LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

Childhood Obesity

Childhood Obesity Statistics: Do B Vitamins Matter?

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childhood obesity statistics and B vitamins
Copyright aleutie/Dollar Photo Club

Weight gain and obesity are not caused by a single choice.  Rather, the outcome is a hodge-podge of calories, exercise, toxin exposure, stress and gut flora.

Forty or fifty years ago, the simple answer of balancing calories in versus calories out would help most people lose the weight they needed and keep it off.  Sure, there were a few who truly had deep-rooted physiological imbalances that kept them obese, but these were few and far between.

But that was then and this is now.

Obesity has become THE monster when it comes to chronic disease.  There is not a single chronic disease that does not have obesity as a risk factor.  Despite this, society has done a poor job of bringing its collective waistline back into an ideal waist-to-hip ratio.  As more and more research accumulates, we have seen that the answer is far from clear.  What is clear, however, is that some things we would never have expected decades ago are at play.

The bacteria in your gut plays a strong role in diabetes and obesity.  This means that antibiotics, especially as an infant or toddler, can preset you for obesity.

Chemicals in our environment that you are exposed to constantly throughout the day, every day, contribute to obesity and diabetes.  Flame retardants, BPA in plastics, phthalates in fabric softener, Teflon in non-stick cookware, your flame resistant mattress, pesticides in our fruits and vegetables.  These are just a few of the thousands of examples of chemicals that affect your health and weight.

Stress is yet another factor that many do not realize as such a strong player in chronic disease and obesity.

This particular study adds yet another dimension to the complex equation of body weight and obesity.  In it, researchers looked at the levels of B vitamins in the blood of a group of  1131 Mexican American children who were between the ages of  8 and 15 to see if there was any relationship between B vitamin status and obesity.  Here’s what they found:

  • Those kids with higher levels of vitamin B-12 had a 52% lower risk of being obese.
  • Higher levels of folate in the blood stream also led to a lower risk.
  • Dietary intake of the B vitamins thiamin and riboflavin were also linked to lower BMI and total body fat mass.

Just like every other factor out there, the management of body weight is not about doing one single thing but more of putting everything into the blender and using the mix to maintain an ideal body weight.

And this also does not mean that giving your child a multivitamin along with his or her Big Mac value meal is going to balance things out.  It is very likely that the B vitamin levels were more likely a reflection of a healthier diet loaded with fruits, vegetables and whole grains and this diet pattern is what is keeping weight under control.

 

Bottle Feeding and Childhood Obesity

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IS BOTTLE FEEDING CONTRIBUTING TO CHILDHOOD OBESITY..?

The enlarging of our children is multifactorial, and most of the blame falls to the parents feeding their children artificial sweeteners, high fructose corn syrup and refined carbs. This particular study contributes further to our understanding of the epidemic. Basically, bottle fed infants had problems with their ability to stop eating vs breast fed infants, irrespecively of the type of milk. This may have do due with a connection to the mother in the act of nursing or an idea of “eat everything on your plate” beginning very early.

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Pregnancy Weight Gain and Childhood Obesity

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BREAKING THE CYCLE OF CHRONIC DISEASE BEGINS HOW EARLY?  Based on previous posts, this shouldn’t be a trick question.  The answer is before pregnancy. In this study, women who gained excess weight during pregnancy had children that, at 9 years of age, had pretty much EVERY risk factor for heart disease elevated.  A literal time bomb that will explode decades before it exploded for the parents.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, we need to stand up for the health of our children by taking better care of ourselves during pregnancy.  This goes for BOTH the dad and the mom.  The decisions you make today are either helping your child grow up healthier, or you are loading a bullet in the chamber.  Decide.  You can’t sit on the fence.

Is Your Pediatrician Making Your Child Fat?

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childhood obesity and antibiotics
Photo courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/sparktography/

There are many causes of adult and childhood obesity, but some rise to the top.

Today’s poor quality diets consisting of liquid calories (regardless of whether it’s milk, soda or Gatorade, we should NEVER drink our calories) and phytonutrient-poor food choices combined with the culling out of physical activity at home and school.

Digging a little deeper you can find that chemical exposures like BPA in plastics, phthalates in vinyl, Teflon in cooking pans and flame retardants in mattresses, furniture and clothing all contribute to weight gain, obesity and diabetes.

Pulling out the shovel to dig even further and you will find that childhood neglect also contributes to childhood obesity. This can be nutritional, emotional or physical abuse.

If you happen to have any excavating equipment, you will find that exposures in the womb can prime the as-yet-unborn child for chronic diseases like obesity, heart disease and diabetes. High levels of maternal stress, chemical exposures and poor dietary choices by mom have all linked to later chronic diseases.

