Childhood Obesity A Health Problem
The rise of obesity in children and youth may lead to the following health problems:

• Heart disease, caused by:
  
  • High cholesterol and/or
  • High blood pressure

Additional Health Risks
Less common health conditions associated with increased weight include:

• Asthma
  
  • Asthma is a disease of the lungs in which the airways become blocked or narrowed causing breathing difficulty. Studies have identified an association between childhood overweight and asthma.
• Hepatic Steatosis
  
  • Hepatic steatosis is the fatty degeneration of the liver caused by a high concentration of liver enzymes. Weight reduction causes liver enzymes to normalize.
• Sleep Apnea
  
  • Sleep apnea is a less common complication of overweight for children and adolescents. Sleep apnea is a sleep-associated breathing disorder defined as the cessation of breathing during sleep that lasts for at least 10 seconds. Sleep apnea is characterized by loud snoring and labored breathing. During sleep apnea, oxygen levels in the blood can fall dramatically. One study estimated that sleep apnea occurs in about 7 percent of overweight children.
• Type 2 Diabetes
  
  • Type 2 diabetes is increasingly being reported among children and adolescents who are overweight. While diabetes and glucose intolerance, a precursor of diabetes, are common health effects of adult obesity, only in recent years has Type 2 diabetes begun to emerge as a health-related problem among children and adolescents. Onset of diabetes in children and adolescents can result in advanced complications such as CVD (cardiovascular disease) and kidney failure.
• Social Discrimination
  
  • Psychosocial Risks - Some consequences of childhood and adolescent overweight are psychosocial. Obese children and adolescents are targets of early and systematic social discrimination. The psychological stress of social stigmatization can cause low self-esteem which, in turn, can hinder academic and social functioning, and persist into adulthood.

Obese children and adolescents may experience immediate health consequences and may be at risk for weight-related health problems in adulthood. Studies have shown that obese children and teens are more likely to become obese as adults.

To help your child maintain a healthy weight, balance the calories your child consumes from foods and beverages with the calories your child uses through physical activity and normal growth.

Remember that the goal for overweight and obese children and teens is to reduce the rate of weight gain while allowing normal growth and development. Children and teens should NOT be placed on a weight reduction diet without the consultation of a health care provider.

I think childhood obesity is becoming a growing problem as the years go by. It seems like there are more and more obese children now then there ever was before. I saw a show on Dr. Phil recently about a 150 pound four year old child. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this show. The kid could barely get up from out of bed and walking was hard for him. How do you let your 4 year old get so overweight? Apparently the mother denied feeding him any bad food and that there had to be some sort of medical issue with her child, but the doctors have yet to find anything. The mom is overweight herself and Dr. Phil refused to believe that the mom had nothing to do with her son being extremely overweight.

The mother's aunt wrote this to Dr. Phil:

How can a mom really believe giving a child Kool-aid and soda in a bottle isn't bad for him??? And why would a mom even consider doing that?

Apparently the father stepped into the picture and got him on the right track. He wrote this letter to Dr. Phil:

Just goes to my point... I think people should have to get a license to procreate!

I wonder if that mom has...

Munchausen syndrome by proxy. It's a rare form of child abuse in which a parent - usually the mother - causes her own child to become sick to get attention for herself.

In this case, she let her child become extremely obese.

I've never heard of that syndrome before, how'd you hear about that?

Quite a few years ago, on the news, and on TV shows about it.

I went to a Chinese restaurant a few weeks ago with my brother and his better half. It was an 'Eat as much as you like' buffet for a fixed price. There was a family sitting a few tables from us, and they were all fairly 'big boned'.

The young lad, perhaps ten or eleven years old, went back to the buffet (and gathered a LARGE plateful) at least four times, AND had a dessert- possibly two helpings. Now, I'm known for my appetite, and could eat for Britain, but this young lad must have eaten three or four times as much as I did.

We were quite amazed. He was well on the way to becoming as large as his parents. Roly poly...

So sad for that boy. To the roly poly family... stop going to the all you can eat!!

We had neighbors years ago, and the two youngest boys were just the right weight, while the rest of the family was pretty big. It only took a matter of a couple of years for the youngest boys to start gaining extra weight and finally blend in with the rest of the family. Those boys are now so overweight as adults, that it is life threatening to their health. Their dad already had a heart attack at the age of 53.

Kids are going to eat how their parents eat, so the parent's have got to set a good example for the children to learn from so they don't end up the way they do (if the parent's are overweight).

I think the main cause of this epidemic is the feminist movement to be honest. Before I get my head bitten off, I am not saying it is the women's fault... I am just saying this is where it started. I think that when women went into the workforce and started competing with men to earn a living outside of the home, we lost our way a bit. (Hypothetically scenario) My grandmother stayed at home cooked, cleaned and looked after the kids. She taught my mom how to cook and clean and look after her kids. My mom entered Corporate America and she still cooked some of the time and we ate out a lot, my dad did as much cleaning as her and the both were pulled to different activities with the my brother, sister and me; but we were raised just as much on tv as my mom and dad. One thing they failed at was to teach us how to cook, clean and take care of the kids because there just wasn't enough time in the day to do it all. Project this into the future, since I don't know how to cook, was raised half-way on tv and can hire someone else to clean if I work more, I will work all the time. I won't cook because I don't know how and eating out tastes good; I won't work out because I a working too much and am braindead when I come in just to be able to afford the maid for my house and don't even mention the kids... their having fun watching McDonald's commercials and playing, "Grand Theft Auto" anyways... Do you see where this is going... it has to stop somewhere before our society fat, video-gaming playing, isolated, health risks at the age of 13... oops too late! It is scary to think where the next generations kids are going to end up though isn't it?!?

I know how to cook, clean and take care of kids and I grew up in the same kind of environment that you did! I can see your point, but I don't necessarily agree. I think the main difference between today and say about 50 years ago is how strict parents are. 50 years ago kids probably only at the set times that the parents allowed them to eat. These days kids don't even ask their parents when to eat because the parent's aren't strict and let them fend for themselves. That's even different from when I was growing up. I remember at a certain point in my childhood having to ask my parent's for anything that I wanted to eat.