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childhood obesity

Childhood Obesity and Breast Cancer Links

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overweightl woman meditation on beach
Kokhanchikov / Dollar Photo Club

I have said that a girl developing breasts at 8 and starting her menstrual cycle by age 9 is a very scary recipe for breast cancer.

And yet this is exactly what we are seeing.  The number of Elementary school girls who can be classified as overweight or obesity has risen continually in the past decade or so.  While these numbers seem to be leveling off, it will remain a concern for many years to come.

I have written continually about how situations that occur in childhood will affect that child decades later as an adult.  Obesity cuts across so many of future health conditions in so many ways, with conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer having roots in childhood health conditions.

In this particular study, researchers looked at how the bodies of obese adolescent girls break down estrogen.  In general, estrogens can get broken down into one of 3 pathways—the 16 and 4 pathways, which are known to damage DNA and cause cancer, and the 2 pathway, which is generally considered protective and lowers the risk of cancer.

In this small study, researchers looked at 12 lean and 23 obese pre-pubertal girls (Tanner Stage I breast and pubic hair) and compared body weight to estrogen breakdown products.  Here’s what they found:

  • Estradiol concentrations were 6.9 times higher in obese versus lean girls (3.45 pg/ml vs 0.5).
  • Concentrations of 16α-OH-E1 were 14.34 times higher in the obese girls (7.17 vs 0.5).
  • The protective 2-MeO-E2 levels were lower in the obese group.

In other words, even at a very young age, these girls were priming their risk for breast cancer.  Obviously, maintaining an ideal body weight is a top priority.  It is also very important for society to understand that being overweight as a child is not a temporary thing or something to brush aside as aesthetic but not health-damaging.

In the meantime, cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, radishes, Brussel sprouts…) are known to help our bodies break down estrogens in a protective, non-cancerous way.

Another very important factor that is hardly ever addressed is our exposure to environmental estrogens.  Plastics, Styrofoam, phthlates and flame retardants can all have estrogen-like activity in the human body. Identifying and eliminating (or at least reducing) these chemicals in yours and you children’s lives needs to be a consistent habit.

Lastly, constipation can actually increase the estrogen levels in the body.  The body eliminates estrogens through a process called conjugation that occurs in the liver.  The conjugated estrogen is then put into bile and is supposed to be eliminated in the feces.  But, if you’re constipated, that estrogen never makes it out—rather it is broken down by bacteria in the gut and thrown back into the bloodstream, free to wreak havoc on estrogen sensitive tissues like the breast and endometrial lining.

Of course, living an anti-cancer lifestyle in general will also help protect the estrogen levels from obesity from damaging the breast tissue, but this is all just going to be a band-aid until the weight is better managed.

Childhood Obesity Statistics: Contributions of a Forgotten Chemical

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environmental chemicals and obesity
absurdovruslan / Dollar Photo Club

 

Calories in, calories out.  Seems to be a simple enough equation for weight loss or maintenance.  Or, at least it used to be.

Make sure your son or daughter stays active.  Throw out any Kellogg’s breakfast cereals and keep them away from fruit juice.  These recommendations are simple enough and makes sense for keeping the rising obesity tide in children at bay.

But somewhere along the process the equation changed.

When you took math class, you were dealing with numbers you understood and could work with.  But what if the equation your teacher put in front of you had numbers that weren’t even on the page?  Makes absolutely no sense, right?

But when it comes to health, this is exactly what is happening.  As society and manufacturing have progressed we have introduced chemicals into the environment that can have a very strong impact on your risk of chronic disease.  It’s no longer about watching the calories you eat and making sure you stay active.  The equation now contains chemicals in the environment that are affecting your health.  And not in a good way.

Many are aware of the more common chemicals like bisphenol A (BPA) in plastic water bottles, thermal register receipts and soda cans.  Teflon in non-stick cookware.  Flame retardants in your clothing, mattress and furniture.

But if in casual conversation I asked your thoughts about dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene I’m pretty sure you’d give me a blank look and steer the conversation to politics.  Unless, of course, you’re a biochemist for DuPont.

If instead I asked you if you had ever heard of DDT used as a insecticide in farming, that glossy look in your eyes would disappear and you’d become more and more animated as you recall the damage this chemical did to animals in the environment and how it was banned from use in the US in 1972.

