The effects of childhood obesity: Does childhood obesity presage adult obesity - Research Paper Example

The effects of childhood obesity: Does childhood obesity presage adult obesity? Introduction There is no question about it. There are clear evidences to suggest that childhood obesity has a chance to continue into adulthood obesity. It is in this purpose that this paper tries to discuss results from various researches and studies conducted by experts on the issue about childhood obesity and its probable link towards adulthood obesity. However, before anything else, it is essential for this paper to discuss first the idea about obesity and its impact to the society prior to linking childhood obesity to adult obesity. Over the past 25 years, according to Braet (2005), there was an increase of childhood and adolescent obesity in which it has doubled among 6 to 11 year-old children and tripled among 12 to 17 year-old. Braet explained that the moment NHES defined overweight as the 85th percentile of BMI, statistics showed around 26 to 31 percent of children in America and 14 to 22 percent of children in Europe were found overweight. She added in the article she cited, it stated that pediatric obesity tends to have a rising effect towards the risk of adult obesity (p. 117). Study shows that the rate of obesity may have slowed down among women but it showed continuing increase of rate among men and children both girls and boys (Spicer and Moore, 2008, pp. 143 – 166.) According to them the high risk also occurs among racial and ethnic minorities. It is clear that obesity needs necessary attention to address it as part of social issues and problems. It might be tempting to conclude that this health condition will only affect improved countries. However, there are other things that needed to be learned about it. As can be widely heard today, obesity is becoming a global pandemic and critical health issue as usually given from news and by some medical experts. This means that obesity does not occur on the rise only on developed countries, as well as on developing countries. Samaras (2007) pointed out that considering that they have changed from rural agrarian to urban economies, developing countries have been noted to have significant rise of obesity problem. To be more specific of this claim, he added that over the last 20 to 30 years, obesity has risen from 25 % to 50% in Kuwait, Colombia, Philippines and China. He further explained that the rises of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancers and increases in body size in developing countries are all considered to be results of their westernization (p. 148). It is therefore explained by Samaras that experts see childhood prevention as important in treatment of obesity since doing so in the late adolescence and young adulthood stage has been observed difficult. From this advice, it can be noted that experts may seem to have been thinking childhood as stage to have crucial impact to the progress of obesity into adulthood. This issue is discussed further in the later part of this paper. For the mean time, it is also important to consider discussing the importance of studying the issue about obesity. Obesity is not a disease, it is an initiator Perhaps some might think obesity as a disease that is why it needs to be worked out soon enough and that it needs full time working on it. However, Glaser (2007) clearly defined obesity as unhealthy condition, not a disease. According to him, when more extra calories are stored in fat cells overtime, especially kids who have taken in more calories become bigger. Therefore those who ate too much calories by with few or no active physical activities have great chance to gain weight or become obese. However, he argued that it cannot be denied that sometimes obesity runs in families. With this, Glaser exactly believed that there are some other factors causing the disease aside from the level of calorie intake. However, what seems to be hurting about obesity is that it stands as the reason for other complications such as other diseases and medical conditions. Smith (1999, p. 1 - 16) was able to discuss the contemporary and undesirable effects of obesity. He discussed the association between obesity and overall mortality, obesity and its effects on the heart and blood vessels, obesity and its effects on the respiratory system, obesity and its association with high blood pressure, obesity and its effect on blood lipids, obesity and its association with type II diabetes, psychosocial consequences of obesity, obesity and its effects on other body systems and the cost of diseases associated with obesity. The good thing about obesity is that there is an available measure for it and that it is based on standard making its detection so easy and simple. The levels of adiposity going over a prespecified cut-off are the criteria for overweight or obesity (Cole and Cachera, 2002, p. 15). They explained that adults with 25 kg/m2 body mass index (BMI) are overweight and those who have 30 kg/m2 body mass index are considered obese. They pointed out that applying these cut-offs to children would screen them at different ages and will be complicated further by the differences of maturation. Body Mass Index (BMI) in simple terms is the simple measure of obesity by comparing a person’s weight with his or her weight (Hicks, 2008, p. 14-21). The use of BMI to classify obesity can be considered to provide useful measure of obesity according to the World Health Organization (2000, p. 9). According to Hicks, people as they grow older gain weight because their bodies tend to slow down in converting food into energy. He also added that a child