Which brings us to this particular study. In it, researchers looked at the links between antibiotic use in childhood and later obesity.  The relationship between the bacteria in our gut and obesity has been in the spotlight for the past few years.

Rather than any single bacteria that plays a role in protecting or producing obesity, it has more to do with the patterns of bacteria present within the gut. Following this concept, it would make sense that antibiotics, which completely decimate the bacteria in the gut, will have some of role to play in obesity.

Broad spectrum antibiotics, which indiscriminately destroy the good bacteria in the gut, would have stronger effects.

Here’s the surprising details:

  • Despite the uproar over antibiotic overuse, an astounding 69% of infants were given antibiotics before age 24 months.
  • Not only did the bulk of kids have antibiotics, but on average they had 2.3 antibiotic prescriptions each.
  • In children who had been exposed to antibiotics, there was an 11% higher risk of being obese.
  • If broad-spectrum antibiotics were used, the risk was higher at 16%.

Someone’s going to have a really hard time convincing me that 69% of infants in this study needed to be on antibiotics (the study included 64,580 infants, so that makes 44,560 infants exposed to antibiotics overall).  This is an astounding number.  I have said time and time again that I consider the wanton destruction of the normal bacterial flora in an infant one of the worst things that can be done to that child’s immune system.  Until the culture of medicine wakes up and stops worrying about the stupid concern of antibiotic resistance (OK…not stupid, but pales in comparison to destruction of the normal flora…) and truly begins to understand the devastation that antibiotics play we will never see this trend reverse.  Part of the onus is also on the parent for not questioning the prescription in today’s day and age of the Internet.

The bottom line?  Think really, really, really hard when your infant is given a prescription for antibiotics.  Question the pediatrician about the long-term side effects.  If he or she seems unaware besides antibiotic resistance, this is your first sign that your doctor hasn’t cracked a medical journal in QUITE a while.  Time to run.

Personally, I usually steer my patients towards family practice.  In general, providers in a family practice seem far more in tune with the research and less inclined to follow dogma and write a prescription for every stuffy nose.

 

Surprising Fact that May Contribute to Childhood Obesity Statistics

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childhood obesity statistics and sleep
Photo courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/

There has been very little dent in the childhood obesity statistics over the past decade or so. Sure, there’s been much attention focused on the problem, but very little real answers.

The least painful answer is for kids to get out and move.  Or at least this recommendation is the one that is not going to cost any big businesses money and may even generate additional income.  You will never see a recommendation to avoid dairy or refined carbohydrates because these recommendations would be very, very painful to certain business that “support” the efforts to fight childhood obesity.  The sad thing is that, while exercise is important, it’s low on the totem pole of important changes to make.

While the dietary changes are the most powerful tools we have for fighting off obesity, there are other more sneaky things that contribute.  Take family meals, for instance.  It is well documented that family meals increase the quality of the foods eaten and lower the risk of obesity.  And these families meals should NOT involve television viewing.  That’s a pretty darn easy recommendation, but may require some pretty serious changes in the priorities of parents.

This particular study addresses another one of those little known factors when it comes to obesity rates, whether in children or adults.

Sleep.  Or rather, lack of it.

Yup.  Lack of sleep has been consistently shown to increase obesity rates.  And why shouldn’t it?  It’s a stress on the body and stress contributes to weight gain.  All too often, we don’t stress the importance of getting a solid nights’ sleep, especially in our teenage high school students.

In the study, researchers looked at the sleeping habits of  250 healthy high school students from public school (average age 15.7 years with 57% black and 54% female).  These kids were from low to middle class families.  The amount of sleep was measured both from a diary and from actigraphy (a small device attached to the wrist or arm to monitor the amount of sleep based on body movements).  Here’s what they found:

  • The amount of sleep during the week in the group was clearly too low (6.8 hours based on diary and 6.0 based on actigraphy).
  • On the weekend, the amount of sleep was a little higher at  8.7 based on the diary and 7.4 based on actigraphy.
  • Black participants and male participants slept less and had more fragmented sleep.
  • Female participants reported poorer quality of sleep in their daily diaries and more daytime sleepiness.

Given that the recommendations for sleep in this age group is 8 to 9 hours, this is a big problem.  Even when they think they can “catch up” on sleep over the weekend (you can’t) the actual sleep measured by actigraphy is still too low.

As parents, it is our job to set the stage for the importance of sleep for long-term health.  Those habits are picked up early and can contribute to a lifetime of poor health.  How much sleep did YOUR teenager get last night?

 

A Primer on Early Childhood Obesity and Parental Influence – (03-18-03)

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A Primer on Early Childhood Obesity and Parental Influence.

