CHILDHOOD OBESITY SEEMS TO BE RAMPANT

It doesn’t take a scientific genius to figure it out. Just look around you. Whether you’re hanging at a mall or strolling past a school playground, you will notice there seem to be a lot more pudgy kids running around lately. But science likes to measure things, and the prevalence of obesity—both childhood and adult—has captured the attention of many scientific investigators; they are finding that causes of obesity are complex and myriad. The following appeared in Survival of the Sickest by Dr. Sharon Moalem with Jonathan Prince.

“One-third of American children are overweight or obese—that’s 25 million kids. In the last thirty years, the percentage of obese two-to five-year-olds has doubled—and the percentage of obese six- to eleven-year-olds has tripled. A baby girl born in 2000 now has a 40 percent chance—almost a coin toss—of developing Type 2 diabetes, and that’s directly related to the huge surge in heavy kids.

“What’s even sadder is that many of these children are showing symptoms of obesity-related illness while they’re still kids. One recent study showed that about 60 percent of obese five- to ten-year-olds already exhibited at least one major risk factor for heart disease—high cholesterol, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, or high sugar levels. Of those kids 25 percent had more than one risk factor. A 2005 report in The New England Journal of Medicine said that the epidemic of childhood obesity is the critical element in a gathering storm that could produce the first modern decline in American life expectancy—dropping life expectancy as much as five[!] years.

“There’s no question that gallons of sugary soda, baskets of fatty fries, and too many hours watching television and playing video games instead of after-school sports is a fattening combo. But new research suggests that may not be the whole story.

“There is emerging evidence that the dietary habits of parents, especially women in the earliest stage of pregnancy, may have an impact on the metabolism of their children. In other words, if you’re trying to get pregnant, you really should think twice before you bite that Big Mac—once for your own waistline and once for your potential child’s.

“Before you get the wrong idea, this isn’t to suggest some strictly Larmarckian idea that a fat parent is going to have a fat child because the child will inherit the weight problem his or her parent acquired. But this is to say that new research is rapidly changing our understanding of how, when, and whether genes express themselves—that is, how, when, and whether the instructions in a gene are carried out. A series of groundbreaking research over the last five year has shown that certain compounds can attach themselves to specific genes and suppress their expression. These compounds act like a genetic light switch, essentially turning off the genes they attach to. And—here’s where it gets really interesting—the research shows that environmental factors, like the food we eat or the cigarettes we smoke, can flick the switch on or off.

“This research is changing the whole field of genetics—it’s even launched a subdiscipline called epigenetics. Epigenetics is concerned with the study of how children can inherit and express seemingly new traits from their parents without changes in the underlying DNA. In other words, the instructions are the same, but something else overrides them.

“Being a gene isn’t all that it was cracked up to be anymore.”

Dr. Moalem published the foregoing in early 2007. The application here is for people of childbearing age who plan on procreating to improve their dietary habits and get some exercise as  ways of keeping the human race of the future healthy and strong. The future, in many ways, depends on the lifestyle choices we make today. For those who have no plans for bringing new life into being, it is still good advice for their own healthy longevity.

Click on the amazon.com logo in the sidebar if you would like to read more of  Dr. Sharon Moalem's fascinating book. __________________________________________________________________________________________

Disclaimer: The purpose of this weblog is not to dispense medical advice nor in any way is meant to be construed as diagnostic or prescriptive. Always check with your physician before beginning any new program or trying any of the items discussed in the posts that appear on this site.