who is obese has greater chance of becoming obese adolescent and adolescents who are obese are most likely to become obese adults. What causes obesity? Too much attention has been given to obesity today due to the reason as mentioned earlier, that excess body weight has been viewed to bring serious public health challenges and overweight is responsible for the widespread occurrence of large proportion of disease in the WHO European region (WHO Europe, 2007, p. 1). In the United States, Colditz (2001) reported that obesity is a severe health problem for there was a sharp increase among children and adults over the past three decades. Change in lifestyle trends has been viewed a significant factor contributing to the increase of obesity particularly among adults and Colditz definitely agree with the possibility of the idea. Kretchmer (1988) on the other hand look it the other way, but there is something in common with what Colditz believed about. According to him, obesity is a situation involving the interaction of genetics and environmental aspects making it a biologically complex situation and further makes the genetic factors according to him contribute to the etiology of obesity (p. 3). From the biological point of view of the result of research he presented, there was a remarkable increase of adipose cells in the obese individual (p. 5). Not only that, he also presented the view that there are some other factors affecting individual’s behaviour towards eating and appetite and these are color, odour, taste and other factors (p. 6). On the other hand, Stern and Kazaks (2009) believed that there are factors that contribute to obesity and they can be understood by understanding the dimensions of energy balance such as factors that affect consumption of food, factors that affect the level of activity and metabolic and genetic contributions. Stern and Kazaks cited in particular the following factors that contribute to obesity: increase of energy intake, distorted portion sizes, drinking more calories, availability of convenient foods and physical inactivity (pp. 17 – 24). Fast foods are considered to be one of the main reasons of obesity with the United States being affected the most and now it affects the entire world (Schlosser, 2001, p. 225). Researches found out that gluttony, laziness and other related bad habits may not be necessarily the culprit of obesity (Harmon, 2008, pp. 37 - 45).Harmon presented a clear result of the research that suggests an answer when children of the same age were allowed to consume the same quantities and varieties of foods. The result showed that some gained weight while the other remained on their average weight. This postulate was supported by a survey that examined the weight of children from two to seventeen and then examined again seventeen years later. The study showed that 77 percent of children who were overweight from the start of the project remained overweight as adults. On the other hand, less than 10 percent of the children who were having normal weights at the beginning of the study grew into overweight adults. Harmon postulated that it might also be a question of heredity. According to him medical researches found out that if both parents are obese, the likelihood of becoming obese is 80 percent. Consequently, if only one parent is obese, the chance of becoming obese as well is only 40 percent. Then if none of the parents is obese, the probability of becoming obese is only 30 percent. Schneider (2008, pp. 467 – 476) strongly believed that not only genetic but also the environment are factors to contribute to the occurrence of obesity, the term replaced by overweight at present (Schneider, 2008, pp 467 – 476). This is also agreed by Sherwood, Story, Sztainer & Bauer (2008) who believed that Obesity and overweight are chronic problems as results from the interaction of genes and the environment resulting to energy imbalance due to sedentary lifestyle and abundance of food. Talking of lifestyle and abundance of food Cawley (2007) presented that the technological changes make the availability of processed foods and those people who took advantage of it have the greatest increase in weight. Even if Schneider, Sherwood, Story, Sztainer, Bauer and Cawley believed the strong link between the environment and genetics on obesity, Fisler and Warden (2008, pp. 355 - 370) still believed that both the environment and genetics have complex and incompletely defined interactions. However, they believed that they can determine an individual’s height and weight and other quantitative traits of humans. Thus, agreeing fully to the belief of other studies on the general impact brought by the environment and genetics to obesity. From this information, it can be noted that researchers were further open to many possibilities causing obesity and its rise. According to Visscher (2007, pp. 3 – 64), the varied definitions of obesity suggest importance to clinicians, policy makers and researchers. They clearly explained that when the definition seems to be about protocol and clinical guidelines, clinicians benefit from it. On the other hand, they also explained that when the definitions seem to be about comparing subgroups, between cities, countries or regions and obesity rate over time, policy makers and researchers benefit from it. Why Study Obesity? As discussed earlier, it is clear that obesity has become a pandemic health issue. As such, it really needs more detailed attention just prior to alleviating or eradicating its occurrence and impact to the society. It is in this regard that Peña and Bacallao (2000, p. 5) were able to justify that the study of obesity is a priority health issue because of the following reasons. 