Overweight Kids Often Become Obese, Unhealthy Adults

Overweight Kids Often Become Obese, Unhealthy Adults
WEDNESDAY, Dec. 5 (HealthDay News) -- Overweight children andadolescents are more likely to be overweight or obese adults and morelikely to suffer early heart disease and death, two new studiesconclude.
The first, out of Denmark, found that large children, especially boys,are at an increased risk of coronary heart disease as adults.
The second, based on a computer model, found that overweightadolescents are more likely to end up with heart disease and even dying inearly adulthood.
"Teenage and childhood weight does matter," said Dr. Thomas R. Kimball,a pediatric cardiologist with Cincinnati Children's Hospital MedicalCenter. "This is not a problem of middle-aged adults. This is a problemthat we have to face as a society in our children."
"When you see a shift at this level across the entire population, itreally suggests that this is a major public health problem and requiresintervention that really needs to be reinforced at every level of policymakers, every level of institutions," said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo,lead author of the computer modeling study.
"This is more than just a problem of overweight adolescents and theirparents. It's a problem that requires really a concerted effort atfederal, state, local policy levels to reinforce the availability ofhealthy foods for kids and the availability of physical activity. Wereally want to prevent obesity before it starts," said Bibbins-Domingo,who is assistant professor of medicine, epidemiology and biostatistics andthe Robert Wood Johnson Harold Amos Medical Faculty Scholar at theUniversity of California, San Francisco.
Both studies are published in the Dec. 6 issue of the New EnglandJournal of Medicine.
The overweight and obesity crisis is reaching epidemic proportionsaround the world. In the United States, federal statistics estimate that 9million adolescents (17 percent of the population) are overweight and 80percent of overweight adolescents grow up to be obese adults. Childhoodobesity rates have tripled since 1970.
Worldwide, children are becoming heavier at younger and younger ages.In the United States, 19 percent of kids between the ages of 6 and 11 areoverweight.
Being overweight or obese puts you at risk of heart disease, diabetes,cancer and other ills.
The first study looked at a group of almost 277,000 Danish children --all schoolchildren in Copenhagen -- from 1930 to 1976.
Out of that initial group, more than 10,200 men and 4,300 women wereidentified whose childhood body-mass index (BMI) data were available andwho had received a diagnosis of coronary heart disease (CHD) or died ofCHD as adults.
Boys with a higher BMI at 7 to 13 years of age and girls with a higherBMI from 10 to 13 years of age had a higher risk of a heart disease eventin adulthood, the researchers found.
The authors used as an example a 13-year-old boy who weighs 11.2kilograms (24.6 pounds) more than average boy his age. He now has a 33percent increase in the probability of having a coronary event before heturns 60, the Danish team said.
"It's scary," Kimball said. "We knew that if you're an overweight kid,you're at a higher risk to be an overweight adult. This study goes a stepfurther. It's proving that you have an increased risk of cardiovascularevents as early as 25 years of age."
The second study projected the number of overweight adults based on thenumber of overweight adolescents in 2000.
Using a computer model, it predicted that up to 37 percent of men and44 percent of women will be obese when these people -- now teenagers --turn 35 in 2020.
This could result in up to 5,000 additional deaths from heart diseaseand 45,000 heart attacks, cardiac arrests and related events by 2035 amongthis group of young adults. It would raise the death toll fromobesity-related coronary heart disease by 19 percent.
"To some extent, we're not surprised. We know it's not good to beoverweight at any age but we were really struck by the magnitude of thisincrease," said Bibbins-Domingo. "We're modeling a young adult population35 to 50 years. These are people who should be working and raisingfamilies, not worrying about heart disease, and we're suggesting more willbe hospitalized for heart attacks, will need chronic medication to managehigh blood pressure and high cholesterol, and many more will actually diebefore the age of 50."
More information
To learn more about the government's We Can! Program regardingchildhood obesity, visit the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.