This one always gets me. Overweight children and overweight dogs are 100% the fault of the parent. Well…maybe 96%. Parents need to educate themselves on the difference between high quality foods and junk. Poor nutritional foods are pervasive and the marketing is effective at getting parents to think the food is healthy. Sunny Delight with real fruit juice (10% with the rest as sugar), Ovaltine with all 2 essential nutrients (and the rest is non-essential chemicals and sugar).

Pediatric Nursing Journal – Current Content

Click here for more information.

Still Buying Your Kids Chicken Nuggets? You Won’t After This

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Any self-respecting parent who cares about his or her child should restrict fast food.  As in less than once per quarter.

Some of you may think this is a little harsh (and it’s likely going to be the ones who hit the drive thru at little more often than monthly), but I stand by that statement.  The quality of fast food is abhorrent and is in no way, shape or form part of a healthy diet and is a contributor to the childhood obesity statistics we see in this country.

There are some acceptable “fast food” restaurants you can choose instead, Chipotle has some good options for kids.  There are some sandwich shops that aren’t too toxic (Subway or Quizno’s are possible, but you’re going to have to put some veggies on the sandwich to bring it up to par).  Maybe Taco Bell.

Ok..so maybe not Taco Bell…

But you always get your child chicken nuggets, and they’re chicken, so they can’t be that bad, right?

Wow, are you wrong.  This particular study looked at what actually made up “chicken” nuggets from 2 national fast food chains (while the study did not identify the chains, you can make some guesses).  Here’s what they found:

  1. Striated muscle (chicken meat) was not the predominate component in the nuggets.
  2. Fat was present in equal or greater quantities.
  3. Also present were cells from the epithelium (skin), bone, nerve, and connective tissue.

While this may not come as a shocker, I guess we’d expect “chicken” nuggets to be made up of mostly chicken.  According to this study, that’s not even close to true.  Worse, you can bet the chicken meat is not of the organic, free range variety.

If you still choose  to buy your children chicken nuggets after knowing this little tidbit, I don’t really know what to say.  (As a side note, I had Keegan, 7 1/2, read this article and his response was that it was just “wrong…”)

Alternatively, Costco (Kirkland brand) sells a natural chicken nugget with whole grain breading in Mickey Mouse head shapes that taste fantastic…

 

What Kind of Carbs Did YOU Have for Breakfast? 3 Things to Know

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It’s be awhile since I touched on the topic of good versus bad carbs, but it remains of critical importance.  And it’s not as simple as counting the carbs on the label.

If it was, we’d all just go for the bread with the “no carb” label and be done with it and damn the sucralose that’s probably hiding inside.

As a quick primer between the evil refined carbohydrates and the angelic whole grains, this is a summary from a previous blog article:

  • The whole grain contains the germ (the bulk of the protective nutrients), endosperm (the calories) and the bran (the fiber). To extend shelf life and increase palatability to the oblivious American public, the germ and bran is lopped off and we’re left with the endosperm–the calories minus some 90% of the phytonutrients that where present in the whole grain. The result is a devastating calorie rich/phytonutrient poor staple consumed by the vast majority of Americans. So “enriched wheat flour,” “sugar” and “high fructose corn syrup” all fall into this category.
  • It is rare that someone truly understands the distinctions between the whole grain and refined carbohydrate, but this understanding is critical to health.  Refined carbohydrates have been linked to pretty much every chronic disease, while whole grains generally protect.  Opposite ends of the spectrum.  Despite this clear difference and the very clear research that states that refined carbohydrates are pretty much evil, our national recommendations still do not tell us to avoid them.

Hopefully now you can begin to understand why bagels aren’t a good idea for breakfast and why most of the oatmeals are a far cry from being healthy.

When we refer to they glycemic index of foods, we are referring to how fast they show up as sugar in the blood stream.  Low GI means that sugar trickles slowly into your system, while a high GI level indicates that the sugar from that meal is pretty much in your blood by the time you even smell it.

This particular study looked at the effects of a high GI meal versus a low GI meal on certain parameters in the blood of a small group of volunteers.  In addition, researchers looked at how hungry they were 4 hours after the meal (around that time that you may be thinking about your next meal or even taking a quick look in the pantry).  Here’s what they found:

  1. Glucose was 2.4-fold greater after the high- than the low-GI meal.
  2. Plasma glucose was lower and reported hunger was greater 4 hours after the high- than the low-GI meal.
  3. The high-GI meal elicited greater brain activity centered in the right nucleus accumbens–the area of the brain related to addiction.

This means that starting the day with a poor choice for breakfast, such as a fast food croissant sandwich, poor quality oatmeal, Cheerios or most low-quality cereals will likely sabotage the REST OF YOUR DAY!  Of course, the same goes for all the meals of your day, but it seems to me that starting out on the right foot is the best option.