1. It is a factor affecting or causing various nutrition related non-communicable diseases that caused remarkable number of deaths. 2. The measure for preventing obesity coincides with the measure for preventing other non-communicable chronic diseases. 3. Obesity can be easily detected using traditional anthropometric measurements making it a useful indicator for monitoring diseases. Does childhood obesity presage adult obesity? Perhaps the question is too broad for a general answer for it might be hard to uncover the exact and general reason for obesity. As mentioned earlier from the results of other studies, it is clear that a person might become obese even if he or she is not overweight or obese during childhood due to some factors discussed earlier. There are indeed many factors affecting obesity and overweight among individuals and it is unlikely to find a general answer of a question asking about the ability of childhood obesity to foretell adult obesity. However, some studies have justified the chances of becoming obese when a person was obese during childhood. Some economic studies of the contemporary rise of obesity take into account the data of adults but these gives insight to the rise of obesity among children (Cawley, 2007, p. 27-56). When it comes to the possibility of continuing childhood obesity into adulthood, disturbing trends in the United States and in the world have important implications. This is according to Must and Anderson (2003, p. 684). However, there are some studies which clearly suggest that children who are obese have the possibility to become obese adults or overweight (United States Government Accountability Office, 2005, p.1). Those who are obese or overweight during childhood and when such condition continues until adulthood stage are most likely to experience cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality (Oddy, Scott & Binns, 2006). This result clearly suggests that indeed, there are individuals who are overweight and obese during childhood and still experienced the same during adulthood stage. This is due to the fact that many individuals are today suffering cardiovascular disease and other weight-related diseases strongly linked to adulthood obesity. According to Freedman (2004), there is an association between being overweight in infancy stage and later in childhood. Freedman further presented information that children who are overweight have great chance of becoming overweight adults. Freedman presented information from a research that discussed about signs such as elevated blood pressure, cholesterol, trigyycerides and insulin level which can be found from overweight children. Furthermore, from that research, it was found out that children who are overweight are at high risk for coronary heart disease (CHD), atherosclerosis and adulthood coronary heart disease. This means that such cases of adulthood diseases got from childhood health condition have a chance to keep going in the future. This also means that being overweight at younger age has a chance to continue until adulthood considering that some diseases associated to becoming obese and overweight among children have chance to continue until adulthood stage. Regan and Betts (2006, p. 33) elaborated that childhood obesity has clear health impacts during childhood and this continues into adult life. They further explained that the consequences of childhood obesity are comprehensive which affect many aspects of physiological and psychological functioning. However as some research presented it, the association between childhood weight and adult disease could be direct or indirect. From the information given by Gillman (2004) on the research on life course approach to obesity, there is increasing evidence that children who are overweight are most likely to become overweight adults and once they are, obesity seems to be hard to treat (p. 189 – 217). Gillman emphasized that there are now many studies trying to consider the role of growth at infancy stage as predictor of later adiposity. On the other hand, from a rat experiment presented by Gillman, modification of energy was found out to have lifelong effect on gaining weight even if the intake was set back to normal condition afterwards (p. 14). This result at some point gives credit to some studies telling about the abundance of foods and pattern of consumption among individual. Another research also presented result that among children of school age in Pakistan, an increasing incident of overweight and obesity is remarkable even if one out of six of them was stunted and one out of three of them was underweight during at the early years of their lives (Williams, 2009, p. 163). Williams added that in the UK, a research presented the fact that obesity and overweight are also common to happen among poorer families than wealthier ones (p. 163). This result only proved that childhood obesity cannot exactly tell in general as predictor of adulthood obesity. However there is one thing clear from the studies about obesity. There are many contributing factors for the development of adulthood obesity and childhood obesity is just one of them. References: Braet, C. (2005). Obesity and Binge Eating Disorder. In S. Munsch & C. Benglinger (Eds.). Treatment of Obese Children (pp. 117 – 137). Switzerland: S. Karger. Cawley, J. (2007). Obesity, Business and Public Policy. 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Williams, A. F. (2009). Infant and Young Child Feeding: Challenges to Implementing a Global Strategy. In F. Dykes & V. H. Moran (Eds.). Life cycle Influences and Opportunities (pp. 163 – 177). UK: Wiley Blackwell. Read More