The rest of the world was a little slow to catch on.  DDT was banned worldwide during the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) on May 21, 2002, going into effect in 2004.  Over a decade ago.  Little did we know just how tough it was for Mother Nature to degrade and get rid of DDT.

With this in mind, if you knew that dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene was a breakdown product of DDT, things would make a little more sense.  And your cause for concern would go up.

Here in the US, 40+ years after DDT was banned, almost all of us have breakdown products of DDT that can be found in our blood.  Scary.

The DDT ban is not so new in Europe and given how long it takes for DDT to clear from the environment it’s hard to imagine that this is not having an effect on our kid’s health.

As if this wasn’t enough to worry about, phthalates are incredibly common in our lives.  That “new shower curtain smell” or the new car smell likely indicates that phthalates are present.  Many “fragrances” have phthalates embedded within them.  Think about how many household items you use on a daily basis that have a scent to them.  It’s likely that phthalates are at work.

All of these environmental chemicals have been shown to contribute to chronic disease.  Top of the list is obesity.  But just how much do these chemicals contribute?  Just a little?  A lot?

This is the exact question posed in this particular study.  In it, a panel of researchers used models to estimate the potential that dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene, BPA, phthalates and other chemicals were contributing to childhood obesity.  Then they went further, determining the costs related to healthcare expenditures due to these chemicals.  Here’s what they found:

  • The panel identified a 40% to 69% chance that dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene caused 1555 cases of overweight at age 10 (in 2010) with associated costs of $36.7 million.
  • There was a 20% to 39% chance that dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene caused 28,200 cases of adult diabetes with associated costs of $12.5 billion.
  • The panel also identified a 40% to 69% chance that phthalate exposure caused 53,900 cases of obesity in older women and $232 billion in associated costs.
  • Phthalate exposure had a 40% to 69% chance of causing 20,500 new cases of diabetes in older women with $907 million in associated costs.
  • Prenatal bisphenol A exposure had a 20% to 69% chance of causing 42,400 cases of childhood obesity with associated lifetime costs of $2.16 billion.

These are estimates, but they are based on what it known about how much these chemicals contribute to poor health.  Unless you take these chemicals into account for the equation of your good health, the solution won’t balance.

In everything you do, you need to pay attention to the chemicals you may be exposed to and do your best to avoid them whenever possible.

 

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.

 

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

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Relation between sugar-sweetened drinks and childhood obesity- (03-08-01)

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Relation between sugar-sweetened drinks and childhood obesity

Are these results such a big surprise? Not only to soft drinks add additional, empty calories, but they also replace needed drinks and calories such as water, fruits and vegetables. Couple this with a lack of physical activity and our “mysterious” obesity epidemic is not so hard to believe. It still get my blood pressure up to see toddlers with soda in their sippie cups. I firmly believe that no child should even be exposed to these types of drinks until at least 8 years of age (if ever). That includes such sugar laden drinks such as Sunny Delight and Hi-C.

Lancet 2001; 357: 505-08 The prevalence of obesity among children in USA increased by 100% between 1980 and 1994. Recent national estimates indicate that 24% and 11% of children are above the 85th and 95th reference percentiles of body mass index (BMI), for age and sex, respectively. Various environmental and social factors relating to diet and physical activity have been identified that could contribute to obesity. One such factor, which has received little attention, is the consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks. According to data from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), per capita soft-drink consumption has increased by almost 500% over the past 50 years. From 1989-91 to 1994-95, soft-drink intake rose from 195 to 275 mL in the general population, and from 345 to 570 mL among adolescent boys. Half of all Americans and most adolescents (65% girls and 74% boys) consume soft drinks daily, most of which are sugar-sweetened, rather than artificially sweetened. Currently, soft drinks constitute the leading source of added sugars in the diet, amounting to 36·2 g daily for adolescent girls and 57·7 g for boys. These figures approach or exceed the daily limits for total added sugar consumption recommended by the USDA. Although this increase in soft-drink consumption coincides with secular increases in obesity prevalence in children, the long-term effects of sugar-sweetened drink consumption on measures of body weight need to be prospectively examined. We aimed to determine the association between change in sugar-sweetened drink consumption and change in BMI, and incidence of obesity among school-age children, over 2 academic years. Interpretation: Consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks is associated with obesity in children.