Nov. 8, 2006
 
HEALTH: Fat Bellies on Children Aren’t Healthy
 
By Lee Bowman
Scripps Howard News Service
 
Nearly one in five American children grew big enough around the middle to be considered abdominally obese by 2004, a 65 percent increase in belly fat over just six years, according to a new study published Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2006.
 
Although increases in Body Mass Index (BMI) scores among children have been noted for more than a decade, the increase in children with significant belly fat appears to have been even greater, based on data from government health and nutrition surveys taken between 1999 and 2004.
 
The findings, published in the journal Pediatrics, are important because many experts consider a person's girth about the middle to be a better predictor of heart and artery disease and diabetes risk than the more common weight to height ratio of BMI.
 
Belly fat is considered more dangerous than general weight gain because the abdominal and visceral fat -- fat surrounding the internal organs -- is more clearly and strongly linked with risk for those diseases.
 
Measures of waist circumference are not usually taken during doctor's visits, but height and weight is almost always noted. Yet a very muscular person may register a high BMI score, even while having average waist circumference and being healthy. On the other hand, a sedentary child may have a high BMI, but if he or she carries a lot of fat around the middle, may be at higher risk for health problems.
 
Using data from several national surveys, Drs. Chaoyang Li of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Stephen Cook of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry found that the percentage of 6- to 11-year-old children with high BMI scores rose by 25 percent, from 15.1 percent in a 2000 survey to 18.8 percent in 2004. The increase in abdominal obesity of the same group over the same period was more than 35 percent (14 percent in 2000 to 19.2 percent in 2004).
 
"Those increases only grow more alarming as you tease out specific age groups over longer periods of time," Cook said. For instance, between surveys done in the early 1990s and the first years of the new century, "the largest relative increase in the prevalence of abdominal obesity occurred among 2- to-5-year old boys, 84 percent; and 18 or 19-year old girls, 126 percent."
 
The good news, Cook said, is that children and teens with unhealthy body fat levels can change their habits and shed much of the weight before permanent damage is done.
 
"Kids, teens and adults who have early stages of (hardened arteries) can have a healthy cardiovascular system again," said Cook, an assistant professor of Pediatrics. "Older adults who have plaque build up (in arteries) have a much harder battle, especially if the plaque has calcified."
 
Cook noted that, as yet, there is no clear standard for how waist circumference should be measured to gauge disease risk. But he said the study is another warning for doctors and parents to limit sedentary lifestyles for kids and to begin teaching healthy eating and exercise behaviors early in childhood.
 
On the Net:
 
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/118/5/e1390
 
Contact Lee Bowman at BowmanL(at)SHNS.com. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com