Florida Child Injury Law Blog

Posts Tagged ‘obese children’

Obesity in children can lead to a shorter life.  Those are the results that were found in a study published this week by the New England Journal of Medicine.  Thousands of children were tracked through adulthood and the heaviest youngsters were more than twice as likely as the thinnest to die prematurely, before age 55, of illness or a self-inflicted injury.

 A condition called pre-diabetes brings great concern. Youngsters with this condition were at almost double the risk of dying before 55, and those plagued with high blood pressure were at some increased risk. Obesity however was the factor most closely related with an early death, researchers said.

 “The message here is that if you take your kid to the doctor and the doctor says, ‘Well, their blood pressure is O.K., their cholesterol is O.K. and their sugar’s O.K..,’ the kid who’s obese still warrants our attention,” said Dr. Peter F. Belamarich, chief of specialty medicine at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx.

 In Florida, 33% of children are considered overweight or obese.  This is higher than the national average of 31.6%.  These statistics have gradually risen since 2003.