Sunday 091115

Rest!

http://www.thatsfit.com/2009/11/13/overweight-kids-set-for-heart-disease/



You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that kids’ waistlines are expanding as rapidly as adults’ these days. Just take a look around. With an estimated 33 percent of children overweight or obese, the husky kids who used to be the exception are now becoming the norm — and being big as a kid can translate into big health problems later on.

Medical experts report that overweight kids are heart attacks just waiting to happen. One study from the New England Journal of Medicine found that today’s kids are likely to become adults with heart disease, which translates to more hospitalizations, more medications, more medical
procedures and a shorter life expectancy. Another study reported that if the number of overweight children continues to increase at the current rate, there will be 100,000 additional cases of heart disease by 2035.

Who are the main culprits for childhood obesity? Parents, for one. Carting in boxes of donuts to their little ones’ soccer games, offering sugar-loaded fruit drinks as afterschool snacks and replacing home cooking with deep-fried drive-thrus, parents are teaching kids some fattening life lessons. The average child today consumes 180 more calories a day than their leaner counterparts did in 1989. That can translate to an extra 18 pounds a year.

Caloric catastrophes are only part of the problem though. Thanks to the technology gurus and marketing powers-to-be that target our youth, kids today are more likely to be found tweeting, texting, Wii-ing and channel surfing than running, biking and playing. “Now you can drive through entire neighborhoods where you know there are a lot of young kids there and hardly see any of them out,” said American Heart Association spokesman, Russell Pate in an interview
with CNN. So while kids are more likely to say that a blackberry is a phone vs. a fruit, we can still help them make heart-healthy choices. Once they learn to make them on their own, they may be more likely to turn off the TV and head outside.