Nov

19

Child Obesity Seen as Warning of Heart Disease - New York Times(Childhood Obesity News)

Filed Under Childhood Obesity News | Leave a Comment

The study, presented Tuesday at the American Heart Association conference in New Orleans, found that the thickness of artery walls of children and teenagers who are obese or have high cholesterol resembled the thickness of artery walls of an average 45-year-old. Another Australian study, of 150 10-year-olds, found that in the heart pumping process, the left ventricles were slower to untwist in children with a higher body-mass index, a relationship of weight to height, said a co-author of that study, Walter Abhayaratna, a researcher at Australian National University. Scientists, who measure the carotid artery because it is easier to capture images of neck arteries than the coronary arteries directly connected to the heart, say increased thickness in the carotid artery wall indicates greater amounts of fatty plaque in the arteries leading to the heart and brain. Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life program at Children’s Hospital Boston, said that seeing risk factors like CIMT in children was especially worrying because “there’s not only a much longer period of time for it to be damaging the body, but it is also occurring at a stage of life where the body is still forming and the physiological systems are still being fine-tuned. Read Childhood Obesity

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,