Medical students and family medicine residents packed a conference room -- some even sitting on the floor -- to catch an educational session on childhood obesity July 28 at the National Conference of Family Medicine Residents and Medical Students here.
The attendees got a dose of the hard truth -- undeniable statistics that America's children are getting heavier: The number of obese children has tripled in fewer than three decades, from 5.5 percent in the early 1970s to 16.5 percent in 2001-02, said speaker Kyle Griffin, M.D., a faculty physician at the Cox Family Medicine Residency in Springfield, Mo., in his presentation, "Childhood Overweight and Obesity."
Griffin has a special interest in treating obese and overweight children, so much so that he secured funding from the Children's Miracle Network to create a patient education resource center in the residency clinic's waiting room.
"We must understand the branches or consequences of obesity," said Griffin. "But then we must equip health care providers to strike at the roots through prevention and treatment strategies."
The sobering health consequences faced by obese children include hypertension, insulin resistance, diabetes mellitus, lipid abnormalities, obstructive sleep apnea and orthopedic problems, said Griffin. A hidden consequence -- social discrimination -- may be just as destructive to young lives.
Griffin, who said in the session he was using the terms obesity and overweight interchangeably, told his audience that when children in a study were shown pictures of kids of varying sizes, the children ranked the photos of the overweight kids last in terms of likeability. . Is it any wonder, said Griffin, that overweight children suffer poor self-esteem and depression?
Griffin read letters by two obese teens in which the girls said they hated their bodies and lamented their lack of a social life. "I don't want to be this way -- I want to be like the other pretty skinny teenage girls," wrote one girl.
It's important to identify a weight problem early in a child's life, said Griffin, because obese children often become obese adults: 20 percent of obese 4-year-olds will become obese adults. A whopping 80 percent of obese adolescents will carry their obesity into adulthood.
Often the first step toward treatment is parent education, said Griffin, because "parents must understand the medical complications of obesity and be ready to help the child make changes. The primary goal is healthy eating and activity and not the achievement of an ideal weight."
Griffin offered some parenting tips regarding a child's diet:
- Resist using food as a reward.
- Offer only healthy food options.
- Remove temptations.
- Establish daily family meal and snack times.
- Be a good role model.
Ask a child to drop just one high-calorie food such as chips, ice cream or french fries is an easy-to-meet goal, said Griffin. "Eliminating one can of soda per day could equal one pound of weight loss per month," he said.
Public schools need to pitch in too, said Griffin, by offering healthier school meals, especially for low-income students who can get as much as 50 percent of their daily caloric intake from school meals. "The fat content of those meals often exceeds national standards," said Griffin.
Increased physical activity is key to fighting childhood obesity, said Griffin. Rule number one: Turn off the TV. "Tell parents to limit TV time to under two hours per day," said Griffin. Or, you can really shock the kids and expand that to include all screen time -- video games and computers, too, he said.
