Science has already found links between obesity and many diseases. That’s really nothing new; being fat will eventually kill you, no matter how healthy you might think you are.
But, as obese parents continue to raise obese children, we must now ask ourselves — what kind of consequences are these kids experiencing?
Studies show that overweight children are already experiencing the consequences most overweight adults experience. Conditions such as high blood pressure, type-2 diabetes and high cholesterol are striking children who haven’t even hit puberty yet.
Linyuan Jing, PhD, presented a study on children and obesity at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions in 2015. The study compared MRIs of 20 overweight children to 20 healthy children to analyze differences in the size and function of their hearts — and the results were horrifying.
The overweight children displayed several symptoms of heart disease, such as enlarged left ventricles and thickening of the heart muscles. In fact, their left ventricles were about 27% larger than those of healthy children’s. These are not signs of risk – these are signs of already having heart disease. 40% of the overweight children were considered to be at “high risk” due to the type of thickening found in their hearts and a reduction in their blood-pumping capacity.
Only seven of the overweight participants were teenagers. Clear signs of heart disease were found in children as young as eight years old.
Jing says, “Ultimately we hope that the effects we see in the hearts of these children are reversible; however, it is possible that there could be permanent damage. This should be further motivation for parents to help children lead a healthy lifestyle.”
It’s important to note that when choosing candidates for the study, children who already had diabetes or were too large to fit in the MRI machine were eliminated. Had they been included, the results of this study would definitely have painted a far darker picture.
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