representation of what you eat and inherently, your lifestyle choices. But statistics tend to overrule the simplistic explanation. In the last several decades, the number of obese individuals rose alarmingly. There surely is an underlying process triggering the change and explaining a bit more than the plain fact that obesity fosters obesity.

Obesity fosters obesity because of changes in leisure time activities?

An article published in The American Journal of Medicine looked deeper into the issue. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey claims that the decrease in physical activity in the last 20 years is the variable which most thoroughly explains why we are getting fatter. Because Americans do not exercise enough during their leisure time, but maintain a constant nutritional intake, pants keep getting tighter.

Young women are most affected. According to the survey, only 19.1 percent of women reported no physical activity in 1994. The percentage went up to 51.7 in 2010. For men, the numbers are 11.4 percent in 1994 and 43.5 percent in 2010. The BMI for young women rose most drastically.

“Our findings do not support the popular notion that the increase of obesity in the United States can be attributed primarily to sustained increase over time in the average daily caloric intake of Americans,”, Prof. Ladabaum, one of the authors, states. There is a difference in the caloric in-take in the case of women who did not exercised at all. Men engaged in high-level activities ingested a lower portion of calories. Researchers also looked at the waist circumference and found out that women’s waists grew by 0.37 percent per year and only 0.27 in the case of men.

How people eat is not separated from the other spheres of their lives. Obesity fosters obesity, but it is hardly an explanation by itself. Manual jobs are now rarer than ever. So the transition from a blue collar to a white collar economy might be a better foundation for an explanation of why Americans got fatter and fatter. Has leisure time changed much over the years? Probably for many who struggle with two jobs, there is no leisure time anymore.

ADHD Treatment is Linked to Obesity Risk

March 18, 2014 By Jack M. Robinson Leave a Comment

This week it seems that psychological disorders in children are beginning to be figured out, little by little. A recent study has discovered new causes of autism in children and now we’ve got some exciting news about ADHD. There have been studies in the past that have shown that children with ADHD are more predisposed to obesity than those without the illness, but a recent study performed by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore has come to contradict that and reveal that, in fact, it isn’t the illness itself that causes obesity, but the ADHD treatment is linked to obesity.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, is one of the most common disorders in children. Unfortunately this disease doesn’t have a cure, but there is medication that can help relieve symptoms.

ADHD Treatment is Linked to Obesity

The studies that have hinted at a link between ADHD and obesity might have been wrong all along. A study published last year in the journal Medical News Today revealed that males who have ADHD growing up are more likely to have a larger BMI during adulthood. It was believed that the culprits were poor impulse control which causes the children to develop poor eating habits and gain weight but this new study says that the ADHD treatment is linked to obesity.

Data from almost 165,000 children from ages 3 to 18 took was used by the study and after careful inspection and assessment it was revealed that children who were left untreated for their ADHD or had been given stimulants had a greater BMI than those who did not have ADHD. But, the children who had ADHD treated with various stimulants had slower BMI growth in childhood, but fast BMI growth in adolescence and adulthood.

Also, the researchers discovered that the earlier the stimulant medicine was given to the child, the stronger the effects were.

To conclude, ADHD treatment is linked to obesity, but further studies are needed to have a definitive view on the matter. This study is just the first step into finding out how stimulants affect the growing bodies of children with ADHD.

New Study Shows Link Between Low Academic Performance and Obesity

March 11, 2014 By Sebastian Mc’Mannen Leave a Comment

We know many of the health risks carried by obesity, such as diabetes, various types of cancer and heart disease, but we’ve got one more on the obesity’s long list of health risks: apparently a new study shows there is a link between low academic performance and obesity.

This new study found a link between obesity in girls under 21 and low academic levels. The study was conducted by various universities in the United Kingdom and the results were published in the International Journal of Obesity. It is the first comprehensive research that looks at the association between academics and obesity in young adults.

Study Shows Link Between Low Academic Performance and Obesity – Findings

It appears that the link between obesity and low academic is clearer for girls than boys. The leader of the study and professor at the University of Strathclyde in the United Kingdom, John Reilly believes that there is a need for further investigation so that we can better understand why obesity is negatively connected to academic attainment.

The study was conducted on around 6,000 children and it concluded that 71.4% were at a healthy weight, 13.3% were overweight and 15.3% were obese. The results showed that girls who were obese at 11 years of age had lower academic achievement at the ages of 16, 13 and 11 years when compared with those who were of a healthy weight.

Even after the researchers took into account some factors that could interfere with the results of the study (such as mental health, IQ and social-economic status), they found that there is indeed a link between low academic performance and obesity. The girls who are obese are performing more poorly than their healthy weight colleagues.

This new study is yet another reality check for parents, educators and doctors. Did you know that in the United States, childhood obesity has quadrupled in young adults in the past 30 years? What are your thoughts on this disconcerting fact?

Obese people more likely to develop migraine

September 13, 2013 By Janet Vasquez Leave a Comment

Scientists have found a link between obesity and migraine. According to a new study, being overweight may increase a person’s risk of suffering from migraines.

According to the researchers, obese people are 81 percent more likely to have episodic migraines as compared to those of normal weight.

US researchers discovered that people who get occasional migraines are more likely to be fat than people who do not have migraines.

Episodic migraines, defined as 14 or fewer migraine headaches per month, are more common than chronic migraines which occur at least 15 days per month.

“Previous studies have shown a link between people with chronic migraine and obesity, but the research has been conflicting on whether that link existed for those with less frequent attacks,” said study author B Lee Peterlin, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

“As obesity is a risk factor that can potentially be modified and since some medications for migraine can lead to weight gain or loss, this is important information for people with migraine and their doctors,” Peterlin said.

Study

The researchers carried study on 3,862 people with an average age of 47 and collected their complete record of height, weight and migraines. A total of 1,044 participants were obese and 188 of the participants had occasional or episodic migraine.

“These results suggest that doctors should promote healthy lifestyle choices for diet and exercise in people with episodic migraine,” Peterlin said.

“More research is needed to evaluate whether weight loss programmes can be helpful in overweight and obese people with episodic migraine,” Peterlin said.

Peterlin added that the results also indicate that the link between episodic migraine and obesity is stronger in those under the age of 50, the years when migraine is most prevalent, as compared to people older than 50.

The study was published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Early Childhood Obesity – Finally Explained?

Obese children weight is misperceived in the case of low-income families

Obesity fosters obesity because of changes in leisure time activities?

ADHD Treatment is Linked to Obesity

Study Shows Link Between Low Academic Performance and Obesity – Findings

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