The Many Hazards of Childhood Obesity
It hasn’t been so long since obesity was limited to the world of adulthood. Over the last thirtyish years or so the situation in the US has changed definitely for the worse. In addition to more adults being overweight, children and teenagers are developing this condition at ever younger years. For children, the obvious and most influential people will be the parents, and education as well as awareness are critical. It is, however, the parents who must offer guidance and act as positive role models. Obese kids are staring down the barrel of a plethora of physical and behavioral health problems. Looking beyond that, the kids are also at high risk for lots of issues that won’t surface until later on. So for kids it is a terrible one-two punch that is nearly impossible to beat and overcome.
The child who is obese is on a crushing path heading right for awful health problems. One problem, for example, is fatty liver disease (which is just about the most common liver disease). Very many years ago people usually associated liver problems with alcoholism and sclerosis of the liver. Now, though, we understand that chronic obesity is a major factor in fatty liver disease. What will usually make the primary liver issues worse is that the metabolism of an obese person is terribly dysfunctional. The liver helps with detoxifying the body of anything that is not good for it. This puts a major demand upon the bodily 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 very serious because what happens is the airway actually becomes blocked during sleep. Kids who are overweight and obese are more likely to develop snoring problems but that’s a deceiving piece of data, according to researchers. The reason for this snoring is sometimes OSA, obstructive sleep apnea. The adenotonsillectomy is one possible solution to the problem of sleep apnea in children and teens who are obese.
Researchers still don’t know if there is a direct correlation between obesity and early onset puberty which is more common in girls than in boys. However, there is a certain amount of common sense looking at what is known. For example, we know that kids who are obese and overweight grow faster and enter puberty earlier. It is still a situation, however, in which causality needs to be more definitely defined. While this is obviously not that serious a threat as the other obesity related problems, there are definitely serious implications that accompany abnormally young ages 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.