Thursday 3 January 2008

Causes of Childhood Obesity


Causes of Childhood Obesity
Obesity is defined as an excessive accumulation of body fat. Obesity is present when total body weight is more than 25 percent fat in boys and more than 32 percent fat in girls. There are various medicines like Phentermine, Adipex etc. which aid in the weight loss for adults but these medicines are definitely not meant for children.
Obesity in children leads to many risk factors. It is the leading cause of pediatric hypertension. It increases the risk of childhood cardiac disease, type2 Diabetes Mellitus, the risk of painful joints. But the most important what some researchers feel is the amount of psychological pressure and the social pressure that he has to undergo among his peers which make him susceptible to depression at times. Thus the social pressure is one of the main consequences of childhood obesity. Not all obese infants turn to obese children and similarly not all obese children turn to obese adults. Childhood obesity results from a combination of factors like genetic or hereditary, psychological, or nutritional.
Family: A child whose both parents are obese has a higher chance of developing obesity as compared to other children. This can happen for a variety of reasons like genetic factors or may be the sedentary lifestyle of the parents or the lack of exercise in their daily routine. This can make the child born with obesity.
Inactive Life: Children these days spend more of their time on playing video games and watching T.V. This has prevented the children of today to engage in some healthy ground activities like sports. Hence children are gradually becoming couch potatoes. Leading an inactive life has made them grow into an obese from just being overweight.

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