The Growing Epidemic of Obesity in Children and Teens
Not so very long ago obesity and all of its accompanying complications were limited to the realm of adulthood. In the United States, things have deteriorated over the last thirty years or so. In addition to having more adults than before, kids and teens are developing this condition at younger ages than ever before. For children the most obvious influences are typically their parents though education and awareness raising are also super important. But it is the parents who must provide guidance and also be a positive role model for their children. Kids who are obese are facing imminent problems with their mental and physical health. Beyond that, there are a lot of dangerous risks that will have both the means and the opportunity to develop into real problems later on in life. So for kids it is a terrible one-two punch that is nearly impossible to beat and overcome.
The obese child is now facing a harrowing path toward insane health issues. One example of this is fatty liver disease which is an incredibly common liver condition. A while ago most people figured that alcoholism and sclerosis were the primary causes of liver problems. Today, though, we understand that fatty liver disease is most often caused by chronic obesity. What will usually make the primary liver issues worse is that the metabolism of an obese person is terribly dysfunctional. Your liver helps things more by acting as the detoxifying agent to rid your body of anything that is not good for it. So there is just an incredible demand and load that is placed on the systems of kids and teens who are obese. Widespread research has proven that kids who suffer from obesity are far more likely to suffer from sleep apnea than kids who aren’t obese. This condition is alarming because it leads to the blocking of a child’s airway while he or she is sleeping. Obese and overweight children are more prone to snoring but that is slightly deceiving according to those doing the research. The reason for that is the snoring is sometimes a hidden symptom of OSA, obstructive sleep apnea. The adenotonsillectomy is one possible solution to the problem of sleep apnea in children and teens who are obese.
Researchers are still not sure about a direct relationship between obesity and the early onset of puberty, and more so in girls than boys. Of course there is definitely more common sense and looking at the things we know now involved. For example, it is known that obese and overweight children grow at a faster rate, and they do enter puberty earlier. It is a situation, though, in which definite causation needs to be defined. While this is clearly not a serious threat to health as other obesity related medical conditions, there are certain implications that go along with an abnormally young age for the onset of puberty. Obese kids and young adults have often been (accurately) described as “the walking wounded.” This applies because of the way that obesity affects the mind and the body.
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