Discouraging news about kids and obesity

Here we go again: another discussion about obesity in America.  Why, you may ask, is this being discussed on a website about medical tourism?  Simple.  The obesity crisis, epedemic, catastrophe (use any word you like) and the problems, direct and indirect, associated with it very much relate to why our healthcare costs are launching into the stratusphere.  And, of course, our high healthcare costs are a big reason why many Americans are seeking medical treatment overseas.   

To get a clearer picture of America’s struggles with obesity, researchers say that you have to look at our youngest citizens and their families’ economic status.  The results of a recent study of 1,976 three-year-old, low-income, urban-dwelling children and their mothers showed that 1/3 of white and black children and 44% of Latino children were overweight or obese. 

"The message is that we're seeing overweight and obesity at younger ages than we thought possible," said study author Rachel Tolbert Kimbro, a health and society scholar at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "It's a particular problem in lower-income communities, and it's something we need to keep an eye on and prevent as much as possible." 

While there have been many studies that have shown high rates of obesity among older children and teenagers, according to Kimbro, there's been little research into weight problems among toddlers and very young children.  

In this study, the results of which were published in the Dec. 28 online edition of the American Journal of Public Health, the researchers examined surveys of poor, urbanite parents who had children from 1998 to 2000 in 20 large U.S. cities.  

"We are seeing young children with 'adult' diseases like type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol and several cardiovascular risk factors.  We do know that an overweight child has a 70 percent chance of becoming an overweight or obese adult,” said Cynthia Sass a registered dietician in Tampa, FL, and a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association. 

That’s a scary, but very preventable outcome.  And look at it this way: For all the lower income children who are overweight or obese, there are 2/3 of white and black children and over half of the Hispanic children who are not, which, in my humble opinion, seems to prove that living healthy is not impossible no matter what your race or economic status.    

Yet, obesity remains the second leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.  When you see the numbers, it becomes clear how that could be the case.  For instance, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, there are approximately 127 million adults in the U.S. are overweight, 60 million obese, and 9 million severely obese.  That’s about a 20% increase in just those who are overweight in the last thirty years.  

This recent study is useful because it proves how not only obesity can start at an early age, but also how it can spiral into serious, lifelong damage.  Yet, when boiled down to its elements, the endemic obesity in America isn’t about race, ethnicity, economic status, or even age, as much as it is about making good choices.   

A little bit of prevention, most of which is very simple and exponentially less expensive than dealing with problems after its too late, can really go a long way.  The health of a country is only as good as the health of its citizens, and the cost of a country’s healthcare is only as low as the cost it takes to treat the country’s citizens.