Are you thinking that our "epidemic of childhood obesity" is just a lot of media hype? You're wrong, and dangerously so. The shape our kids are in (or out of) these days is putting them at risk for an unhealthy adulthood and premature death — and it's up to us, right now, to make it stop.
Dr. Carlon Colker is worried — and he thinks you should be, too. Doc is Shaquille O'Neal's personal physician and trainer, and he runs the physical fitness component of Shaq's Big Challenge. He's on the show for a good reason — as a doctor, as a trainer, and as a parent, he's frightened by what he sees going on.
"It's absolutely horrifying," he exclaims. "Kids are coming in with diabetes in such large numbers that we had to throw out the terms we used for the different types." What used to be called adult-onset diabetes isn't called that anymore because kids are getting it now — this life-altering chronic disease is now referred to as type 2 diabetes, and overweight kids are developing it at alarming rates.
Dr. William Muinos is equally alarmed. The pediatric gastroenterologist at Miami Children's Hospital who oversees the health of the kids on the show knows firsthand what our nation is up against. "I'm seeing high blood pressure in children as young as eight years old," he says. Even a slightly elevated reading in a child can lead to early arteriosclerosis and increased risk of heart disease. There's a long list of other health problems that beset overweight children, he says, including high cholesterol, sleep apnea, fatty metamorphosis of the liver (a type of hepatitis), shortness of breath, polycystic ovarian syndrome in girls, and early puberty. What's worse, he adds, the heavier the child, the earlier the problems begin.
And our kids are getting much heavier, much younger: Rates of overweight and obesity have skyrocketed among American children and teens. Today, 30 percent of youngsters age six to 19 — that's nearly one out of every three kids — are either overweight or at risk for becoming overweight. If the trend we've seen over recent years continues, the numbers will keep rising.
To see the extent of the problem, you need look no further than the nearest schoolyard (if you can find kids there at all, now that PE and recess times have been drastically reduced). Dr. Muinos offers an even scarier eye-opener: he takes MRI scans of his seriously overweight young patients, which show a cross-section of their midsection. These scans show, quite dramatically, how much of the child's body is fat. Compare these two scans, one of a child at a healthy weight and the other of a child who is extremely overweight. The healthy child has a slender white ring of body fat around the belly. On the overweight child, the white ring of excess, dangerous body fat actually dwarfs the body within.
The risks only get worse as the child gets older. Health conditions like diabetes and heart disease are some of the leading causes of death in the United States, and experts think that average life expectancy could decrease by as much as five years if the obesity epidemic continues at its current pace. Our kids could be the first generation in history to have shorter lives than their parents.
So yes, weight matters, a lot. Are you ready to take action to help your children?
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Photograph © American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.
For more information about Dr. Carlon Colker and Dr. William Muinos, see
About the Experts.