If I haven’t scared you enough already about how our country is overweight. Or how cities and schools are taking out playgrounds. Or how bad our diets can be for kids… here’s something else to think about.

Physicians have identified a risk factor for heart disease in adulthood that can be present in children as young as 10. They want kids as young as 3 years old to be screened for BMI. They hope to  help motivate children to exercise and lose weight. I’ll quote a lot from this study and past studies that illustrate just how serious this problem is, starting from a very young age.

“The researchers from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center found an association between stiffness of arteries and function of the heart’s left ventricle later in life.” The study looked at more than 600 preteens and young adults.

“Screening for arterial stiffness and diastolic function – the ability of the left ventricle to relax and fill with blood before contracting and pumping it to the body – may be called for in obese teens or those with type II diabetes if we want to identify young people at increased risk for developing early cardiac disease,” says Tom Kimball, M.D., a pediatric cardiologist at Cincinnati Children’s and senior author of the study.”

Conclusion? there are risk factors in childhood that predict heart disease in adults.

This isn’t the first time the issue has been studied. In 2001, two studies showed that obesity in children directly affects structure and function of the heart, which could lead to increased risk for heart disease. “A 2003 study suggested that certain abnormalities of the heart are more common in obese children than in children of normal weight. A 2004 study showed that morbid obesity in children and adolescents directly affects the structure of their hearts and puts them at increased risk for future heart attack.”

“More recently, Dr. Kimball identified BMI rebound age as a risk factor: The earlier in young childhood that kids reach their lowest BMI and then begin to gain body mass, the greater the chance of having adverse changes in known cardiovascular risk factors, which can show up as early as age 7.”

Obviously there is a lot more we can do to prevent heart disease and other obesity-related problems. It’s just astounding how young these problems can show up. I think in those cases it starts with parents because they have a big influence on how their kids eat.

What do you think?

More at http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1925489/new_risk_factor_for_adult_heart_disease_identified_in_children/index.html?source=r_health

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